Salmonella spin from the ”Humane Society” of the United States took another turn for the worse yesterday. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof used his Thursday column (and the Times blog) to mimic the animal rights group in attacking modern egg farms as a supposed breeding ground for the bacteria. “[W]e can overhaul our agriculture system so that it is both safer and more humane — starting with a move toward cage-free eggs,” Kristof writes. But like HSUS, Kristof is plainly wrong.
read more here »A Discovery About Who’s Channeling Eco-Militant Beliefs (Thursday, 9/2/2010)
Yesterday a crazed gunman named James Lee took hostages at the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was later killed by police. Lee’s bizarre crime will be a topic for TV talking heads in coming days, but one of the most interesting features of the story probably won’t get much airplay. What drove Lee to strap explosives to his body and threaten to blow an office building (and its inhabitants) to kingdom come? A 2-page manifesto attributed to Lee could provide an answer. His “demands” for the Discovery Channel included a change in programming to favor population control and preferring wildlife over people. This follows the familiar philosophies that we see regularly touted...
read more here »BMI Is a Fatheaded Obesity Tool (Wednesday, 9/1/2010)
Britain’s “fat” surveillance of schoolchildren has once again backfired. The Sun reported last week that a perfectly healthy-sized girl is refusing to eat after the government told her parents that she’s “overweight.” The key problem is the British health authorities’ use of a measure called the “Body Mass Index” (BMI) to classify kids as fat, underweight, or healthy. Parents are receiving warning letters if their kids fall on the "overweight" end of the spectrum. Our main criticism of the BMI is its inaccuracy as an obesity-measuring tool, and a number of similar gaffes this summer make us wonder how much longer it will be in widespread use. Fortuitously, The New York Times analyzed some of...
read more here »Benefits of Buying Local Can Be a Far-Off Fantasy (Tuesday, 8/31/2010)
It may seem counterintuitive that buying something grown halfway around the world can be more eco-friendly than buying something grown just a county or two away. Strange, but true. Someone should tell the “locavores,” who encourage people to buy food from the closest sources possible -- like farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs -- in order to reduce the “food miles” of what’s on our plates. It sounds nice, but as New York Times contributor Stephen Budiansky wrote recently, some of the hip and popular locavore terms don’t mean much when actual facts are introduced:
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