More evil than Walmart

"...controlling the seeds is not some abstraction. Whoever provides the world’s seeds controls the world’s food supply."

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear (from Vanity Fair, May 2008)

Every time I read about Monsanto I'm reminded of the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. Now that I've read Margaret Atwood's amazing, scarily possible Oryx & Crake another comparison might be to OrganInc or HelthWyzer.

One of the VF article's most damning tales is of the town of Nitro where Monsanto ran a chemical plant:

On March 8, 1949, a massive explosion rocked Monsanto’s Nitro plant when a pressure valve blew on a container cooking up a batch of herbicide. The noise from the release was a scream so loud that it drowned out the emergency steam whistle for five minutes. A plume of vapor and white smoke drifted across the plant and out over town.Residue from the explosion coated the interior of the building and those inside with what workers described as “a fine black powder.” Many felt their skin prickle and were told to scrub down.

Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions. Many were soon diagnosed with chloracne, a condition similar to common acne but more severe, longer lasting, and potentially disfiguring. Others felt intense pains in their legs, chest, and trunk. A confidential medical report at the time said the explosion “caused a systemic intoxication in the workers involving most major organ systems.” Doctors who examined four of the most seriously injured men detected a strong odor coming from them when they were all together in a closed room. “We believe these men are excreting a foreign chemical through their skins,” the confidential report to Monsanto noted. Court records indicate that 226 plant workers became ill.

According to court documents that have surfaced in a West Virginia court case, Monsanto downplayed the impact, stating that the contaminant affecting workers was “fairly slow acting” and caused “only an irritation of the skin.”....

....In 1981 several former Nitro employees filed lawsuits in federal court, charging that Monsanto had knowingly exposed them to chemicals that caused long-term health problems, including cancer and heart disease. They alleged that Monsanto knew that many chemicals used at Nitro were potentially harmful, but had kept that information from them. On the eve of a trial, in 1988, Monsanto agreed to settle most of the cases by making a single lump payment of $1.5 million. Monsanto also agreed to drop its claim to collect $305,000 in court costs from six retired Monsanto workers who had unsuccessfully charged in another lawsuit that Monsanto had recklessly exposed them to dioxin. Monsanto had attached liens to the retirees’ homes to guarantee collection of the debt.

Monsanto stopped producing dioxin in Nitro in 1969, but the toxic chemical can still be found well beyond the Nitro plant site. Repeated studies have found elevated levels of dioxin in nearby rivers, streams, and fish. Residents have sued to seek damages from Monsanto and Solutia. Earlier this year, a West Virginia judge merged those lawsuits into a class-action suit. A Monsanto spokesman said, “We believe the allegations are without merit and we’ll defend ourselves vigorously.” The suit will no doubt take years to play out. Time is one thing that Monsanto always has, and that the plaintiffs usually don’t."...

...What had Monsanto known—or what should it have known—about the potential dangers of the chemicals it was manufacturing? There’s considerable documentation lurking in court records from many lawsuits indicating that Monsanto knew quite a lot. Let’s look just at the example of PCBs.

The evidence that Monsanto refused to face questions about their toxicity is quite clear. In 1956 the company tried to sell the navy a hydraulic fluid for its submarines called Pydraul 150, which contained PCBs. Monsanto supplied the navy with test results for the product. But the navy decided to run its own tests. Afterward, navy officials informed Monsanto that they wouldn’t be buying the product. “Applications of Pydraul 150 caused death in all of the rabbits tested” and indicated “definite liver damage,” navy officials told Monsanto, according to an internal Monsanto memo divulged in the course of a court proceeding. “No matter how we discussed the situation,” complained Monsanto’s medical director, R. Emmet Kelly, “it was impossible to change their thinking that Pydraul 150 is just too toxic for use in submarines.”

Ten years later, a biologist conducting studies for Monsanto in streams near the Anniston plant got quick results when he submerged his test fish. As he reported to Monsanto, according to The Washington Post, “All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10 seconds and all were dead in 3½ minutes.”

