What is Going On In Iran July 19, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Uncategorized.Tags: Iranian protests
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I have a post at Reviving the Left describing events in Iran over the weekend.
Homosexuality 1966 July 19, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Culture, Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts.Tags: irresponsible news media, progress for gays and lesbians
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In honor of Pride weekend, it is good to have a reminder of how far gays and lesbians have come. Here is a Time Magazine article about homosexuality from 1966. (h/t Tyler Cowen)
Beset by inner conflicts, the homosexual is unsure of his position in society, ambivalent about his attitudes and identity—but he gains a certain amount of security through the fact that society is equally ambivalent about him. A vast majority of people retain a deep loathing toward him, but there is a growing mixture of tolerance, empathy or apathy. Society is torn between condemnation and compassion, fear and curiosity, between attempts to turn the problem into a joke and the knowledge that it is anything but funny, between the deviate’s plea to be treated just like everybody else and the knowledge that he simply is not like everybody else.
Deviates?
For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort —witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Rich dowagers often have a permanent traveling court of charming international types who exert influence over what pictures and houses their patronesses buy, what decorators they use, and where they spend which season.
Witty, pretty, and catty? Swishy life counselors for the I-have-too-much-money-and-I-don’t-know-how-to-spend-it set. There is an important social function on which our whole economy depends.
There is no denying the considerable talent of a great many homosexuals, and ideally, talent alone is what should count. But the great artists so often cited as evidence of the homosexual’s creativity—the Leonardos and Michelangelos —are probably the exceptions of genius. For the most part, thinks Los Angeles Psychiatrist Edward Stainbrook, homosexuals are failed artists, and their special creative gift a myth. No less an authority than Somerset Maugham felt that the homosexual, “however subtly he sees life, cannot see it whole,” and lacks “the deep seriousness over certain things that normal men take seriously … He has small power of invention, but a wonderful gift for delightful embroidery. He has vitality, brilliance, but seldom strength.”
A warning to all you art students! Fail at art and you will become teh gay!
Homosexual ethics and esthetics are staging a vengeful, derisive counterattack on what deviates call the “straight” world. This is evident in “pop,” which insists on reducing art to the trivial, and in the “camp” movement, which pretends that the ugly and banal are fun. It is evident among writers, who used to disguise homosexual stories in heterosexual dress but now delight in explicit descriptions of male intercourse and orgiastic nightmares. It is evident in the theater, with many a play dedicated to the degradation of women and the derision of normal sex.
Yes. Gay men are responsible for the degradation of women, who have been treated so well by straight men. The woman’s liberation movement was a reaction to gay men. Who knew?
Another homosexual trait noted by Bergler and others is chronic dissatisfaction, a constant tendency to prowl or “cruise” in search of new partners. This is one reason why the “gay” bars flourishing all over the U.S. attract even the more respectable deviates. Sociologists regard the gay bar as the center of a kind of minor subculture with its own social scale and class warfare.
Of course the “straight” bars are full of monogamous, family types who would never think of prowling for new partners.
Fear of the opposite sex is also believed to be the cause of Lesbianism, which is far less visible but, according to many experts, no less widespread than male homosexuality—and far more readily tolerated. Both forms are essentially a case of arrested development, a failure of learning, a refusal to accept the full responsibilities of life. This is nowhere more apparent than in the pathetic pseudo marriages in which many homosexuals act out conventional roles—wearing wedding rings, calling themselves “he” and “she.”
A failure of learning? I guess a few more romance novels in English lit class or another lecture about responsibility from a glowering, third grade teacher with two chins and a ruler in hand would have just made the whole problem go away.
There is more but you get the drift.
I guess it is comforting to know that the journalists of the past could be just as bigoted and captivated by stereotypes as today’s chroniclers of conventional “wisdom”. It is important to remember that much of the drivel pouring out of the mainstream news media today will sound just as preposterous in 40 years as this article does.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
Friday Food Blogging July 17, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Food and Drink.Tags: corporate food, food snobs, The Cheesecake Factory
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Does corporate food suck?
Ezra Klein, who now writes a biweekly column on the politics of food for the Washington Post, has a post defending the virtues of The Cheesecake Factory.
