Fire and Knowledge

In general, I weathered even the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.

–Jayber Crow in Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (2000), p. 162

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

–Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) in The More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, p. 149

Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects say. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque.

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), p. 65

The FDA has announced that cloned livestock are “safe to eat” and do not require special labeling. This means consumers will not know whether the meat (or dairy produce) they purchase is cloned or not. These sorts of decisions are to protect companies profits, not citizens. Many people — myself included — do not want to eat food from clones for health or religious or philosophic reasons, and we have a right to know whether the food we are buying is cloned.

FDA believes “that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day,” said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

That is probably true since the FDA does not require labeling for genetically altered foods, such as corn and soy — foods that exude toxins and resist poison. They also do not require labels for dairy products from cows that have been given bovine growth hormone (rBGH) and antibiotics. So cloned meat is probably just as healthy as those foods. But I don’t think those are healthy, either, even if the FDA does.

This is an important issue. Please consider telling the FDA to require special labeling for cloned animal produce and genetically-altered produce. The FDA says they will accept comments from the public for the next three months. I hope they will listen. This is what I sent the FDA:

Hello,

Consumers should be given a right to know whether the meat (or dairy produce) they purchase is cloned or not through special labeling. Many people — myself included — do not want to eat food from clones for health or religious or philosophic reasons, and we have a right to know whether the food we are purchasing is cloned. We should also know if the food has been genetically altered. You should be the organization that gives us that choice. You are supposed to protect us and let us make informed decisions. Please do so.

Sincerely,

Joshua Sowin

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another which states that this has already happened.

–Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) in The More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, p. 148

Calculate the amount of CO2 emissions your car and home produce with Terrapass. It’s an easy way to get an idea how our daily lives impact our world, though I’m not sure what I think of their “offsetting” idea (it’s a start, I suppose, but reduction is always better).

When the first pilgrims came to America there were an estimated nine billion passenger pigeons—more than twice the number of all birds found in America today.

–Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods (1998), p. 204

The first obstacle to a proper appreciation for “old books” is this common failure to understand that our own world is also merely a “period” in intellectual history, with many unquestioned assumptions that later generations will find absurd. It is certain that those later generations will look back at the ancestors that we despise or mock and conclude that they got many things right that we got wrong. (And after all, do we not sometimes say there was wisdom in ancient Greece or Rome or China or India that the modern Western world has neglected or forgotten?) But this is a very hard lesson to learn in an age that believes that its rapid technological development must be accompanied by like progress in morality and wisdom. [C. S.] Lewis was not even convinced that technological changes should regularly earn the label of “progress”—he thought that buttons served far better than zippers to keep the fly of his trousers closed, and he dipped a pen in an inkwell to the end of his days—and was thoroughly skeptical of any claim that we morally exceeded our ancestors.

–Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (2005), p. 166