The New York Times notes Bloom's Day today with an editorial about a corporate executive who sent Bloom's Day cards to 16 of his best executives in 1954.
Two years earlier . . . W. D. Gillen, then president of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, had begun to worry about the education of the managers rising through the company’s hierarchy. Many of these junior executives had technical backgrounds, gained at engineering schools or on the job, and quite a few had no college education at all. They were good at their jobs, but they would eventually rise to positions in which Gillen felt they would need broader views than their backgrounds had so far given them.
Gillen took the problem to the University of Pennsylvania where they set up a
10-month immersion program on the Penn campus, what amounted to a complete liberal arts education.
Besides classes and seminars and vast amounts of reading, they also did field trips to museums and concerts and to study the architecture of the cities nearby.
Perhaps the most exciting component of the curriculum was the series of guest lecturers the institute brought to campus. “One hundred and sixty of America’s leading intellectuals,” according to Baltzell, spoke to the Bell students that year. They included the poets W. H. Auden and Delmore Schwartz, the Princeton literary critic R. P. Blackmur, the architectural historian Lewis Mumford, the composer Virgil Thomson. It was a thrilling intellectual carnival.
Finally, they struggled with James Joyce's Ulysses.
It was clear as the students cheered one another through their final reports that reading a book as challenging as “Ulysses” was both a liberating intellectual experience and a measure of how much they had been enriched by their time at the institute. . .
The institute was judged a success by Morris S. Viteles, one of the pioneers of industrial psychology, who evaluated its graduates. But Bell gradually withdrew its support after yet another positive assessment found that while executives came out of the program more confident and more intellectually engaged, they were also less interested in putting the company’s bottom line ahead of their commitments to their families and communities. By 1960, the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives was finished.
The whole article is well with thinking about. The problem with a good education is that it is liberating.
After finishing the last post on the South Carolina primary elections, I kept poking around. What I found first was election results from the 2008 Democratic primary in South Carolina and they were so completely bizarre I couldn't believe them. And with good reason, they were totally wrong. All the Obama results were 0% with just a few votes per county even when there were thousands of African-American voters. I mention this to remind people to think when they see things on the internet. When it's too strange to be true it probably isn't. Fortunately there was a link to the same results in a different format. They seemed much more sensible - Obama won with 55% of the vote. But let's try thinking again. In 2008, Obama got 55% of the Democratic primary vote in South Carolina.
In 2010, Al Greene took the Democratic primary with 59% of the vote! According to Charleston South Carolina's Post and Courier these are the election results for last week's Democratic primary election for the US Senate:
U.S. Senate - Dem Primary
June 09, 2010 - 04:54AM ET
South Carolina - 2109 of 2109 Precincts Reporting - 100%
Name
Party
Votes
Vote %
Greene , Alvin
Dem
99,970
59%
Rawl , Vic
Dem
69,572
41%
Let's think about this for a bit. First, a small discrepency:
In 2008 the Post and Courier says there were 2259 precincts and in 2010 there are only 2109 precincts. There's probably a good explanation, but we do need to find out what it is.
Now, let's think about the 2008 primary election. The first really serious female presidential candidate and the first serious black presidential candidate were both running and getting tons of attention. Everyone was worked up about this and there was lots of national attention on the primary elections that day. Plus, John Edwards from neighboring North Carolina was on the ticket.
So an extremely articulate black candidate with lots and lots of publicity running against two white candidates, Obama, got 55% of the vote in 2008.
In 2010, an inarticulate black candidate with no publicity and no funding running against one white candidate with high name recognition and good funding got 59% of the vote. Something is bizarre here.
You can say, "But far fewer voters actually turned up to vote, only about 1/3." But, presumably, the voters who turned out this time around would be more likely to be party regulars who pay more attention to the elections and are better informed. They would have looked at the two candidates and seen that the one was totally off the wall. The other candidate was white - like 62% of South Carolinians (though the percent of white Democrats is probably lower, it still appears to be over 50%.) I know almost nothing about North Carolina politics, but nothing I've read yesterday and today suggests that Vic Rawl had high negatives.