In contrast to food snobs who disdain chain restaurants, Klein argues:
Not only did the miso salmon rock, but so too did the crispy beef. The spaghetti carbonara and chicken piccata Ruhlman’s party ordered were also pretty good. And of course they were. The Cheesecake Factory isn’t accidentally popular. They spend millions each year on food research. They have access to a tremendous quantity of data on consumer preferences. They have the money to test new products and experiment with new dishes and refine their flavors. They have central processing plants where food is par fried and broken down with sugar and salt injections. People should read David Kessler’s The End of Overeating to get an idea of the resources that go into creating the flavors for chain dishes. They’re not screwing around.
Foodies have an unfortunate tendency to alight on a Unified Field Theory of Corporate Food: It’s bad for the environment and bad for workers and bad for animals and bad for waistlines and, above all that, a fraud, because it also tastes bad. This would be convenient, if true. If people weren’t actually enjoying what they were eating, then getting them to change their eating habits would be pretty easy. But it’s not true, of course. They keep going back to the Cheesecake Factory because, well, they like it.
He goes on to discuss the fact that such food is laden with calories so it is bad for you. However:
Human beings are wired to prefer abundance, salt, fat, sugar, and value. The Cheesecake Factory is giving people the whole package. Changing people’s eating habits so that type two diabetes don’t become the new chubby would be easy if the food was actually repulsive or the value was bad or it was all, in some other way, a trick. But it’s not. The food is enjoyable. The value is incredible.
Having eaten at The Cheesecake Factory recently, I suppose I agree that the food tastes good. And he is certainly right about the resources corporations dump into figuring out what people like and giving it to us.
The problem with his post is that he misses the point about why foodies dislike corporate food. Foodies don’t seek out food that tastes good—that is easy to find. We want food that is unusual, authentic, inspired, rich with interesting cultural associations, creative or inventive, and capable of satisfying idiosyncratic tastes.
You won’t find corporate food satisfying any of these criteria. In fact, the whole point of their research and development is to make sure their food is not challenging. I just can’t get excited about another plate of chicken piccata or miso salmon.
From the standpoint of why food is interesting, corporate food isn’t. And that sucks.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
Why There are No Philosopher Kings July 16, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Philosophy.Tags: climate change, Heidegger on technology, philosopher kings
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The best evidence suggests that planet earth is about to become a tinder box traversed by raging fires, unpredictable storms, melting icecaps, surging oceans, and massive shifts in farming-friendly climates.
What should we do?
There are lots of proposals for technological solutions on the table some of which are close to implementation such as solar energy, wind energy, bio-fuels, etc. These are all technologically feasible—they simply need market mechanisms in place to create demand and discourage use of fossil fuels, more efficient transmission technologies, and a greater sense of urgency and political will.
What is James Garvey’s solution? He says to read Heidegger:
He [Heidegger]argues that we are all enmeshed in a technological way of life — our problems, activities, agendas and so on happen in a social world where everything is regarded as a standing reserve, a stockpile. (If you work in Human Resources, you’re part of the trouble.) We see our problems as technological problems, and our solutions are technological too. It’s all we can see because we’re stuck in the world we’ve thought ourselves into. He tells us that we can maybe get out again by reflection on the senses in which we are enveloped by technology, instead of further attempts to save ourselves from it with yet more of it. We can look to art, he says, and maybe build an aesthetic outlook into our way of life. We can think of the mountain as beautiful, not simply as a source of coal. There’s a sense in which this sort of thing can save us like no space mirror can.
Huh? Isn’t that like telling someone trapped in a burning building that we should never have discovered fire? Its a nice thought, sympathetic even, but not very helpful.
I have always enjoyed Heidegger’s essay on technology and agree that we are far too focused on the instrumental value of things. Heidegger is probably right that by viewing the world as a resource we fail to acknowledge and appreciate other forms of value.
But human beings are not going to give up on technology, nor should we. That horse left the barn a long time ago and would entail suffering on a massive scale. And ruminating about aesthetics just isn’t going to help reverse global warming.
