Monthly Archives: November 2014

Voter Turnout for 2014 Midterm Elections

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The Denver Post published an editorial declaring that the “…test of the state’s all-mail ballot and vote center system…” was a success because 2 million votes were cast compared to 1.8 million for the 2010 midterm election. The sad fact is that the Post was bragging about a 53% voter participation despite the ease of voting by mail.

Colorado voters were significantly more engaged that the nation as a whole. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that just 36.4% of eligible voters in the nation cast votes, which was the lowest turnout since 1942. There were seven states with turnout less than 30%. The worst result was in Indiana at 28%. Even the Kansas Senate race that was given nationwide attention only had turnout of a bit less than 43%.

Another scary statistic is that the nationwide campaigns were estimated to have cost $3.67 billion. I know that there was a constant barrage of television ads for the Colorado Senate election. That one campaign had a total cost of 97 million dollars, which equates to about $50 for each vote that was cast. I will admit that the ads toward the end of the campaigning did sometimes count as entertainment. I particularly liked the one portraying a couple desperately searching for a place to buy condoms because Senatorial candidate Cory Gardner had outlawed them as part of his quest to prohibit all forms of birth control.

There have been all manner of suggestions on how to get more voters to participate. Both political parties have spent huge amounts of time and money on their get out the vote efforts. Perhaps they should think about political ads that are less insulting.

Killing Patton

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killing patton book cvrThis is another in the series of “Killing” books written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and my wife says this is her favorite book in the series. The subtitle of the book is “The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General.” The book does present some compelling evidence that Patton may have been killed. He did create some powerful enemies, including some in the U.S. military, Stalin, and some Germans.

The book begins with a description of Private First Class Robert W. Holmund, an explosives expert in Patton’s army. Private Holmund and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to attack a heavily fortified and mostly underground fortification called Fort Driant. The bombing and artillery strikes that preceded the assault have had no effect on the Wehrmacht fighters who have remained safe within the fort’s fifteen-food thick walls and hidden forest pillboxes. Machine guns that the soldiers have named “Hitler’s Zipper” because of the high-speed ripping sound as it fires twelve hundred rounds a minute open up on the attackers as their advance stalls at the barbed wire around the fort. The machine guns are joined by rifle fire, mortars, and artillery. The Americans eventually disengage and crawl back to safety. Eighteen have been killed or wounded. And that’s just the start.

The soldiers try again a few days later, and this time they make it through the barbed wire to again be faced with precision fire from everything the Germans have. The survivors are forced to hastily dig foxholes to escape the barrage. The medics race from foxhole to foxhole to tend to the wounded until they are killed. The soldiers find a way into to the tunnels and battle the Germans underground. The survivors withdraw to the foxholes and the Germans mount a counterattack. There are only four of Holmlund’s squad left alive by the time a sniper’s bullet fells him. The descriptions of the combat are vivid.

The book intersperses descriptions of Patton and the speeches he gave his troops to prepare them for war with descriptions of the war. He said, for example, “Americans despise cowards.” “Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” I wondered whether the parents of Private Holmlund wished he had been a little less brave. Continue reading →

Chickens Come Home to Roost

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There is little disagreement that the expression refers to bad things happening as the result of past offensive words or actions. World Wide Words explains that the idea “…goes back to Chaucer, though he expressed it rather differently…writing that curses are like ‘a bird that returns again to his own nest’.” Chickens appeared in a poem by Robert Southey in 1890. He relied on the image of farm chickens “…foraging during the day but coming back to the safety of the hen-house at dusk…” There have been many variations, including “…curses come home to roost, which is in Margret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.”

New French Fries Won’t Cause As Much Cancer As Before

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Mr-potato.svgGMOs (genetically modified organisms) are back in the news with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent approval of Simplot’s new potato – the Innate. Simplot has inserted additional fragments of the potato’s own DNA – nothing from bacteria or other organisms. You’d think this would reduce the “ick factor” that bedevils other GMOs. The new potato offers advantages to the consumer, not just to farmers and seed companies, so perhaps it has a better chance of being accepted that other GMOs.