When something doesn't look right, we should look a little harder. Sometimes we can explain the problem. Like the other day while running, I sensed the color of the trees was funny. I looked up and one of the birches had been broken near the top and it was hanging down. Oddity explained. Now, these numbers in South Carolina, plus Greene's inability to answer questions about things like where he got the money to run and reports of problems with the computers all raise serious questions. These were paperless touch screen computers so voters don't have, and the voting machines don't produce, any independent hard copy of the votes. There are serious questions about electronic voting and it's quite possible that South Carolina could be the first example of voting machine rigging on a large scale.
Or, it could turn out to be as simple as voters voting for the candidate with the same name as a famous gospel and soul singer.
[Update 3:30pm June 16: This Huffington Post blogger found a lady who said she voted for Al Greene because his name sounded like the singer. The blogger writes as though this were further proof of South Carolina's problems, we all know that name recognition is a major goal in politics. After all, Californians elected a governor because his name was the same as a movie star. What's the difference?]
After Tuesday's election results, the most curious story for me is the victory of Al Greene in the Democratic Senate race in South Carolina. When I saw a video of him talking to the press the bells and whistles really began to go off. Here's yet another video.
Was this guy for real? What were the Democrats doing during the campaign? How come all this comes out only after the election? How could an inarticulate candidate nobody knows, who didn't campaign, beat a well funded party backed candidate? It's pretty remarkable. There's a bigger story there one way or the other. Either there's some monkey business or there's a new lesson to be learned. But given Greene's dreadful presence on tape, the former seems more likely than the latter.
I was puzzled by the lack of attention it got compared to stories about California's rich women execs or Arkansas' Governor's race, or even the other South Carolina race. Maybe these got more attention immediately post election because these were the ones that had been hyped the most pre-election.
The media were looking the other way, so they weren't ready for the Greene story, but I suspect it will turn out to be one of the biggest. It has Watergate writ small all over it. I know, every hint of political scandal is compared to Watergate, but this potentially about political sabotage by the other party just like Watergate.
My first questions were:
1. How does an unknown, inarticulate, black candidate with no political history and no campaign expenditures knock off a white judge in a conservative southern state in a US Senate primary? (According to Wikipedia, in 2000 the state was 62% white, 29% black. Presumably a larger percent of registered Democrats are black than the state population.)
2. Why didn't his obvious weaknesses, not to mention the pending felony charge, come out during the primary campaign?
So I started looking around.
A TPM story June 10 says there are two more odd cases of black candidates running for office in South Carolina in Democratic primaries with no party support and no financial disclosures. One lost (Gregory Brown who ran against sitting black Democratic Representative and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn), but the other, like Greene, won too.
In the third race that Clyburn calls suspicious, the 1st Congressional District, Frasier won even though the establishment-favored candidate, Robert Burton, raised and spent $100,000. Frasier's campaign didn't file any details about his spending with the FEC. But he's far from a first-time candidate, having run nearly three dozen times -- and losing -- for elected office. Frasier has run as a candidate for both parties, and has even been accused of being a Republican plant and not qualified to be a candidate in the past, according to local press accounts.
Frasier doesn't have a campaign Website or Facebook page we could find, but Frasier beat Burton by about 2,200 votes or 56%-44%.
So people are accusing the three of being Republican plants. Theoretically that shouldn't matter. Primary voters should be able to see through the ruse and not elect them. Except the South Carolina primary is an open primary. Republicans could vote in the Democratic primary. So far, though, I haven't seen any documentation of pushing Republicans to vote for these candidates - letters, emails, etc. Surely if this were a significant factor, there'd be some documented evidence. Maybe it will come out yet.
But down in South Carolina, Jennifer, at Indigo Journal, a self proclaimed progressive blog* (hey, this is South Carolina, who knows? it says:
Founded in 2008 by Tim Kelly and Jennifer Read, IJ is a news, analysis and action website dedicated to building a strong progressive community in the reliably red Palmetto State*)
suggested on June 11 that there was not a Republican conspiracy:
While national pundits and activists foam over the possibility of some nefarious GOP plot at work here in the Palmetto State (a scenario I find weak at best), the real question S.C. Democrats should focus on is why didn’t their front-runners mount more sophisticated campaigns?
Today, June 14, Jennifer, has posted losing Democratic Primary candidate Judge Vic Rawl's statement calling for an investigation into the election which he says are riddled with irregularities.
First is ongoing analysis of the election returns themselves, which indicate irregularities.