Which is easier? Creating sources of energy that do not burn fossil fuels or convincing 6.7 billion people (many of whom have never heard of global warming and wouldn’t believe it if they did) to change the way they look at mountains?
We can acknowledge Heidegger’s insight without thinking he is making policy proposals.
And we should strive to keep all Heideggerians away from positions of power.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
American Capitalism in Action July 15, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics.Tags: abusive banking practices, American Capitalism, medical insurance reform
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Here are two examples of American Capitalism in action. Via USA Today:
Even as regulators crack down on abusive mortgage and credit card practices, another type of lending threatens to mire consumers in a credit trap.
It’s called “courtesy overdraft” and has long been used by banks to automatically pay transactions that account holders don’t have the money to cover — and then charge them a steep fee. For years, banks have made it easier for customers to overdraw their checking accounts, aided by a cottage industry of consultants who make big money by helping to wring fees out of consumers, a USA TODAY analysis finds. […]
….Has banks’ pursuit of profit gone too far? Ken Vollmer, 49, of Augusta, Ga., thinks so. He sued Wachovia this year, alleging it “purposely structured transactions to make money.” A merchant mistakenly put a hold on his funds, then the bank cleared transactions from high to low, triggering hundreds in overdraft fees, he says. Spokeswoman Richele Messick says Wachovia processes transactions in an “appropriate” way and will “vigorously defend” itself in the case. […]
This is how this perfectly legal scam works. Via Kevin Drum:
Just to make this clear: Say you have $100 in your checking account and four checks arrive at your bank in the following amounts: $15, $20, $30, and $150. If you clear them in that order, the first three are fine and only the last one incurs an overdraft. If you clear them in the opposite order, all four incur overdraft fees. Ka-ching! That’s why banks like to clear high to low.
This seems like an easy problem to solve. Why doesn’t Congress prohibit this practice? Well, I don’t suppose the folks bouncing $10 checks are big campaign contributors.
And on a related topic:
Over the weekend Bill Moyers interviewed Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive who testified before congress last month. It is a hard hitting narrative of the deception and thievery that passes for medical insurance today.
In his first television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. “I didn’t intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they’ve used over the years, and particularly back in the early ’90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan.” […]
Looking back over his long career, Potter sees an industry corrupted by Wall Street expectations and greed. According to Potter, insurers have every incentive to deny coverage — every dollar they don’t pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year. Under these conditions, Potter says, “You don’t think about individual people. You think about the numbers, and whether or not you’re going to meet Wall Street’s expectations.”
Can’t you see that invisible hand of Adam Smith just doling out wealth fairly so that every one gets what they deserve?
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
Do Republicans Lack Mirror Neurons? July 14, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, ethics of care, politics.Tags: empathy and Judge Sotomayor, empathy as epistemological, ethics of care
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I posted recently on the flap over Obama’s use of empathy as a criterion for choosing supreme court justices. But the moral cretins in the Republican Party still don’t get it. It is as if they were born without mirror neurons.
So it is worth revisiting the issue.
Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee hearings on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the SCOTUS, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said
“This empathy standard is troubling to me. The Constitution requires that judges be free from personal politics … feelings and preferences.”
But this is an utter misunderstanding of how empathy works. Empathy is a fundamental moral capacity. It is, in part, what makes us moral beings. Any person, whether a judge or not, must have empathy to function as a social being because empathy enables us to discern how others are situated in the world, what their emotional state is, what their intentions are, etc. We could not accurately interpret human behavior without empathy. [See Vignemont and Singer, unfortunately behind a paywall.]
Judges especially need empathy. Whether the issue involves the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment or disparate impact statutes in employment law, judges must determine how various interested parties will be affected by their rulings. When the law treats one group differently from another in the pursuit of a social goal, special justification is required
It is simply part of their job to assess outcomes.
Republicans wrongly think that judges who feel empathy must be allowing their preconceived moral ideology to influence their understanding of the law. They seem to think that judges must coldly apply the law as written without regard to consequences, which of course enables their privileged position as advocates for the ruling class to be smuggled in disguised as objectivity.
But empathy does not work that way.
