Perfectly safe

From today's paper: "Bill would restrict voting to property owners."

Last week, [Republican State Rep. Deborah] Hudson introduced House Bill 358, a one-line bill that would restrict voting in school-tax referendums to those who actually pay the tax. Only citizens who live in the district and own property there would be allowed to vote in referendums, though renters and other nonproperty owners living in the district still could vote in school board elections.

But by Thursday, Hudson learned that there was a problem with her bill: the Constitution.

Oh, right, the Constitution. Pesky that.

Makes one wonder whether the elementary schools Rep. Hudson attended were adequately funded. Maybe they couldn't afford history or social studies teachers when she was in school. Or math and economics teachers -- since she also seems to think renters don't contribute to paying property taxes.

- - -

This Dude will not abide.

"Your friends got brains in their heads," the ridiculous Officer Rivieri says, "they know when to shut their mouths."

Unfortunately for Rivieri, those friends also had a video camera. And a YouTube account. Here's to the Internet for making it slightly more uncomfortable to be a bully with a badge. (via Avram at Making Light)

- - -

Also from today's paper: "Study didn't warn families of sludge risks."

BALTIMORE -- Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning from the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

... There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

... Another study investigating whether sludge might inhibit the "bioavailability" of lead -- the rate it enters the bloodstream and circulates to organs and tissues -- was conducted on a vacant lot in East St. Louis next to an elementary school, all of whose 300 students were black and almost entirely from low-income families.

In a newsletter, the EPA-funded Community Environmental Resource Program assured local residents it was all safe.

"Though the lot will be closed off to the public, if people -- particularly children -- get some of the lead-contaminated dirt in their mouths, the lead will just pass through their bodies and not be absorbed," the newsletter said. "Without this iron-phosphorus mix, lead poisoning would occur."

Soil chemist Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, said he doesn't doubt that sludge can bind lead in soil.

But when eaten, "it's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach," he said. "Actually thinking about a child ingesting this, there's a very good chance that it's not safe."

I suppose it's important to keep in mind the big picture here, remembering all the lives this research might save in the future due to all we're learning about syphilis lead poisoning.

Comments

[amandaw]

"You got that camera on? If I find myself on Y--"

and the video cuts off.

And ending so perfect, you'd think it was scripted.

[Nobody_Special]

RE: The Baltimore Sludge story.

One wonders if anybody in the EPA remembers back in the late 1970's when the City of Chicago thought up its latest can't miss moneymaker: Nu-Earth, a fertilizer made from industrial and human "sludge".

The problem was this "all organic" fertilizer was loaded with cadmium, a known carcinogen. So our fine city had to scramble to recall it. So I'm thinking if the unfortunate people in Baltimore and East St. Louis don't die of lead poisoning, they may very well die from cancer caused by God knows what in the sludge.

[Ben]

“were never told about any harmful ingredients”

This practice (especially for treated human sewage) has existed for a long time. Its most "harmful" effect is that ignorant people think it sounds nasty. Unsurprisingly, as with vaccination, and many other cheap and effective public health programs, the rich want to take it away from the poor.

Try this experiment. Take a potty, and put into it some milk drink, dilute fruit juice or other beverage suitable for young children. The older children won't want to drink it, even if you explain that the potty was hygienically cleaned before you put the drink in there. They're conditioned to follow a taint rule, bad stuff cannot become good again, it has to be disposed of. If bad stuff touches good stuff, the good stuff is bad too.

This rule works fine if you're 5 years old, or even for an individual adult, but as a society we have to accept that all the water in the world has been pissed out, drunk, pissed out again and so on ad infinitum. What is dirty can and does become clean if properly treated. Taint is just a primitive way of explaining a much more complicated situation that we now have a pretty good handle on.

Lead paint is dangerous. HIV contaminated blood is dangerous. Girls have cooties. Sludge is icky. But only two of these four problems is a significant public health risk. I'm not suggesting that you deliberately feed sludge to your children, but that it's not particularly dangerous compared to ordinary dirt, which kids do eat and it does occasionally make them sick. As a low-cost public health fix, this was a great idea, it's a shame that from the comfort of a middle class home some people think it sounds too "icky" to continue.