A conflict of interest

Emma Bull and Will Shetterly are going to be at the Grant Park McNally Robinson next Wednesday at 7:30pm. Going to see them would be so deliciously ultra-geeky. I don't think I've ever met an author I've loved in person before. The closest I've ever come was talking to Carol Matas on the phone (by total fluke). That in itself was a pretty neat experience. (I think I even gushed a little bit.)

However, Wednesday night is also my final Religious Studies class... and we're going to be reviewing for our final exam.

Grrr.

Oh, what to do...

For I am persuaded

"Buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave... No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world." - Agniola Di Tura, Siena 1347

I just finished Connie Willis' Doomsday Book and despite a few quibbles I ended up liking it very much. I'm not going to write a regurgitated synopsis of the book - if you want to know what its about you can read the Amazon or Wiki synopses. Instead I'm going to cheat and mostly just take snippets from the email conversation Elliot and I had about it earlier today. Oh, and there will be spoilers.

First, a couple of things I found frustrating about the book:

-1 - The illogic of dropping a female historian in a forest in the Middle Ages and expecting her not to be taken too far away from the drop location and for her to be able to find it again in 2 weeks with little trouble; when Dunworthy and Colin go back to find Kivrin they have a *locator device* with them - so what, they can break the rules when its an emergency but not to prevent one? In my mind the fact that the entire plot centered around a drop that went wrong, but didn't have to have gone wrong in quite that way detracted from the realism of the book. (I mean, I know academics are supposed to be a little off, but c'mon!) And I know that Kivrin's being taken away from and not being able to relocate the drop was integral to the plot, but I feel like Willis could have achieved the same effect but set things up so that we didn't question the characters' intelligence as much.

- 2 - The sparsity of character development. You never learn anything about who Kivrin is - her family, her likes, her dislikes, her more private feelings (like for Roche). And the family she's with - Eliwys and Agnes and Rosumund and Imeyne and Gawyn - sometimes they feel like carricatures. Eliwys in particular - you never find out what she's thinking about anything and her dialogue makes her seem so dense. Its too bad because you suspect that she's really a fascinating character and has a story to tell but we're never allowed to hear it. (Actually one could easily make the same argument with Roche.)

And time and again when Kivrin was with Rosamund or Eliwys or Imeyne, I was so frustrated that she didn't ask them more things - like about Eliwys' sons and husband and why exactly they were in Bath (you never find out!) and how old the sons were and whether Eliwys' marriage was a happy one and etc etc - or even show more outright sympathy, rather then just implied sympathy. I mean, Rosamund is a 12 year old child bride who is clearly going through emotional hell and Kivrin recognizes that but does a baffling job of being encouraging. She pushes her towards doing her duty and rarely shares her own opinion of things. Maybe this is Willis trying to have Kivrin be an impartial historical observer, but one wonders who would really be capable of being such under the circumstances!

However, the second half of the book became so intense that I gave up objecting and just fell into it. Despite all I just said about the character development (and my objection stands!), you still manage to start loving the people as Kivrin does (Imeyne and Mrs. Gaddson excluded - I never did stop wanting to slap some sense into them).

Especially Father Roche - I think I developed a small crush on him - well, who wouldn't love a "cutthroat"? This led to Elliot (Claw of the Conciliator) and I having a mini-debate over whether things between Roche and Kivrin should have been *ahem* consummated (hmm... this lends a whole new meaning to "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished"...). They never are. In fact, in most of what passes between them you have to read between the lines and guess at what they truly feel for each other.

Elliot says: "...chaste love can be very classy. And really, the 'priest-breaking-his-vows-for-love' trope has gotten kind of hackneyed. That idea comes up in The Child Goddess, an sf novel I just read, except in this case it's a futuristic female (Catholic) priest, who's broken her vows in the past and now is struggling against breaking them again with the married man she loves."

I say: "Unconsummated love is sometimes better. I kept thinking of how it would have worked if they had done anything and it might have wrecked things. Or it might have been totally awesome like the scene in The Name of the Rose..."