Simplot began selling precut frozen French fries and hashbrowns to fast-food chains back in the 1950s, but they want to create a new consumer product: the fresh pre-cut potato. Unlike most potatoes that turn brown quickly, the Innate stays fresh and white much longer. Whether consumers will embrace this new convenience, and pay a bit more for it, will determine if Innate succeeds.

Another happy outcome is that Innate produces less acrylamide. Acrylamide has been shown to increase the risk of cancer in lab rats and mice, but studies in humans so far have not shown a clear increase in cancer risk in humans. One of Simplot’s biggest customers will not take advantage of the change:

“‘McDonald’s USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practice,’ a company spokesperson” said.

The Mother Jones article rings true:

“When you think about it, that cautious attitude makes perfect sense. McDonald’s has been beset by declining sales and questions about the quality of its food. Its customers don’t care about the Innate’s anti-browning quality because they buy their fries cooked. The only potential sales pitch would involve the lower dose of acrylamides. But saying ‘Our new fries might be less carcinogenic than the ones we’ve been selling you for 50 years’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it.”

I also ran across some commercial information on a website supported, in part, by the European Union. Innate isn’t mentioned, but French fries are not the potato’s biggest market:

“Only one in four potatoes grown in Europe actually gets eaten by people. Almost half end up being fed to livestock. The remaining one quarter are used as raw material in the production of alcohol and starch.”

It seems “sticky starch” is used as paste, glue, or lubricant. Currently, the different forms of starch found in a potato must be separated, so plant breeders are working to develop potatoes that produce only one type. More GMO potatoes are doubtless on their way.

Reducing a chemical (a natural chemical found in all potatoes) that may-or-may-not cause cancer seems like a small gain. And, personally, I don’t find cutting my own potatoes a big imposition. But on this blog, we’ve offered cautious support for GMOs and I don’t see Innate as changing that position. We’ll keep watching.

Read more on GMOs here:

GMO labeling 2

GMO labeling 1

GMOs Food Safety and Golden Rice

GMOs Science and Morality

GMOs vs Hybrids

Slavery in America: The Half Has Never Been Told

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half has never been toldEdward E. Baptist has written a book about slavery in America. It may seem surprising, but despite being much-studied, slavery and the Civil War that ended it are still controversial.

Baptist wants to present the “beating heart” of slavery. He uses many sources. Notarized sales records and “certificates of character” provided a lot of data on slaves. During the Great Depression, WPA historians were paid to collect personal histories from freed slaves. Baptist “draws on thousands of personal narratives” and often uses evocative language. Slaves as a group were “this trussed-up giant, stretched out on the rack of America’s torture zone;” a particular slave who “survived six weeks of marching in shackles… was thin, made of knots of starved, scarred muscle, draped in rags.”

Baptist states that Americans have a “sanitized” understanding of slavery and the Civil War that “insist[s] that the purpose of the war had been to defend [the South’s] political rights against an oppressive state… that slavery had been benign and that ‘states rights’ had been the cause of the Civil War.” Baptist writes that the “enslavers” insistence on extending slavery into the American West,” where they “pushed too hard,” was the final straw so that, “at last, whites came to take up arms against each other.”

Through the 1800s a profession of entrepreneurial slave traders came to dominate over small, local slave-trading. Slaves were taken farther away from their homes and families than ever before. The price of slaves tracked the price of cotton, and cotton production was increased through torture, especially whipping. Slavery was not dwindling away on its own, as some of the Founding Fathers had hoped and predicted. It was an important part of America’s economy. Cotton was vital to the industrial revolution and slavery helped America become an economic power. Continue reading →

Darkest Before the Dawn

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The Phrase Finder explains that the expression means there is hope even in the worst of circumstances. There are many examples  in print from the late 1700s. An English theologian and historian named Thomas Fuller used a version of the term in writings dating 1650. It isn’t known whether Fuller originated the expression or whether “…he may have been recording a piece of folk wisdom.”