Is USDA Organic Certifiably Insane?

I saw a very brief and hurried post from ERV on ScienceBlogs. In it, she noted that organic farmers let their animals die from treatable diseases, because to do otherwise would deny them the valuable 'organic' label. WTF? In Europe, organic livestock MUST be treated humanely, and may receive therapeutic medication (including antibiotics) - to do otherwise is a complete denial of everything science and medicine has learned in the past three hundred years. But, apparently, that's what Organic means in the US! As ERV says

'Organic' farmers? All concerned about their free-range, cage-free, at harmony with the Mother Goddess animals? They let their fucking animals die from treatable diseases, because if they treat them with even one dose of antibiotics, the animals are no longer 'organic'.
She quotes Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association
Allowing one-time therapeutic antibiotics is "a slippery slope", and would "undermine consumer confidence in organics. It's the same position [I have] as on human vaccines. They are dangerous, and that's why I didn't vaccinate my kid."
Never mind the epic FAIL in Ronnie Cummin's statement about the dangers of vaccines - that woo is worthy of a post all by itself! The issue is that animals are allowed to die, often painfully, from completely preventable and treatable diseases. Why is this so? ERV linked to her source (this article at the blog "In These Times"). According to that article,
Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations defining organic standards mandate that if [a] calf had gotten one dose of antibiotics, even to save her life, she could never give organic milk—even after the two years it takes for her to become a milker, and even though neither she nor her milk would retain any trace of antibiotics.
So why would the USDA have such nonsensical standards for 'organic'?

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Read more about the article CEOs Earn More When They Fire People
John D Rockefeller - Archetype of today's CEO

CEOs Earn More When They Fire People

John D Rockefeller - Puck Magazine 1901 The Institute for Policy Studies has just released their 17th annual review of CEO salary. It makes for scary reading. While the rest of us suffer through the double-dip-recession-that-never-actually-lifted-off-the-bottom, CEOs, who are not only some of the wealthiest people in the country but are also the most handsomely paid to boot, have seen their income rise in real terms, while their employees have seen a reduction in real income and a significant contraction of job opportunities. According to the Institute

Corporate executives, in reality, are not suffering at all. Their pay, to be sure, dipped on average in 2009 from 2008 levels, just as their pay in 2008, the first Great Recession year, dipped somewhat from 2007. But executive pay overall remains far above inflationadjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.
Their employees, meanwhile
are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s. Back in those years, precious few top executives made over 30 times what their workers made. In 2009, we calculate in the 17th annual Executive Excess, CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. CEOs are clearly not hurting.
But reality is even worse:
In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies
The market, and the embedded compensation committees, are rewarding CEOs for destroying livliehoods, for shipping jobs overseas, and for eviscerating the american workplace. These are the same people who lobby our politicians to create business friendly legislation (aka legislation that will protect their bonuses and options) and to fight against social programs (that would level the playing field a little) What was so wrong with the vibrant, growing, energetic America of the 70s and 80s? Why do CEOs hate America, so?

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A new site for Biblical scholarship?

I have to admit, I enjoy reading about the gaming scene (I live my geek vicariously). I was therefore delighted/amazed/surprised/dumbfounded to read about a new MMO game called The Bible Online warning - extremely slow server The site describes the game as follows

<The Bible Online: Ch1. The Heroes> is based on the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Players can meet and play the real heroes of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants. The game is designed for users to actually experience the Book of Genesis by fulfilling quests of Abraham, which is based on the true stories of the Genesis. As a MMORTS, players are to lead their tribe, build buildings, maintain resources and engage in warfare with other tribes. However, players do not stay in one place, but will go on a quest to go to the Promised Land. Players will lead Abraham’s tribe from Ur to Haran and finally to Canaan.
Most game sites are very excited, but confidently expect the game to be 'adult only' due to the graphic nature of the sex, violence, and general debauchery inherent in the source material. [H/T - Destructoid and Penny Arcade]

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Lost comments from August 25 – Found!

I regret to verify that this website has recently lost some comments. This has recently been brought to my attention by three readers. After hearing from several of you, I scrolled through the comments chronologically. On most days, we receive about 10 comments. For August 25, I seen no comments. August 25 was one of the two consecutive days that we took down the server for an hour to upgrade our hosting capacity; this is a somewhat complicated procedure. I suspect that something went wrong during that process, though I am not positive. I think that I lost two or three of my own comments. [more . . . ]

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