Second are the many voters and poll workers who continue to contact us with their stories of extremely unusual incidents while trying to vote and administer this election.
These range from voters who repeatedly pressed the screen for me only to have the other candidate’s name appear, to poll workers who had to change program cards multiple times, to at least one voter in the Republican primary who had the Democratic U.S. Senate race appear on her ballot. . .
Third is the well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina. It is worth noting that these machines were purchased surplus from Louisiana after that state outlawed them.
South Carolina's Election Commission says it's confident its voting system are reliable, and Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire rebuffed the claim by Vic Rawl (whom Greene defeated in the primary with over 100,00 votes, just under 60%) that South Carolina purchased its machines second-hand from Louisiana after the state stopped using them. South Carolina bought its machines directly from ES&S, Whitmire said.]
According to the Rawl campaign, there are too many irregularities in Tuesday night’s results to let the election go uncontested. Fair enough. Let’s do some due diligence digging. But I still say, had Team Rawl stepped up their communications game prior to primary day, we wouldn’t be dealing with this drama. Case in point: we’ve received more press releases from the Rawl campaign in the last 5 days than we did during the entire primary season. Just sayin’.
However, Tim, also at Indigo Journal, writes in a later post today trying to figure this out by following the money in the Brown campaign (the person who ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Clyburn.
Brown’s campaign was run by Preston Grisham – a longtime aide and former campaign manager for, you guessed it, Joe Wilson. [Steve: You remember the guy who interrupted Obama's speech before the joint House and Senate by shouting out, "You lie"?]
Brown’s disclosure forms (here, here and here) show he paid Grisham’s consulting firm more than $23,000.
The truly perplexing thing, though, is just where Brown got this money – or any of the $54,000 he spent on his campaign. As of his latest filing, Brown reported raising a grand total of $830. He ended his campaign last Tuesday with a deficit of over $53,000.
“Say Joe Wilson and a group of well-heeled Republicans cook up a scheme to cause Clyburn to have to spend his cash and to “help” the Democrats nominate a Senate candidate that can be hung around the whole fall Dem ticket’s neck,” said a source we spoke with this afternoon.
“On March 1, Brown’s campaign cuts Joe Wilson’s former campaign manager a check for $12,500 for marketing,” our source continued. “We don’t know what the hell kind of “marketing” Preston Grisham provided Brown, but we do know that shortly thereafter, an unemployed Alvin Greene has $10,400 for a filing fee to run for the U.S. Senate.”
As I said, it’s a stretch to take this all the way to Alvin Greene. But we do now have not one, but two, Democratic primary candidates who haven’t disclosed where thousands of dollars in campaign cash came from, and we have Joe Wilson’s – and/or elephant poop – all over one of those candidates.
that Frasier has a home and several businesses in Maryland and far fewer legal ties to his purported home on Wadmalaw Island.
but the County Board of Elections and Voter Registration determined he's a resident.
So, there are some facts, but a lot more speculation at this point. But I also remember hearing about some burglars at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building. That's all it was at first, a petty burglary. It took a long time before people believed that Nixon was connected to that.
Let's go back to my initial questions and see where we are.
1. How does an unknown, black candidate with no campaign expenditures knock off a white US Representative in a conservative southern state? Possible answers:
The white Dems didn't campaign, according to Jennifer
There were serious voting irregularities with second hand voting machines
And after writing all this I have more questions on this:
In the House upset, what is the racial make up of the House District? Was it majority black so that a black candidate against an unknown white candidate could win? Jennifer says that in the last couple of days there were high profile tv ads so voters could see he was black.
In the US Senate race, could the voters have voted for Al Greene because they associated his name with gospel and soul singer Al Green?
2. Why didn't Al Greene's obvious weaknesses, not to mention the pending felony charge come out during the primary campaign?
Jennifer suggests that the party backed Democratic candidates didn't take their opponents seriously and simply didn't campaign. This isn't too unusual when someone has a fringe candidate or two running against them. They want to save their money to campaign in the general election.
I looked back through the Indigo Journal posts to March and didn't really see any coverage of Greene, Brown, or Frasier here either. There was one post "Trouble for Demint" that had a quote that listed Vic Rawl as "Democratic Challenger," with no mention of Greene. The quote mentioned that Rawl hadn't done any advertising - but the implication seemed to be that his polling numbers against Demint were that high even though he hadn't started to campaign. There was no comment about him needing to campaign. This wasn't a post by Jennifer. But, to be fair, it seems that Jennifer wasn't posting much earlier.