The Doomsday book is steeped in religion (for some reason I wanted to say "dunked," like a donut, but I stopped myself just in...). This is a pretty obvious statement when you think about just how Christianized Britain and Europe had become by the Middle Ages, but this didn't have to be the case for the parts Willis set in "present day" (actually the future - around 2200 AD). She chose to set the entire story - both Middle Age and present day - at Christmas time and include as much religious paraphernalia as she could cram in - complete with numerous visits to church(es), Latin chants, bell ringers and all. She tries to diversify a bit in her present day story by name-dropping a few non-Christian religions that exist, but you can tell her imagined world is at heart a very Christian one (well, at least, Britain specifically is). Though this is a bit annoying, she does manage to do a very good job of showing a broad spectrum of Christian faith - from the absolutely galling, jeremiad-spewing Mrs. Gaddson to the gentle, quiet, subtler faith of Father Roche - and many more in between.

And then there's Kivrin - who, despite my complaints above, is still a fantastic heroine and who goes through what can only be called hell-on-earth. She's swept up in the wake of the Black Death - the most horrific disease imaginable (though one contender has put forth the Ebola virus as a possible second), which historians - as Willis reminds us through Kivrin - believe wiped out up to seventy-five percent of Europe.

Elliot says: "I thought Doomsday had a really interesting and sophisticated ending. She rages against God, against the meaningless of it all, which is completely the right and understandable thing to do. I mean, it's the freakin' Black Plague. But then Willis weaves in these hints that Kirvin's presence was actually a blessing, that people who saw her as an angel weren't entirely wrong. The message I got was 'it's not *that* you die, but *how* you die that matters.'"

The questioning of faith and the questioning of time - in the world that Willis has created, a world in which the past is mind-blowingly accessible, Willis questions time's significance: when Kivrin is trapped in the Middle Ages and time is a barrier keeping her from home, friends, and family, there are moments where a feeling that all times are one time comes over her - that the past, present and future are all happening at once - Rosamund and Agnes and Mr. Dunworthy and Badri and Montoya and the Black Plague and Baliol - everything. At her most despairing, with death all around her, Kivrin speaks into her recorder: "Is God there, too, I wonder, but shut off from us by something worse then time, unable to get through, unable to find us?"

I don't think I'll ever be able to get certain lines of Shakespeare or the Bible out of my head, and when I'd finished the book, one came to mind: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God."


P.S. Elliot says that in Willis' next book, which continues in the same world as the Doomsday Book, Kivrin is mentioned briefly and offhandedly as a church-goer.

The hour is getting late...

"There must be some way out of here,"
said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief."

Season 4 will be the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica.

They have 22 episodes in which to bring it all together and finish off with a glorious bang.

A Geek's Dream

I just got back from seeing Meet the Robinsons and it was awesome! I liked it even better then The Incredibles.

What makes it a geek's dream, you ask?

Time machines, memory scanners, and intergalactic pizza delivery super heroes for starters.

Its a very, very Disney movie.

Which makes me even more excited about leaving for DW in 5 days!


P.S. Check out this article about the wave of new 3-D movies. Pretty neat! (Or should I make that "Neat-O"?)

'We talked of love, death and fairy tales'

Dear Roberta Sparrow,

I have reached the end of your book
and there are so many questions that I
need to ask you.

Sometimes I am afraid of what you
might tell me. Sometimes I am afraid this
is not a work of fiction. I can only hope
that the answer will come to me in my
sleep.

I hope that when the world comes to an end,
I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there
will be so much to look forward to.

Donnie Darko

"When I was born my father wished to name me
Seven Snows, which is a common name for girls
among our people. But I was born while he
was away in his boat; and before he returned,
my mother had left her bed and seen the Cim
blowing from tree to tree like a soft star in
the air, and completed the naming."

CIM GLOWING


From the Gene Wolfe story Tracking Song.

(There are many ways I imagine Cim Glowing might look. This is just one of them.)

Things that have been making me happy lately...

