Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 4.12
- Is kissing a "gateway drug" to "sex addiction"? – "This attitude doesn’t just misunderstand sex; it misunderstands addiction. It assumes that enjoying something is equal to being addicted."
- "Women's Logic" : The Georgian quiz tv show so offensive, it's sparking a national debate – Hahaha, get it? Women don't HAVE any logic! Ba-dum-ching.
- Canadian Food Inspection Agency changes food labeling – "The CFIA will introduce a web-based label verification tool that encourages consumers to bring validated concerns directly to companies and associations for resolution." Huh? From madfishmonger.
- Crowdsourcing for science – Petridish is like Kickstarter, but specifically for scientific research. How cool is that?
There's a lot I don't understand about the food inspection labeling issue, but then again no one understands anythign Harper does anymore. I have an anaphylactic allergy to tree nuts, does this mean the companies no longer need to label items that may contain nuts? Does it mean that if I die from anaphylaxis my family will have to try and take on the company that made the food? I also worry what this means for people who have say, a milk allergy or are vegan. Lactose and whey are common ingredients, do they not have to label those too? I don't really get what it means or why they're opening the door for snake oil salesmen to put whatever they like in a bottle. Our PM is unbearably stupid.
This falls in line with the way many conservatives think; that only you, the citizen, are to be trusted with any important task and that the government is never to be trusted. These same conservatives want to reduce education from being fact-based to being opinion-based so that people will have no way of making the choices they are being faced to make.
Want to retire some day? Just save and invest your money, or have your accountant do it, how hard is that?
Want to know if a drug is safe? Hold companies that release dangerous drugs accountable by taking your money elsewhere; reputation is how the free-market works after all.
Want clean air and water? Just buy Dasani like the rest of us.
What’s that? You say you don’t have the time, knowledge, and money to do these things? Gee, sucks to be you.
I know it’s a cliche to say that conservatism is a mental illness, but thinking like that shows a broken process at the very least.
I'm sorry, but could you point out to me, in the article, where it says Food Label Inspectors aren't going to be doing their job anymore, and that the whole thing will fall on Canadians' shoulders?
Because to me, it just seems the Government added an avenue for us to complain directly to the companies if we see something on a label we are concerned with. I'm not saying it's going to work, but I'm also not jumping on the 'conservatives are fucking idiots all the time always' bandwagon so quickly.
This article has to be taken in context.
In order to fund continuing corporate tax cuts, this government is embarking on a very well publicized plan to make large cuts to many government agencies – including the CFIA. This means fewer veterinarians, fewer food inspectors, etc. etc. Notices have already gone out telling CFIA employees that they are "affected" but not necessarily laid off yet.
In that context, this announcement means "Sure, we're laying off the professionals who have studied food and animals all their lives, but now you can complain directly to companies after conducting a scientific examination of every product you have in your house."
Well, let’s see. In the article it says, “In the budget they released last week, the government announced it would “change how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) monitors and enforces non-health and non-safety food labelling regulations … The CFIA will introduce a web-based label verification tool that encourages consumers to bring validated concerns directly to companies and associations for resolution.””
When the government announces a “change” it never means an added service; never. If they were adding an service they would be selling it as the greatest thing since the flush toilet. A change means just that, a change. In this case from a government agency doing what it should to the lowly Canadian citizen doing it instead, with no training I might add.
As for the ‘conservatives are fucking idiots all the time always’ bandwagon; it’s not really a bandwagon but rather my own personal scooter and I have not asked anyone to hop aboard.
Harper and his minions are not idiots, they’re venal and antisocial liars. It has nothing to do with being a conservative, it has to do with being corporatists masquerading as conservatives. Even a lot of traditional Canadian conservatives are horrified by his lies and what he’s doing to the country.
If you're stealing elections, who cares about poll numbers (which are easy enough to manipulate anyway). Also, the agenda is to privatize and dismantle as many social and cultural programs as possible (because it's much harder to rebuild and refund than it is to tear down), and as many personal rights, as possible while in power. While, of course, inciting as much racial/gender/ideological/class animosity and strife between groups as possible so that people will fight against their own self interests out of spite and fear of the other. What's amazing is how it's been step by step almost exactly the same as the takeover of the US by the corporatist (nominally libertarian) interests. It all really seems to lead back to the Koch brothers as the major money and power behind this in both Canada and the US (the Koch brothers have companies that stand to benefit from the Keystone pipeline on both sides of the border-Harper is obviously in their pocket, and it seems that Obama either is too or is unable to stand up to them).
We've even got our own Tea Party brewing out in the praries, though it's more romantically named the Wild Rose party.
I remember when the show "The Week the Women Left" came out and the MRAs were saying, "You could never make a show like that where women looked stupid! The feminists wouldn't allow it!"
And though we all loathe the "stupid dad" meme in sitcoms, this was just one more thing they were wrong about.
The Conservative gov't should be more careful about food safety. After all, as Minister Gerry Ritz pointed out the last time their deregulation policies caused deaths: every time someone dies of food poisoning, their poll numbers go down.