[ You can make a lot of money taking ordinary cow manure (which is "icky") and de-odorising it. This makes little difference to what's actually in the manure, but it makes it less "icky" and so rich people will buy it to make their plants grow. Perception is everything, sadly. ]

[Laertes]

Where did Ms. Hudson get the idea that I, a renter, don't pay property tax?

Go ahead and double the property tax in my town. The difference (and more, I expect) will show up in my rent payment as quickly as the terms of my lease permit. (In my case, that means Next Month.)

Does she imagine that landlords pay the property tax out of the kindness of their hearts, and that it has no impact on rents?

[A Texan in Bavaria]

Devil's advocate for jerk cop: if I remember correctly, there are all sorts of signs in the Inner Harbor announcing that skateboarding there is not allowed.

He did, however, do a fantastic job of making himself and, by association, the Baltimore PD look ridiculous. Hooray for Baltimore's finest! We subscribed to the theory that the Baltimore PD took an excessive interest in our alcohol consumption because nerdy underage Hopkins students were far less dangerous to confront than drug dealers.

[David]

Its most "harmful" effect is that ignorant people think it sounds nasty. Unsurprisingly, as with vaccination, and many other cheap and effective public health programs, the rich want to take it away from the poor.

Side track: Who on earth is recommending "taking away" vaccines from the poor? This sounds like a ridiculous straw man.

Back on track: We aren't talking about a "cheap and effective public health program" where proven methods are being employed to reduce medical risk. We're talking about medical experiments. We're talking about "taking away" the "right" to have medical experiments performed on people without sufficient disclosure. You'll notice there was an explicit newsletter sent saying that ingesting the lead-contaminated dirt was safe. The issue is not that poop is icky. It's that lead is poisonous.

(Disclaimer: for all I know, there may be medical issues with the sludge too, though I don't claim to know anything about that so I'll leave that side of your point alone. But explicitly telling people that it's safe to ingest lead-tainted earth, when the whole point of the experiment is to determine whether it's safe to ingest lead-tainted earth, is already terribly bad scientific ethics even without a lack of due diligence on the sludge side of things.)

[not someone else]

Ben:

I don't get that from the article. The problem doesn't seem to be that it's icky, but that it might be dangerous. I wouldn't trust newspaper science, but there's nothing in there that blatantly sets off "these people don't know what they're talking about" alarms to me.

There's also the question of why exactly they feel the need to do this experiment on people's lawns rather than under more controlled conditions; one would presume they didn't actually, or there's some difference in conditions or something, but that's not how it comes off.

Need to learn to cite their sources better. "Some part of some memo put out thirty years ago by these people, at some time, named gods only know what or how you could find it, said..." And not one mention of actual studies done, unless I'm ignorant.

[Paul]

It is interesting how a Christian musical group Casting Crowns music gets used in different plays and shows. One youth group recently did a hand backlight play to Casting Crowns "Who Am I" song. I've got this awesome video clip on my website, chck it out here http://www.christiansnewswire.com/Product/CastingCrownsPics.html

[Kristin]

I just learned something about the Baltimore PD this month - DYK they train their hostage negotiation team using the Theory of Identical Elements? that is, that they train hostage negotiators the same way others train computer tech support hotline operators, using a script. Theory of Identical Elements states that training is more effective if the training situation mirrors exactly the situations the trainee will encounter in their work. I don't know if the rest of the Baltimore PD operates this way, but I am highly skeptical about using the TIE on anything other than assembly-line processes, certainly not something with as many variations as hostage negotiations or police work in general.

[Ben]

"The problem doesn't seem to be that it's icky, but that it might be dangerous."

No, the problem is that it's icky, and therefore people have consistently claimed, with no evidence, that it is dangerous. Which is what this article is doing.

This research was published in a peer-reviewed journal. But, isn't that strange, this "informative" news article doesn't link to that paper, or provide a full citation for it. Almost as though they don't want their readers to have a third party source which might undo the scare-mongering value of this little piece? What we do get are fragmentary quotes from several sources, none of whom do anything to actually point at a problem.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe,"
-- Yes, like the lead in the soil at these sites. Are these pathogens and chemicals present in this sludge? In a dangerous quantity ?