The Knight & The Wizard, by Gene Wolfe - At first I didn't like them because they felt very video-gamish in plot and because Wolfe likes to kill off a lot of minor characters that you've grown attached to. But then about a third of the way into the first book, the main character thinks out loud to himself "...it was like a big video game, except I was on the screen. Or virtual reality maybe. I sort of felt at my head for the gear, but there was not any..." Once I read that I felt better. I decided to read it as if it were just a glorified video game plot made into a book (or a glorified TV- show-to-book...*cough* Neverwhere *cough*) and then the plot and the sometimes forced-sounding dialogue became more acceptable. And now - part way through The Wizard - I've actually let myself start to like some of the characters and I'm finding myself reobsessing over medieval concepts of honor and 'knightliness.' (As for the minor characters - well, a bunch were killed in the first half of book one but now things seem to have calmed down. Some minors even made it into book 2 - wow!)

The Fellowship of the Ring, the movie* - No, not the entire series because, though it pains me to say it, I think The Return of the King was just slightly less good then the others. I think that Fellowship was the best. It might be that I feel this way because 1) I just rewatched the extended version of Fellowship for the first time in over 1.5 years and 2) in the Fellowship, the Quest has just begun and so there seems to be more light then darkness to it, whereas Return of the King is so very dark in places, especially the Mordor bits with Sam and Frodo and 3) the Fellowship seems to capture the perfect combination of humour and heart-wrenching emotion (as well as splendidly showcasing the archetypal human flaws, but then, that's more Tolkien's doing then Jackson's).

However, I haven't rewatched The Two Towers lately so perhaps tomorrow I'll be rambling on about how The Two Towers is the best of the three! I do seem to do an awful lot of mind-changing!

Battlestar Galactica, the 'reimagined' TV series - I love how its grittier and darker then any Star Trek series ever was. (Actually, I think the only series that I could compare it to somewhat would have to be Buffy - but only to certain seasons, particularly 6 and 7.) And I like how I can sometimes predict what's going to happen in an episode not because the plots aren't well-written or challengingly tricky enough but because the writers/producers aren't big on soap opera storylines - the kind that drag on and on, where nothing is ever resolved.

I could say more about BSG... Much more. Oh, and about FFXII too! But another time...

_____________________________
*Colin and I started watching the extended version of Fellowship on December 25 with E & M and tonight we finished it up with J's kids. Good grief! Little kids sure can be distracting! Over the course of an hour and a half I lost count of how many times I had to say "Shush!" to A and of how many tumbles and somersaults and yoga positions she went through on the carpet as she tried to find the Perfect Movie-Watching Position.

*sigh*

I'm not complaining, really. (Well, maybe just a little teensy bit.) I think its good for me to be around Real Children and not just the ones who are tiny perfect figments of my imagination. Its very... educational. And cautionary.

You know you're really sick when six pain killers have absolutely no effect on your physical state.

*moan*

(I know, I know - I should be braving the pain naturally and suffering in silence like the gods intended, right?)

In other news...

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THERE ARE 2 BEOWULF MOVIES!?

All this time I've been under the misimpression that the 2006 Beowulf & Grendel movie was the one with the screenplay written by the not-as-awesome-as-Gene-Wolfe-but-still-pretty-fracking-awesome Neil Gaiman! My expectations were crushed when it received terrible reviews (from critics and reliable friends alike) and I still haven't watched it.

However, today I was catching up on my pop trivia by reading Wiki bios when I stumbled across this:

"Beowulf is a motion capture film starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie with a scheduled release date of October 2007"

[gasp!]

I blame all of you who know me well! Why didn't you use your Esper powers and correct my error earlier?

In any case, I suppose I can take pleasure in the fact that my disappointment was all for naught and I now have 2 hopefully-good-movies-cross-your-fingers to look forward to - Stardust and Beowulf.

Rejoice!*


__________________________________
* Hey, I never said my blog would be meaningful or that I'd post in it often. I mean, I do aim for meaningful but so do a lot of other bloggers... *nudge* *nudge* (Forgive me, I blame the cold.)

Book bargains are wonderful!

Two recent trips to McNally have resulted in the following:

- The Borrowers Afloat, The Borrowers Aloft, The Borrowers Avenged - all for just $3 each, thus completing my collection of the series

- The Cider House Rules by John Irving ($7 - I like Irving even though he seems to incorporate the same odditities into each of his books over and over again, leading me to conclude that he has a serious fascination with prostitutes - particularly those from the Red Light District in Amsterdam; but he does write about other things and he's a very good story teller.)