So it will be interesting to see where Gregory Brown got the $52,000 he's supposed to have spent when he only raised $850. And where Al Greene got his $10,000 filing fee. And where Fraser got the money for his television ads.
*As an Alaskan blogger who was pigeon-hoed by non-Alaskans right after Sarah Palin's VP nomination, I don't want to perpetuate that sort of silliness. I just wanted to point out that I first saw Indigo Journal today and have to judge by what they say about themselves and what they write. But given the story was about a suspected phony Democrats, I couldn't resist the dig. Their posts seem legitimately progressive to me.
Charles Dickens starts David Copperfield with a description of the hero's birth*. He immediately gets distracted into a discussion of the neighborhood women's forecasts about his life. Then he briefly gets back to his birth mentioning that he was born with a caul and then goes off again suggesting that people believed cauls prevented drowning, and that the woman who bought his caul died in bed at age 92.
I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast that she never had been on the water in her life except upon a bridge and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and other who had the presumption to go "meandering" about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences tea, perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering."
Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
We're only at page 2 of David Copperfield at this point and more than half of what Dickens has written so far is 'meandering' from the story of his birth. Which I take as a signal that most of the book will be meandering.
I was struck by this note on meandering because I'm sure that some people might accuse me of meandering on this blog. But I'm persuaded that the only true stories are told through meandering along all the side paths of the main story. Otherwise, you have knowledge of just one path, but not about the woods through which it, dare I say, meanders.
You may notice this post comes after a post on haiku. In hindsight, I would say the post was NOT about haiku, as I hinted at in the last three lines. Rather it was about the structure of haiku and not the art of haiku. I realized that as I was doing it - having checked a site on haiku and realizing I was focused on the form and leaving out the essence. So I was both flattered and chagrined to have the haiku artist whom I mentioned in passing suggest where I might learn more about the art of haiku. Michael Dylan Welch's link to Becoming a Haiku Poet beautifully distinguishes between what I wrote about - three lines of 17 syllables - and haiku.
He tells us that haiku is about capturing a mood using objective images, about being subtle, indirect. And I was merely using the structure to force myself to get to the essence of a thought, to NOT meander.
Haiku, if I understand Welch, has a special purpose. It's about conveying a feeling. It's not about summarizing an argument. Thank you Michael for being gentle on me and for writing so well about haiku. Using three lines of 17 syllables does not make a haiku.
That said, using 17 syllables in three lines now and then to force oneself to distill the point of one's argument isn't a bad idea. But a 17 syllable (and for those of you who didn't take the time to read Welch's post, let me say that he says that one shouldn't sacrifice natural English to stick to 17 syllables) synopsis of a more complex tangle of thoughts is something like a bumper sticker aphorism. It works for people who already think the way you do. But it frustrates if not infuriates those who think differently.
Meandering, wandering here and there through the woods, NOT sticking to the main path that goes from the parking lot to the peak, is how you get to know those woods. Through Dickens' meandering readers get more than a plot. They get all the blood and muscles and fat. They get the smell of perfume mixed with sweat, the texture of the underwear, and color and style of the outerwear. Not just the bare bones.
A good poem, a good haiku, evokes a feeling the reader has experienced through imagery the reader knows. Possibly a great haiku can transport readers beyond their personal experiences. A good essay evokes an understanding of an issue the reader hadn't already understood, through synthesizing points the reader hadn't yet organized or articulated in this particular pattern.
I think. Though, of course, I'm mindful that ultimately feeling trumps reason. So the effective essay needs also to connect to the readers' feelings.
*Actually, Dickens starts by questioning whether David will even be the hero. ["Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . . these pages must show."]
We enjoyed the concert at UAA Sunday night. It began with the sound vibrating my body. I think I could have heard it from home. But then it settled down to more manageable volumes (or I lost enough hearing that it sounded more manageable) and several times I really got into the music. But I wouldn't pretend to be a music critic. I can only give my very untrained ear's opinion. So here are some pictures instead. Note: there was no flash photography allowed (and I usually don't like flash anyway) and no recording of any sort. So we adjust.
