Putting Pesticides in Perspective...

A great editorial comment in the Globe and Mail today, on the subject of pesticides in the food we eat.

The long and the short of it? In North America, we worry too much. That's about it. Not to trivialize the fear of the domestic consumer, but for the most part, those fears are completely misguided.

The organic produce industry has exploded in growth in the last four years, due partially to a fear of pesticide usage. Yet the numbers don't bear that out - 80 per cent of samples of fresh domestic produce had no detectable residues at all and 19.9 per cent had residues so small that they fell below the limits set by Health Canada or the US FDA. Only 0.7 per cent had residues above that limit, and the limit is so conservative that a person would have to eat hundreds or even thousands of servings a day, for life, to suffer any potential effect.

Caution is fine. But changing your buying habits based on fear simply isn't healthy.

They Paved Paradise, and Put Up a Parking Lot...

"They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parkin' lot"

Environmentalists are saying a decision to install parking meters has backfired in B.C. parks.

The problem - according to environmentalists, now that people have to pay, people stopped coming. And apparently, they stopped comin g in droves - by some estimates, attendance is down 20 percent in 2003.

"The decision to put parking meters into parks was poorly thought out, poorly planned and poorly implemented," Eva Riccius, a wilderness society ecosystem specialist, said Wednesday. "British Columbians should not have to pay to go for a walk in the park."

Actually, I think the truly funny part of the story lies within the details - only 1/4 of folks actually chose to pay the meter. The rest simply ignored them. Park authorities issued tickets, but don't have the legal authority to collect on them.

To claim the decline in attendance simply on parking meters is oversimplistic - after all, this is the same Province that had massive forest fires in 2003. Forest fires tend to occur in... well... forests.

Actual Expert Too Boring For TV

I love The Onion.

This is just an all-too stereotypical look at what constitutes a "science expert" in the media.

I wish they had this on video.

The Latest Salvo in the War on Fun...

(With credit to Exra Levant, who wrote an excellent book on the same subject...)

Take one of the worst managed cities on earth, add in a whopping $300 million deficit, and toss in one really assinine idea.

The result: Detroit City Council is considering a tax on all Fast-Food sold within the city.

Apparently, someone has been using Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" as his budget prep homework.

I could argue that taxing food sold within a city is an abuse of the ability that municipality has to taxation. But hey - lets assume that I'm wrong. Let's assume that Detroit is a perfect city, that all the money raised will go towards healthcare and municipally run health care programs. After all, fast food consumption leads to increased health issues, right?

This is what other greedy municipalities are using as the crux of the same argument. "Other cities and states have special taxes on prepared food, and some have tried "snack taxes." In New York, Assemblyman Felix Ortiz has proposed a 1 percent tax on junk food, video games and TV commercials to fund anti-obesity programs."

Here's where that argument falls apart - "if approved, the Detroit tax would be the country's first to target fast-food outlets, the National Restaurant Association said. The tax would apply to anything sold at a fast-food restaurant - even salads."

Call it what it is. It's not a taxing bad behavior... it's attacking a somewhat vulnerable industry in order to avoid making tough decisions on your own deplorable spending habits.