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RE: Nothing is safe

are soapboxes considered organic? and where is the best place to purchase
one?

soapboxless for the time being,
Barry

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Smith [mailto:dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 11:34 AM
To: Over-the-Rhine at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Nothing is safe


> but then vegetables are all covered with chemicals.  Nothing is safe. 

That's what "organic" food is for (although I wish they had chosen a
different
name for it.  Broccoli with pesticides on it is still organic, as opposed to
computer chips, which are not organic, but it's not an "organic food".  Go
fig.).  You have choices.  You are not a mindless consumer drone at the
mercy
of agribusiness.  If enough people support sustainable agriculture, we might
not drive this planet into the ground (so to speak).  The business will
follow
the market, so it's up to us to make them stop.  We live in an ironic age,
when
mass-production means that unhealthy food is cheap and plentiful, and
healthy
food is more expensive (although not a *lot* more expensive), but the long
term
cost of getting the cheap stuff is a lot more than the short-term financial
savings, of that I am sure.  I mean, look what's happening with genetically
engineered foods.  In principle, I don't have a problem with genetic
engineering, but look at what they're *doing* with it.  Grafting dna
willy-nilly with no controls or care what the modified organisms will do to
the
ecosystem.  Butterflies can't feed on the flowers anymore.  Who knows what
allergies will develop?  And don't get me started on the economics!
Companies
that engineer plants that won't produce offspring, so you have to go back to
them for more seed every year.  And if you, a poor thirdworld country,
decide
you would rather have plants that actually reproduce themselves so you can
try
to develop a sustainable economy, the WTO will slap you with a fine to
compensate the company for "lost income" for what you would have paid them.
This is "free trade"???  Give me a frikkin' break.  That's like having to
pay
pepsi every time you buy a coke.  It's extortion, pure and simple.

Hmmm... sorry.  Got carried away there.

Getting off the soap-box,
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
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