Empathy is a necessary condition of impartiality—at least the kind of impartiality that humans (as opposed to machines) are capable of—because empathy makes us imagine, and thus come to know, how our actions affect others.
Responsible judges begin with the law as written, constrained by precedent and legislative history, and then ask whether the law so interpreted has the effect intended by lawmakers. One needs empathy to answer this question.
Empathy is not a conduit through which we splatter our preferences on an otherwise autonomous law. Empathy helps us discover the facts—it is fundamentally epistemological, not ideological.
Maybe Senators should be forced to undergo fMRI scans (to detect the presence of mirror neurons) before running for office. That would be the end of the Republican Party as we know it.
Cross-posted at Reviving the Left
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
How to Succeed at Climate Change Negotiations July 13, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, ethics of care, Political Philosophy.Tags: Climate Change Negotiations, prisoner’s dilemma and climate change, the politics of global warming
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President Obama arrived at the G-8 summit in Italy last week intending to make progress on an international agreement to limit climate change. But that didn’t quite work out. Via the LA Times:
But by the end of the day, when the Group of 8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, wrapped up its deliberations on climate, Obama found himself stymied by many of the same roadblocks that plagued previous efforts to tackle global warming.
Leaders of the most developed nations again declined to commit themselves to any specific actions now or in the immediate future to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming — actions that would require increasing energy prices, raising taxes or imposing other unpopular economic measures on their people.
Instead, they embraced the high-sounding goal of reducing their own emissions by 80% and worldwide emissions by 50% by 2050 — without pledging to take any specific steps to get there. China, India and other major developing countries, which pressed for action in the next decade by the G-8 countries, reacted by rejecting the package.
Why did the developing nations reject the package?
During the climate talks, Obama aides said, some developing nations asked why they should sacrifice when other countries have caused more of the damage. Analysts said Obama would have more leverage in dealing with such objections from other countries if the Senate approved a climate bill.
It is obvious that there is a real lack of trust between developed nations and developing nations.
The United States has built an economy capable of generating fantastic wealth, in part, by exploiting and degrading resources held by the rest of the world. What reasons do developing nations have for thinking the U.S. has changed its ways? Why should they believe we will take steps to reduce CO2 emissions when we failed to ratify the Kyoto agreement and half our population refuses to believe global warming is a problem?
On the other hand, China and India have enormous, restive, poor populations who are demanding the kind of wealth Americans enjoy. Why should the U.S. believe that the Chinese and Indian governments have the legitimacy and competence to quell their population’s quest for fossil-fueled growth? After all, the environmental records of China and India are horrendous.
There is ample reason for mistrust on both sides.
Thus, these negotiations are shaping up to resemble what social scientists call a prisoner’s dilemma. A prisoner’s dilemma is a device in game theory that illustrates the fact that in competition over scarce resources, if everyone tries to maximize their self-interest, no one gets what they want.
The developed nations (the U.S., Japan, Western Europe, Australia, etc.) and the developing world (especially China and India) all want the same thing—reduction in greenhouse gas emissions sufficient to avoid the consequences of climate change. But each side wants to achieve this at the least cost to themselves.
If the developed nations and the developing nations refuse to cooperate on limiting CO2 emissions, we all avoid the cost of developing clean energy but run the risk of burning up the planet. Everybody loses. If the developed world cooperates (unilaterally reduces emissions) and the developing world does not, then we bear the entire cost of solving the problem. But because the developing world continues to spew greenhouse gasses, we incur that cost without actually solving the problem. In that case, we are all still burning up but we, in the developed world, are suckers as well—we trusted the developing world and got burned.
But the same logic holds for the developing world. If they limit their growth in order to reduce CO2 emissions, and we do not, no one gets what they want but now its the developing countries who are the suckers. They bought a pig in a poke. Although both countries would benefit from cooperation, both sides want to avoid being suckers. Hence the impasse.
But it should be obvious that this is an entirely irrational way of thinking about the problem. Why should anyone care about being a sucker if the condition of not being a sucker is a crispy-fried planet. If we burn up the planet, the satisfaction of not being taken in by those deceptive Chinese will be a hollow victory. It’s a bit like the atheist who will have the “satisfaction” of “discovering” she was right all along when she can no longer enjoy satisfactions of any sort.