The bottom line is this: Every decision we make is based on a single criterion -– what’s going to best protect and make whole the people and the ecosystems of the Gulf.
How do you make whole the people who were killed? How do you make whole the people whose businesses have been devastated? How do you make whole an ecosystem whose whole food chain has been thrown horribly out of whack?
You don't. Once it's broken you can't repair it. This is not like fixing a car after a wreck by putting on a new fender. Either the President is making glib promises or he doesn't yet realize the enormity of what has happened.
Background: I once picked up trash for a couple of hours downtown with a group. By far the most numerous item that we picked up was cigarette butts. Nothing came close.
So, today I was coming home from Costco - haven't figured out how to carry a Costco load on the bike yet - and I was stopped at Airport Heights behind this car. Then she pushed a cigarette out the window. She didn't text me first so I don't have it on video. But below, if you look carefully you can see the butt beside the car.
She had moved up a little bit by this time.
A little larger.
So on the way home I debated whether it was ok to post her license plate. Well, sure, it's legal, but is it the right thing to do? I learned before that plates aren't up on the web and that you can't look them up without a legal reason. And I messed up one number. So I was pretty comfortable with it. She'll know. And her friends and neighbors will know. (That is if any of them ever see this post which is also highly unlikely.)
And, of course, I checked on the web. I found thesmokingsection, a pro-smoking website, that says it's ok to criticize smokers who litter:
This is a cultural phenomenon. It was once acceptable to throw butts on the ground under the theory they would degenerate quickly. While debatable in the old days, that notion should have gone out as quickly as filters came in. Unfortunately it didn't. Considerate smokers don't litter. Those who do deserve criticism as much as any other litterer.
I also looked to see if others had noticed that so much of the litter around is cigarette butts.
"It is estimated that 40% of the litter in the Borough is smoking related, be it wrappers, cartons or cigarette ends."
-- [Gedling Borough Council, England]
-- "Each year more than 1 billion pieces of litter will accumulate on Texas highways. Of those, 13 percent are cigarette butts. That means 130 million butts will be tossed out in Texas alone this year."
--Texas Department of Transportation
Whyquit.comhttp://whyquit.com/whyquit/A_Butts.html explains what these butts do to the environment:
Are cigarette butts litter? Absolutely! But unlike paper products they're not biodegradable. Nearly all cigarette filters are composed of a bundle of 12,000 plastic-like cellulose acetate fibers. Cellulose acetate is photodegradable but not bio-degradable. It can take years, in some cases up to fifteen, for ultraviolet light to cause fibers to decay into a plastic powder that can't be seen. As they do their deadly cargo is released. The nicotine trapped inside 200 used filters is likely sufficient to kill a 160 pound adult human - 50 to 60 milligrams. Imagine a month without rain followed by a brief thunderstorm that washes 500,000 nicotine laden canoes - enough to kill 2,500 humans - into area creeks and streams. Aquatic life at the bottom of the food chain can pay a deadly price. But so can fish who mistake butts for food or birds who use them for nesting material. Nicotine isn't the only villain as trapped tars and toxic gases leach into waterways too.
And they estimate there's a lot of them out there.
What we do know is that worldwide 5.6 trillion filtered cigarettes are smoked annually, with an estimated 1.7 billion pounds of cigarette butt litter. Here in the U.S., more than 1.35 trillion cigarettes were manufactured in 2007, of which 360 billion were smoked here. Look closely at the ground at any intersection. They're everywhere!
We recognize that cigarette butt litter is a significant contributor to litter in our environment. As the leading manufacturer and marketer of cigarettes in the United States, we are helping reduce cigarette butt litter.
So why do cigarette smokers do this? Well, first, let's assume a good portion of cigarette smokers don't. But what about the ones that do?
After vainly wandering through the internet, I finally got to a source I'd seen referenced by others over and over again - Keep America Beautiful (KAB.) They seem to be the main anti-litter organization. Here's what their website says:
Why do people litter? Here’s what KAB’s 2009 Littering Behavior in America research found:
Personal choice. Individual behavior—or choosing to litter—means litter on the ground. Nearly one in five, or 17% of all disposals observed in public spaces were littering, while 83% disposed of litter properly. And 81% of littering was intentional, e.g., flicking, flinging, or dropping. On the other hand, individuals who hold the belief that littering is wrong, and consequently feel a personal obligation not to litter, are less likely to do so.
