No Love Lost

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Don_Quijote_and_Sancho_PanzaI think of this phrase as meaning two people who never liked each other are at odds again.

The Phrase Finder message board includes this: “A translation in 1620 of ‘Don Quixote offers this passage: ‘There’s no love lost,’ quote Sancho, ‘for she speaks ill of me too when she list.'” It also says “several centuries ago, this phrase carried two opposing meanings.” The old meaning is along the lines of “their affection for each other is undiminished.”

The Free Dictionary says this phrase “originated in the 1500s and until about 1800 could indicate either extreme love or extreme hate. The former was meant in ‘No love between these two was lost, each was to the other kind’ ( Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765). Today, however, the term signifies ill will exclusively.”

It seems odd to offer a citation for the obsolete meaning but not for the current meaning. The Don Quixote translation is the best I found.

GMOs Revisited – Still Look Fine to Me

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tomato.svg.medProducts certified by Non GMO Project (by a private entity – proving the government is not the only source of such information) nearly tripled last year, and Whole Foods may require GMOs to be labeled in their stores, while Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have “sworn off”

GMOs, according to slate.com. But my opinion, expressed in previous posts about GMOs, has not changed. I see opposition to GMOs as increasingly irrational.

While philosophical concerns may appeal to some, fear of health effects seems to be the primary motivation for avoiding GMO foods. I have noticed no one worries about GMOs that manufacture medications.

I still find no compelling scientific evidence that GMOs are more dangerous than conventional foods.

Slate says “it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies… [Activists] defend drugs, pesticides, and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins [as the GMOs they condemn].” That’s a pretty strong statement.

The article goes on to discuss a few anti-GMO campaigns in detail, concluding that “the stories of papaya, Bt, and Golden Rice demonstrate, in several ways, that [health] concerns are unfounded.” If you’re worried I encourage you to read the article for yourself.

Slate also discusses pesticide resistance, which is a legitimate concern. Evolution doesn’t care where environmental factors come from, and weeds could become Roundup resistant. Shifting to crops that are naturally herbicide resistant also contributes to the future problem. A wise farmer will look beyond this year’s crop.

Slate also covered the super tomato: “Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops… the Garden Gem is very different from every other supermarket tomato: flavor. It actually has it. Lots.”

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? If your own garden tomatoes are suffering from blossom rot, like mine this year, this could be the answer. But the tomato industry (yes, apparently there is such a thing) has said “no” in what Slate calls “incomprehensible dysfunction in the tomato market.” Garden Gem would cost more, and the tomato industry does not believe consumers will pay more because they just won’t believe a supermarket tomato will taste better.

I bet they’d be cheaper than my garden-grown! (Dip into The 64 Dollar Tomato for a story crazier than mine.)

Our previous GMO posts are here.

Grant

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front cover of Grant biographyI posted a review of the more than thousand page Ulysses S. Grant autobiography and thought I should follow that with the 173 page biography by John Mosier for those who want to know more about Grant but don’t have many days of reading time to commit. I understand that, although I will comment that the autobiography gives a much richer insight into the man and his remarkable accomplishments as a general. My primary complaint about Moiser’s book is that he could have reduced it by any number of pages if he hadn’t spent so much time comparing Grant’s military actions to those of other great generals. A couple of instances would have been appropriate and instructive, but there are dozens of instances.

Moiser is indeed a Grant fan. The fly cover says, “…Mosier reveals the man behind the military legend, showing how Grant’s creativity and genius off the battlefield shaped him into one of our nation’s greatest military leaders.” Grant had many critics, and the book attributes much of the criticism to other generals (read Halleck) who feared Grant’s successes would detract from their careers. Newspapers were filled with stories about the horrible slaughters of Civil War battles, and there emerged an image that Grant was a drunken butcher who won battles by sacrificing the lives of thousands of the soldiers in his overwhelmingly large forces. My belief is that Grant was indeed a master strategist who cared deeply about human life, understood the need for solid logistics, and was amazingly quick at determining proper tactics to take advantage of terrain. In short, I believe Grant was a leader in the true definition of what would make the average soldier in the trenches or on the march look at him and decide he was a man worth following. I submit the absolute trust given Grant by William Sherman, who famously said something to the effect “I know that you will come save me, if alive.” I can’t think of a more powerful endorsement of trust between comrades in arms. Continue reading →

Jim Crow Law

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Reviewing the book The New Jim Crow made me wonder how this phrase originated.

“It is not clear how, but the minstrel character’s name ‘Jim Crow’ became a kind of shorthand for the laws, customs and etiquette that segregated and demeaned African Americans primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s.” ferris.edu

“The phrase ‘Jim Crow Law’ can be found as early as 1892 in the title of a New York Times article about voting laws in the South.” wikipedia It sounds like the term was already known to readers, so it seems to have originated colloquially, and no one knows who coined it.

In the 1800s, white performers donned “blackface” makeup for minstrel shows where they “played the roles of ignorant, lazy, joyous blacks. Audiences roared with laughter.”

Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a native of New York, was well known for blackface performances where he “acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. In his Jim Crow persona, he also sang ‘Negro ditties’ such as ‘Jump Jim Crow’.” ferris.edu

Rice supposedly got his act from specific slaves he observed, even buying their clothes to use as his costume. black-face.com

Colorado High School Education

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An article in the Denver Post by Peter Huidekoper, Jr. explains that recent higher graduation rates aren’t being accompanied by improved educations. There are “…several high schools where the four-year graduation rate is impressive but the (low) ACT scores and (high) remediation rates are not.” Apparently the ACT test given in the 11th grade is the one remaining “…assessment that matters.” The article discusses examining the ACT scores for 2012 juniors, 2013 senior graduation rates, and remediation rates for those who entered a Colorado college the next fall.

The data studied by Huidekoper showed a clear correlation between ACT test scores and graduation and remediation rates. “For students with ACT scores 21 and above nearly 90 percent graduate and remediation rates are exceptionally low. Graduation rates decrease and remediation rates increase as ACT scores drop. Westminster High (in my home city) had an ACT average score of 16.3, a surprisingly high graduation rate of 76.9%, and “…most of those graduates who went on to college required remedial classes.”

The author gives many more examples of generally depressing data. The “…staggering statewide remediation rate of 34.2 percent does not include nearly half of the 2013 graduates who did not go on to college.” It is clear that there an appallingly small number of seniors who receive a high school diploma and are “college ready.” The author asks whether “…a diploma from a Colorado high school truly stands for something.”

 

Third Wave of Racism in America?

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New Jim CrowSlavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration – are these the evolution of racism in America?

The New Jim Crow is written by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and associate professor at Stanford Law School. She says that over ten years of working for the ACLU she has come to believe that liberal and civil rights groups are failing to recognize an important issue – mass incarceration – and failing to recognize that it is a racial issue.

Part of the problem is that no one wants to be seen as favoring criminals. As Alexander notes, there were several blacks who personally fought segregation on buses, but if they resisted arrest or had unsavory relatives, they didn’t make a good test-case for civil rights leaders. Rosa Parks became that test case because, not only did she refuse to give up her seat, she was unimpeachable.

Alexander defines mass-incarceration as time in prison, plus notes that “ex-offenders are discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives… in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service.” This creates a permanent underclass and, since black and brown men are incarcerated at much higher rates than whites for the same crimes, this is a racial underclass.

She failed to realize this herself for many years, so “knowing as I do the difficulty of seeing what most everyone insists does not exist, I anticipate this book will be met with skepticism… may seem like a gross exaggeration… this book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow.” Continue reading →