So what to do? Solutions to prisoner’s dilemma problems require willingness on the part of one participant to take a risk and trust that the other side will respond in kind. The only solution to the problem of climate change is a real commitment from both China and the U.S. to solve it. And we have more influence over China if we unilaterally make the commitment.
Moral authority matters even among self-interested actors because there are real consequences to being perceived as a international scoundrel.
If we make that commitment and China (or India) does not respond, we get less CO2 reduction than we need, although some is better than none. But China loses too—their pollution problem is enormous and is a direct threat to their prosperity. It would be completely irrational on their part to ignore the problem—and I doubt that China’s leaders are irrational. There is little reason to think they will not follow our lead, especially if we supply them with much-needed technological innovations, and allow them the growth rates that will satisfy their population.
If we don’t make the commitment, then saving the cost of CO2 reduction will matter little because the consequences of doing nothing will be catastrophic. The changes we must make now might be difficult but they pale in comparison to the changes we will have to make in 20 years if we don’t act.
The only rational policy for the United States is to bargain with the Chinese to get the best deal we can, but in the end commit to significant CO2 reduction regardless of what China or India does, and use our moral authority to persuade them to do more.
It is likely that we will bear a greater burden than the developing world for limiting climate change. But that is the price for getting the job done.
And bearing necessary burdens is part of what it means to have moral authority.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
Science and Public Ignorance July 12, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Science.Tags: American anti-intellectualism, media distortions of science, public perceptions of science, Scientific illiteracy
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There was some very interesting (and disturbing) polling information released last week regarding public attitudes toward science. Via CNET:
In the current survey, only 27 percent of Americans cited scientific advancement as one of the country’s most important achievements, compared with 47 percent in May 1999.
That is a curious drop-off in just 10 years. I’m not sure what the explanation is although scientific illiteracy may have much to do with it.
Among those [scientists] surveyed, 85 percent see the public’s lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem. Almost half criticize the public for having unrealistic expectations about scientific progress.
If the public has unrealistic expectations about science, when science inevitably doesn’t deliver, the public may be disappointed in the promise of science.
The media may contribute to the public’s scientific illiteracy.
The media also shares in the blame, say scientists. About 48 percent of scientists say the news oversimplifies science. Newspaper coverage comes off best, with 36 percent of scientists rating it excellent or good. But TV coverage of science fares worse–only 15 percent of scientists see it as excellent or good.
The media is often guilty of overselling science by reporting as scientific fact findings that have still not been confirmed. In most news stories, you have to read to the end to find out the degree of consensus regarding a particular discovery. Even then it may not be clear how complete the scientific understanding of a phenomenon is. So when speculative or insufficiently researched results don’t pan out, again the public is disappointed.
Of course, when you have a public that just flatly refuses to believe even settled, well-confirmed scientific explanations, it is hard to know what conclusions to draw from this data.
The majority of scientists firmly believe in evolution, with 87 percent saying humans and other living creatures have evolved over time through processes such as natural selection. Only 32 percent of the public believes the same.
A full 84 percent of scientists say global warming is the result of human actions, such as burning fossil fuel, while only 49 percent of the public agrees.
Science is so pervasive in human life that the public’s lack of understanding seriously threatens democracy. The human race, long ago, chose the route of technology to satisfy needs and there is no turning back. We cannot make good decisions about how to live without understanding the nature of the reality in which we must live.
Dwight Furrow is author of
Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America
or Visit the Website: www.revivingliberalism.com
The Ethics of Urban Foraging July 11, 2009
Posted by iduckles in Criminal Justice, Culture, Ethics, Food and Drink.4 comments
Recently I have taken to foraging for some of my food and I have wondered about the morality of such an action. Some types of foraging I engage in are clearly morally acceptable. I recently foraged some oranges and lemons from the trees of neighbors, but I asked permission first, so there is clearly no problem there. In addition, I found a nice patch of nasturtiums on an empty lot that appears to be city-owned. Again, picking a few flowers from this patch to throw in a salad does not seem problematic. These two examples seem to show that foraging is uncontroversial in those situations where one has permission or the item being foraged is not owned (issues arising around the tragedy of the commons might play in here, but I am going to ignore them for now).