Litter begets litter. Individuals are much more likely to litter into a littered environment. And once there, it attracts more litter. By contrast, a clean community discourages littering and improves overall community quality of life. Availability and proximity to trash and recycling receptacles also impact whether someone chooses to litter.
It’s “not my responsibility”. Some people feel no sense of ownership for parks, walkways, beaches, and other public spaces. They believe someone else will pick up after them; that it’s not their responsibility.
They choose to do so. Not real helpful. I still don't know what causes that 17% to litter. "It's not my responsibility" starts to get to it. It's what's in their head. Some people have no social conscious at all. Wikipedia says that people with anti-social personality disorder make up about 4% (3% male; 1% female) of the population.
[Anti-social personality disorder] is characterized by at least 3 of the following:
Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
Smoking rates are highest among low socio-economic groups, people with no health insurance, people with disabilities, and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
The rate for the public overall in Massachusetts was below the national average - only 16% - and people without health insurance were more than twice as likely to smoke! Presumably these are people who do not get health insurance through work and are not on the mandatory state health plan for people otherwise not covered.
So smokers overall are less educated, have less money, and less access to medical care than the population in general. And presumably they're likely to be people who aren't coping too well in modern society to start with. The fact that they smoke despite that stats that say how unhealthy it is means they see the world differently than most others.
The key issue seems to be inside people's heads. The lady in the car in front of me presumably had an ashtray in her car, but chose to throw the butt out the window. This leads me to my solution for most social problems - parenting education. Catching people before they become parents and perhaps helping the young learn to plan to have kids when they are most prepared to raise them well. And working with people who are pregnant so that they understand ways to raise kids in ways that increase their likelihood to cope well with society. Changing adults just doesn't work in most cases unless they want to be changed.
There was one more option I found that may holds some promise:
This is a personal butt holder. We saw one of these being used by a Japanese traveler in Laos. He carried it in his pocket. But as I said, the lady in the car in front of me had an ashtray in her car, so just having one of these, even if cigarette peddlars gave them out free (the ad above is for 100, so it would be $3 a piece and if you buy 1000 it was $1.60 each) it probably wouldn't make much difference.
Unless...we required a deposit on butts like some places do on bottles. In fact, a homeless person could get get rich picking up butts given that there are so many of them. It works for other kinds of litter and everything I've read says that cigarette butts are the most frequent piece of litter.
Well, I haven't seen any better suggestions.
[There's lots more to be said here. One very different way of understanding the mind set of smokers - and we shouldn't lump them all together because they clearly smoke for different reasons - is to read what smokers say about why they smoke. Here's a piece on a cigar-lovers' site that talks about the joys of academics who smoke cigars. Some of it is clearly an identity issue and some of it is a bonding issue.]
I noticed the rapeseed fields as we first came over land - probably Holland then Germany - after flying over the Atlantic and we saw bright yellow rapeseed fields three weeks later when we flew from Berlin to Paris. And we kept seeing rapeseed fields from the train and from the car when we were outside of the big cities - but not even that far outside of Berlin or London. While I kind of like the bright yellow, our British friend found the bright yellow fields much too garish.
So I wanted to find out what was going on with all the rapeseed. It turns out rapeseed is also known as Canola and it is also used as a biofuel which explains why there is so much of it planted in northern Europe. From an interesting story in sciencecareers about a Polish researcher:
Rapeseed has increased in importance in Europe and China as demand for biofuel has risen. In 2000, Polish farmers harvested about 450,000 hectares of rapeseed; in 2009 they brought in more than 810,000 hectares. Planted in the fall as a winter cover crop, rapeseed flowers in the early spring. But the molds that cause oilseed stem canker -- Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa -- attack in the fall, so there's a long gap between the time fungicides need to be sprayed and when the crop matures.
Below are some more excerpts from some different websites plus a few more pictures I took on the trip.
Brassica napus Linnaeus—known as rapeseed, rape, oilseed rape, and in some cultivars, Canola—is a bright yellow flowering member of the Brassicacea family (mustard or cabbage family). It is a mustard crop grown primarily for its seed which yields about forty percent oil and a high-protein animal feed.