- The Sad Truth About Happiness by Anne Giardini ($7 - this was my risky purchase as I know nothing about the book)

- The Knight by Gene Wolfe ($7)

- Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen ($4 - another risky purchase; I mistook it for a book that I'd read and loved back in junior high; sadly, this is not the book I was thinking of nor did I find it at all intriguing when I picked it up last night and attempted to get into it. It seems Jane Yolen is a hit-and-miss author at best and in my experience usually a miss.)

* * *

Conversation with the bookstore guy (B.G.) when I went to pay for The Borrowers Avenged and Gene Wolfe's The Knight:

B.G. "Oh, Gene Wolfe! He's great."

Me: "Yep, I know! My favorite by him is... the Long Sun... no, wait the New Sun... well, whichever one has Severian in it."

B.G. "I don't think I've read that one..."

Me: "Have you read this one?" [pointing to The Knight]

B.G. "Oh, yeah!"

Me: "And is it... fairly comprehensible?" [laughing]

B.G. "Well, you know Gene Wolfe - every sentence he writes is deep." [Pause] "Its definitely not a beach read."

Its funny. How can someone be a prolific, well loved, innovative author and yet be such a very bad writer?

I've been reading Foundation by Isaac Asimov and though I went in with high hopes and great expectations I'm ending up disappointed.

As with everything I've read so far by Aismov, the concept is an very interesting one and the plot has many witty twists and turns but the execution of it all is carried out so poorly that the ideas which should be captivating, instead end up being dull when read.

Asimov's writing puts me in mind of cold steel, uncomfortable medical procedures, and stern faces...

I suppose I'm saying his writing is to me... robotic.

Lifeless. Lacking in warmth.

Also, where are the women???

I'm 25 pages from the conclusion of the first Foundation book and with every chapter a new cast of characters arrive (since the book transitions from generation to generation) but of those, all have been men!*

How can you write an entire book without a single woman character? Not even the wife of a main character or a secretary!*

* * *

"In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are. His robots were tin cans with speedlines like an old Studebaker, and still are; the Robot tales depended on an increasingly unworkable distinction between movable and unmovable artificial intelligences, and still do. In the Asimov universe, because it was conceived a long time ago, and because its author abhors confusion, there are no computers whose impact is worth noting, no social complexities, no genetic engineering, aliens, arcologies, multiverses, clones, sin or sex; his heroes... feel no pressure of information, raw or cooked, as the simplest of us do today; they suffer no deformation from the winds of the Asimov future, because it is so deeply and strikingly orderly."

(from the 1985 Washington Post)

______________________
*Actually, since writing this a woman has appeared for all of three paragraphs. She is simpering and silly, the trophy wife of a monarch. She does nothing for the plot.
*And the same men! Different names but the same men - simply reincarnated over and over with different positions and labels but the same attitudes and manner of speaking.
(Of course, since this is the Foundation series we're talking about I guess it could be argued that Asimov did this on purpose to show how his whole psychohistory theory can be played out over a milennia. Strong, similar leaders arise from every generation, shaping history as predicted by Hari Seldon.)

Lady In The Water may be considered a "flop" by Critics but I loved it - imperfections (which there were, of course) and all.

M. Night may have yet to get it perfectly down pat, but I think he is definitely getting closer to It as he goes along.

(And that's more then can be said for most movie-makers... right?)

It reminded me of a crazy day dream - and by that I mean a dream that you dream in the day, half-waking, strange and surreal.

A little like a Gene Wolfe short story or a Neil Gaiman book (a la American Gods maybe...).

I think the little tripline "A Bedtime Story" sums it up perfectly: you need to be on the brink of sleep to appreciate this one - to have it scare you and to believe in it.

Oh, and the promo poster is... totally inaccurate in what its supposed to inspire in your imagination, in my opinion. It makes me think... winter, ice, fairies, magic. Look at it - you'd think she was Queen Jadis or something!

Piff.

*yawn*

Being as I had today off, I decided to Fringe.*

I saw three plays over the course of six hours. One of the plays was funny, one was witty, and one was terrifically good fun.