Far more problematic of course is the situation where one takes fruits or flowers from private property without permission. Occasionally on my many walks around town I see some lovely ripe fruit on a tree hanging over a wall or in someone’s front yard. In some situations I have gone ahead and taken the fruit. The question, of course, is: Is this stealing? On one hand it clearly does appear to be that. I cross over onto privately owned land and take something from that land for my own use. In some sense, the taking of a lemon from a tree does seem to be identical in kind to, for example, taking someone’s lawn furniture.
In my defense, there is a very old (going back at least to the Romans) legal principle know as “usufruct” which, according to an online law dictionary is defined as “the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged.” This legal principle helps distinguish between the two sorts of acts discussed above. When I take a lemon from a tree, the tree still exists and remains undamaged (in some situations, removing lemons from a particularly fruitful tree can actually contributes to the health of the tree) and can still be used by the owner. By contrast, taking the lawn furniture deprives the owner of her ability to use that furniture. Thus, perhaps we can justify the former and still find the latter impermissible.
The problem with this solution is that, as near as I can tell, one must be granted usufructory rights. That is, I don’t have a generalized right to usufruct, I only have this right in situations where that right has been granted by some individual. Thus, issues of usufruct really only apply in those situations described above where I get permission to harvest my neighbors lemon and orange trees. In these situations I have been granted usufructory rights to those trees, but not to the trees of strangers.
So, I seem back in the position I started, is there any justification for taking fruit or flowers without permission from someone’s garden? Am I just a thief? The problem here is that these questions are articulated within a particular, western legalistic frame that takes property rights as absolute. There is, in fact another way of looking at the issue, one which does seem to justify the actions I have described above. I came across a very nice articulation of this point in Wendall Berry’s The Unsettling of America. He cites a letter he received from David Budbill that, in part, describes the principles of property and land ownership that are operative in his community in Vermont,
…we always, with our neighbor, pick apples in the fall off trees on a down-country owner’s land. There is a feeling we have the right to do that, a feeling that the sin is not trespass, the sin is letting the apple’s go to waste.
I find this quotation to be a nice summary of my own feelings on the subject. The one change I would make is in that italicized word ‘right.’ As the author describes the situation it almost seems as if the word ‘obligation’ is more accurate. That is, when the earth produces its bounty, especially when we are the ones that have nurtured it, we have an obligation to make use of that bounty and not allow it to go to waste. This very much describes my own feelings when I pass a tree that is so heavy with fruit that it is falling off the tree and rotting on the ground. This seems like such a waste, that I almost feel an obligation to harvest and enjoy some of that fruit myself. In many cases, particularly if there is no one around, I go ahead and give in to those feelings.
Now I do worry that I am guilty of rationalizing here, but at the same time, I also feel that my feelings concerning waste have legitimate validity and need to be entered into my moral calculus. Beyond this, there are a variety of reasons related to US food policy and my interests in local food that provide buttressing justifications for the kind of foraging I have been considering. Anyway, these are my thoughts and I would be very curious to hear what others think of this issue (particularly people who have nice gardens).
Friday Food Blogging July 10, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Food and Drink.Tags: multiculturalism, spam
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Sometimes multiculturalism is not such a good thing.Via Atlantic Food Channel:
When cultures collide, the results can be unpredictable. Surely, no one in Japan would have imagined that Americans would add avocado and cream cheese to sushi. Similarly, it came as a surprise to me to learn this week that some in Japan have taken to mixing Spam with their yakisoba noodles and corned beef with their omelets.
Yuk. I don’t like cream cheese with my sushi. I am sure I don’t want spam with my noodles.
This culinary crime is from a story about Okinawa:
But both have become staples of cooking in Okinawa, the chain of islands off Japan’s southern coast. Since the end of World War II, the prefecture has been home to 27,000 United States military troops, whose presence has at times been controversial but whose influence is clearly rubbing off. For better or worse.
And now we know the source of anti-American sentiment around the world—military bases colonizing regional cuisines with spam.