Seed Type and Common Varieties
Since 1991, virtually all rapeseed production in the European Union has shifted to rapeseed 00 (double zero), with low content of erucic acid and low content of glucosinolates. The production of rapeseed in the European Union is still “conventional”, that is does not contain GMO. [genetically modified organism]
History
Worldwide Rapeseed Production (million metric tons)
1950s
3.5
1965
5.2
1975
8.8
1985
19.2
1995
34.2
2006
47.0
From Fediol The European Union Oil and Proteinmeal Industry:
Rapeseed oil and meal
As the oil content of rapeseed is around 40%, the processing is made in two steps: pre-pressing plus solvent extraction, or only by pressing. The rapeseed meal is an important protein source in compound feed for cattle, pigs and poultry.
Rapeseed oil contains 98% of tri-esters of fatty acids and 2% of sterols and tocopherols. It has a uniquely low content of saturated fatty acids and a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids, offering a good balance of fatty acids: 60% oleic, 20% linoleic, 10% alphalinoleic. It is also a rich source of Omega 3 and Omega 6 linolenic acids.
The low erucic variety is widely used for applications such as salad dressing, margarines and sauces. The high erucic variety is used in a range of technical purposes, for example bio-degradable lubricating oil as an alternative to mineral oil based lubricants. The use of rapeseed oil methyl esters as a substitute for diesel fuel takes large volumes of rapeseed oil.
Rapeseed meal, with only 37% protein content can hardly substitute soymeal in animal feeding. They represent 7% of the vegetable meals consumed in Europe and can enter feed ratios in the proportion of maximum 15% for chickens and 20% for porks and milk cows.
The situation for rapeseed oil in the EU is in equilibrium with a production and consumption of 5.5 million tonnes. The EU production of rapeseed meal rises 7.6 million tonnes.
[Charts from Fediol.]
You can see from the charts that the EU is the largest single producer of rapeseed, which explains why we saw so much of it. And the winter crop blooms in early spring when we were there - April and May.
Indexmundi lists only one top company: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM.) The price in US dollars per metric ton was down in May 2010 to 864 from a January high of 929.
ADM was the company featured in the movie The Informant for international price fixing. The film, according to Ira Glass, in the 2009 rebroadcast of the show originally broadcast in 2000, was inspired by the original 2000 broadcast. This is a really good, but also chilling show. You can listen to it here. Definitely worth it to get a glimpse of international price fixing and how the FBI works. There's also a book by Kurt Eichenwald who speaks to Ira Glass on this show.
The show documents the FBI investigation of international price fixing of lysine. I don't know for sure whether rapeseed is used to make lysine, but the
Comparisons of amino acids as percentages of the protein (NX6.25) in oil meal show that soybean is the richest in lysine (6.2%), closely followed by rapeseed (canola) (6.0%) and sunflower (3.0%).
So I'd think there was a good chance that rapeseed might have been part of all this.
I should also mention that ConAgra whose campus we walked through in Omaha is mentioned on the tape as one of the customers of ADM that was getting ripped off by ADM by the price fixing.
I learned when teaching 6th grade that giving attention to bad behavior simply increased that behavior. My teachers had modeled a technique of putting 'bad' students' names on the board for later punishment. Rather than focus on the students who were unruly, I found it was a much better strategy to spotlight the one or two kids who were doing what they were supposed to do and put their names on board for later rewards.
So I hesitate to even mention the Cash for Tlingits segment on KWHL. But sometimes you have to deal with things. One can argue, as I'm sure Bob and Mark would, that it was just humor and to lighten up.
If all were equal and we didn't have a history of discrimination against Alaska Natives, and if their cultures hadn't been devastated first by Russian seal hunters and then by American missionaries who brought germs along with bibles, the former killing many bodies and the latter killing Native cultures, then it might be reasonable to see this as simple joking among equals. [Did you make it through that long complicated sentence alive?] But as long as all the statistics show Alaska Native cultures doing far less well than the white immigrants into their land, things aren't equal, and it isn't funny to those being made fun of.
It's never funny when people in power make jokes about people out of power. Now, all that said, there is obviously an audience for this sort of humor. White males, Protestant white males in fact, have traditionally held the vast majority of positions of power in this country - and still do. But despite this obvious fact (look at all the presidents before Obama, and all the governorships, all the legislatures, and all the heads of corporations) individual white males don't necessarily feel that powerful. Individual white males may not be able to develop meaningful relationships with women. Maybe they aren't doing well at work, or if they are in a good position, they may not be able to make their organizations work as others expect. Their kids may not listen to them. Their wives have minds of their own. It's rough. Maybe they can't even find a job.