Sadly, I am talking all about a single play.

The other two sucked.

Okay, okay - only one actually 'sucked' per se. The other was just 'meh.'

(Yes, that is my offical Fringe rating code. I am tired - and slightly cranky at only having seen one good show today - grr!)

The first play of the day which I saw was FemMennonite - a one-woman show.

I had high hopes for it considering the great four star review it received on CBC. However, it turned out to be a piece of self-indugent, Christian-bashing tripe.

You see, I tend to believe that when people leave a fundamentalist religion** (and my own experience has only been with the Christian persuasion), it is usually for reasons that fall into one of two catagories:

1) Intellectual - meaning the individual has left the "flock" due to a lack of faith/a crisis of faith/by reasons of critical thinking. In other words, they could not reconcile two truths - what they believed to be true and what they were being taught to be true. (More on this some other time)

2) Moral - and by this I actually mean immoral. In this second catagory, individuals leave their religion because it is too morally restrictive (or they get booted out for having broken one of the religion's moral commandments).

I've always kind of felt sorry for those who fall into Catagory 2 because they're in such grey territory - they may have left their faith behind so as to indulge in various "sins" such as smoking, drinking, sex, etc. - and yet they're not free because as far as they know they have no ground to stand upon. They're much more at risk of being consumed by guilt over their actions because they have not left their faith due to its flaws, they've left due to what they consider to be their own flaws.

Of course, not all people who leave for Catagory 2 reasons feel any guilt whatsoever. Many, it seems, just leave because their faith was too restrictive and they don't look back or think much of anything of it.

Anyways, I've kind of gone on a tangent here. *ahem*

FemMennonite is about a girl who - from what I finally gathered at the conclusion of the play - leaves her Mennonite religion for reasons falling into Catagory 2. In other words, she wants to party and she finds her Mennonite faith restricts her ability to "really live."

Of course, the play isn't about what happens after she leaves (because that would probably have made a very dull play). Instead, its all about her mocking the lifestyle she eventually decides to leave behind. So that she can pursue her dreams of becoming a movie-star and having lots of great sex.

You get the idea?

Going by the short synopsis I'd read ahead of time, I really thought the play had the potential to be funny and charming and even sweet. But unfortunately it just came off as sad (and by that I really mean pathetic). The jokes fell flat (there are only so many Jesus jokes you can make before you need to get some new material) and I found the character to be... well, basically unlikeable. I actually ended up feeling much more sympathy for the family she constantly mocked and ranted against - I mean, they had to put up with this irritating teenage daughter continually complaining about how repressed and hard-done by she felt day in and day out.

Which leads us to play number two - The Bold and Spikey Poetry Show.

I'm tired so I'll make this quick.

They were quirky, British, and performed stand-up poetry. Some of it was very funny and some of it was very bad.

The last play of the evening was The Excursionists, which - thank the goddess! - was great.

I'll let CBC sum it up as, at least in this case, they were right:

"What would any good Englishman do if his country sank to the bottom of the sea? Why, set out to conquer another land, of course. That’s the premise of this Jules Verne-inspired epic underwater adventure story where you’ll be treated to a fantastical walk on the ocean floor, an underwater train and, of course, the obligatory giant squid attack. The two-man, four-flipper cast offer bang-on performances in the very clever, quirky comedy. British colonialism never looked so good. True fringe."

Really, I ask you! How could anything that is "Jules Verne-inspired" and an "epic underwater adventure" with British humour be bad??

Especially when the two characters emerge wearing deep-sea diving helmets, blowing bubbles, and making "glug-glug" noises as they slowly walk about mimicking the underwater pressured atmosphere.

It may sound insane - but it was great. Very goofy, very British.***

Tomorrow - only a three hour wedding to do. *phew!*

Night night.

______________________________
* Because our annual Fringe Festival is truly one of the greatest things about this city.
**E.g. Mormons (Latter Day Saints), Jehovah's Witnesses, (hardcore) Mennonites, the Twelve Tribes, etc.
*** Although, they were actually from Seattle. Americans! However, in an extremely well-done and subtle way, they included the obligatory "we hate Bush" jibe and so we all liked them anyway.