Pediatricians To Feds: Protect Kids From Toxic Chemicals read the hed on the NPR piece Monday. Parents worry about exposing their children to chemicals like BPA, but nobody knows for sure what they do. That's because current law doesn't require that chemicals be tested for safety before hitting the market. The American Academy of Pediatrics wants the EPA to change that.But Dr. Woody wondered: Really? Protect them? How?
There are "common," natural "chemical" poisons in the atmosphere--formaldehyde, for one, is naturally occurring; there are dozens of others--though normally they're found around volcanoes and such. But in addition to these, There are almost 100 THOUSAND artificial, chemical compounds circulating in our various lifeworlds, more or less. About 75% have been introduced in the last 50 years.
There is not enough regulatory authority in the world to reduce that number by ANY significant amount--there is too much money involved, for one thing--much less any adequate number of regulators to supervise and test the ones being added daily without any particular scrutiny. Only about a DOZEN of the most ubiquitous chemical industrial and agricultural toxins have been tested for long-term human exposure, and all of them have been shown to be "harmful" in one way or another.
There's probably a better chance that you could induce immunity through cautious administration of the toxics: Remember, as the poet Housman reminds us, "Mithradates, he died old." Oh, you never read "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff"? E.g.: @ line 21-22: "And malt does more than Milton can//To justify God’s ways to man...." Well, here's the whole thing:
LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuffJust FYI, since the old Prof in me champs at the sound of poetry, there are three voices in the poem: In the first stanza, it is Mithradates; in the second, and third, the voice is that of Terence, the poet, friend and advisor to the king; in the last stanza is heard the voice of the poet: "--I tell the tail as I heard told..."
By A.E. Housman, 1896 (From "A Shropshire Lad")
‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’
Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
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"Colorful" Language: Words, it seems to me, metaphorically perform similar functions for our emotional and intuitive perceptions of "reality" as the arrangements of photo-sensitive nerves in our eyes do. Those optic nerves actually create for our attention the colors we "see," and color is a primary tool for differentiation between particular phenomena. Those colors aren't "there" unless there are photo-sensors to create them in our consciousness. And they have "meanings," depending on our experiences with the things that manifest those various colors.
Words do the same thing with other aspects of "reality." We "speak the world into existence." Not with selected words, not with our discourses; "reality" is the sum of ALL our words.
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Exceptional: Remember Molly Ivins' famous description of George W. Bush's character flaws flowing from the delusion that, having been born on third base, he'd actually hit a triple and legged it out?
It takes only a moment's honest reflection to realize that this is pretty much spot-on for 'moral' position of the country as a whole, and is the best metaphor I can think of to explain the phenomenon of "American Exceptionalism."
America~~Born on third, believing we'd hit a triple.
American's aren't all that special, but the continent is, and having it in virtually sole possession confers incredible, but unearned advantages. You don't really DESERVE a single family dwelling, a car, and a refrigerator, but you got 'em cuz you're one of the lucky ones.
We ALL resemble the 'wealthy' in this respect: we mistake our incredible good fortune at living here for a reward bestowed by some unnamed benefactor for our (spurious) "national" and/or "personal" virtue.
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Modest: Joshua Holland is perplexed by the apparent seriousness of the GOPhux efforts to revive child labor:
The fact that we're debating the social benefits of child labor laws in the second decade of the 21st century casts the madness that's gripped our right-wing in sharp relief. It took a hard-fought, century-long battle to get compliant kids working for slave-wages out of American workplaces, and that battle was supposedly won 73 years ago during the New Deal.But there is a sort of Swiftian (and, certainly "feudal") logic to it, if you think about it. Regardez vous:
Labor unions fought HARD to enact child-labor laws, not out of any philanthropic concern for the physical well-being of their off-spring but, instead, mainly to prevent children from undermining the wages paid to adults. One significant upshot of the movement was to make "schools" more important, if for nothing else than for warehousing all these potential workers, and keeping them off the streets.
So by bringing children back into the workforce, the Owners would at a single stroke undo a key piece of union orthodoxy, drive wages down for all workers, AND have the excuse to close schools, or at least drastically reduce the need for educational services. Makes "perfect" (capitalistic/CorpoRat) sense...No, really!
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