So when women and non-whites say white males have all the power, it doesn't ring true to many who personally don't feel very powerful.
But clearly, given their historic monopoly of positions of power in the US, they must have something going for them. Either white men are just inherently superior to non-white men and to women OR they have fewer obstacles to overcome than the others. I lean toward the latter explanation. Some people talk about this as 'white privilege' whether it's enshrined in law - like Jim Crow laws or regulations that made minority neighborhoods ineligible for housing loans - or prejudicial custom, like white and male only private clubs and colleges.
When my daughter at age 8 declared she was biking to her friend Heidi's house via the bike trail to near downtown, I had an aha moment. As a supporter of equal rights for women, why was I hesitating to approve her independence when I would have let my son make that trip at that age? Then I thought about all the other things I felt free to do that my wife didn't feel so free to do. We simply know that men are safer than women in our society. I felt no fear working in my office at UAA late at night, but women faculty didn't feel such security. With good reason. One faculty member I knew was raped in her office at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.
These are the extra obstacles to 'success' that women (in general) have that men (in general) don't. I emphasize "in general" because a man weighing 300 pounds might face obstacles that a normal weight woman of equal qualifications might not face.
We can take the obstacles into other areas as well. Women are expected to look and dress better then men. To succeed in some professional and social settings they are expected to wear a dress, heels, and makeup, and have their hair 'done.' Men aren't held to the same high standards. Men can change their shirt and tie but wear the same suit for a week. Women can't wear the same dress for a week. All these, individually minor, activities add up to give women more obstacles, more things they have to do or think about on the way to success than men. [Update 3:30pm: Here's an excellent video I found when I was retrieving the Tim Wise video - below - that beautifully (pun intended) illustrates how women are set up against an impossible beauty standard by the media.]
I can make the same argument for non-whites. (And yes, there are advantages that women have in some situations. But historically they have been minor compared to the extra obstacles.)
But people, including white men, quite naturally, want to believe that whatever success they have achieved, they've done on their own, with no special advantages.
But, slowly, laws have been changed to remove some of those obstacles and women and non-whites have, in many cases, taken advantage and have worked hard. When I retired I was already seeing more women than men in my graduate classes, and that shift is apparently the norm in universities around the country. And something I hadn't expected to see in my lifetime - a bi-racial president - is now leader of the United States.
And so it is quite understandable that some white males may look at these changes and see their positions in the world as threatened. Their privileges are slowly eroding. Privileges many have never realized they had. So it actually looks like they are being punished, when it's only the American ideal of equality becoming more widespread. They have to work harder to keep what they have. Like everyone else always had to do.
Most of us construct narratives about how the world works in which we are the hero. If we are well off, our narratives explain how hard we worked to get here and how benevolent we are to others. Tony Hayward's narrative was revealed when he said, "I just want my life back." This was understood by many as, "This damn oil spill is interrupting my life of wealth and privilege and the rest of you just don't understand how inconvenient that is."
If we aren't well off, our narratives explain the forces that have deprived us of our due. The economy wiped out my 401K. This year's graduates are facing the worst job market since the depression. Immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans. We have lots of narratives.
(I once heard about a study that claimed that when men were successful they had narratives that gave them personal credit for that success, but when they had failures, their narratives blamed them on other forces. It said that women tended to do the opposite - take credit for their failures and not for their successes. If anyone knows of this research, please leave a comment or email me where I can find it.)
Anyway, all this leads to the point that there is a reason that Bob and Mark have an audience for this sort of racist routine. Ranting and raving about how awful such people are doesn't make them go away. I suspect that much of the energy of the Tea Party movement is anger of people feeling their place in the world is being taken away from them. Some of this is about economics, some of it is about race.
A small organization I belong to - Healing Racism in Anchorage (HRA) - is sponsoring a trip to Anchorage in September by Tim Wise who has an extremely good narrative on racism in the United States. I want to alert people that he's coming. At this point HRA is raising money to help pay for the events in September. You can find out more information at our website. Here's the page to join and make a contribution to HRA to help pay for the Tim Wise events in September.