"What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge -- are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."
-- More studies is always a good option when asked questions by the press. Doing more research can't hurt. But, what does the existing research say?

"So that even if they ate some of the soil, there would not be as much of a risk as there was before. And that's what the science shows."
-- Ah, so we did a study, and the result was that risk was reduced. Now /that/ would be a terrible news story. You'd have to sex it up a little....

"He acknowledged the families were not told there have been some safety disputes and health complaints over sludge."
-- The reporter finds an edge - people weren't sent enough information about previous health scares like the one he's creating

"The Baltimore study concluded that phosphate and iron in sludge can increase the ability of soil to trap more harmful metals including lead, cadmium and zinc. If a child eats the soil, this trapping can let all the material pass safely through a child's system."
-- It works, as expected this method works, everybody should be happy...? Oh yeah, we're trying to write a news article. "It works" is boring.

"it's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach,"
-- finally the journalist finds someone who, although it's outside his area of expertise to say either way, isn't prepared to say either way about its safety if consumed by a child. He's home free, now it's a legitimate story about an unknown danger. Did the original study address this question as you'd expect? Is there existing research on the subject? The journalist doesn't care about that science stuff, story filed, money in the bank, people scared and buying more newspapers. Job done.

Normally I just ignore blog re-posts of this sort of generic scaremongering. But the thing is, our gracious host works in this industry (the old and dusty one they call, ironically, "news"). He knows this stuff is bullshit written by people who don't know their science, to sell newspapers. So why re-post it?

[fermion]

Seconding Ben that the "sludge" piece is blowing things considerably out of proportion. According the the website for the fertilizer they used, they sell the same processed sewage sludge to "landscapers" and "golf courses", so--unless they're lying, which I suppose is possible--they aren't just singling out poor people to "test" the stuff. The soil was already contaminated by lead. Putting fertilizer on it seems unlikely to make things worse. About the only thing that seems potentially objectionable is their statement that the treated soil would be safe to eat; it's not really possible to tell from the article if that assertion is supported by the evidence.

[Peter]

I love the internet.

As someone who had some problems as a teenager, among those being that I have a quick mouth and know my rights, I got thrown around by cops of a couple of occasions. Even if those kids were doing something that they shouldn't have, there's nothing in that situation that necessitates that guy tossing a 14 year old to the ground other than the fact that he wanted to make himself feel bigger than them

"I am Officer Rivieri!!"

There's absolutely nothing about being a police officer that makes you any more worthy of respect than any other human being, and when you're acting like that you're a lot less worthy of it.

[12xuser]

There is NO excuse for what that jerk cop did. He was making it clear to those kids that he could do whatever he wanted to them for no reason at all, and they would just have to suffer. This is not "You must abide by the rule of law", this is "I have ultimate power over you no matter what the law says". He should be fired and prosecuted for misuse of his position.

[Pseudowolf]

RE: The cop

I saw that a while back when it first made the rounds and it *still* ticks me off. BTW, this is not isolated incident. Since then, the same guy was also seen "getting tough" on a guy playing around with a remote-control truck in a box. It was a prank to see how people'd react to a box roaming around. The cop, needless to say, overreacted to said prank.

Makes one wonder how many incidents have gone UNreported to due fear of retaliation?

[BillyGee]

"Only citizens who live in the district and own property there would be allowed to vote in referendums"

They're the ones paying the bills. There's nobody more careless than someone thinking they're spending other people's money. Go to Vegas sometime and watch people blow through any winnings, thinking it's the "house's money" if you don't believe me. Now granted, if tax increases are the focus of your worldview, you'd love our current system, where A and B can vote to raise C's taxes so they get more goodies.

Democracy: two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

[Amaryllis]

Oh. Oh my.

I haven't had time today to do more than drop in to an old thread for a few minutes of bookish chit-chat. I finally get around to reading today's post, only to find myself right at home in Baltimore, Charm City itself, Queen City of the Patapsco.

Oh Baltimore. Man, it's hard.

On the ubiquitousness of cell-phone cameras and homemade videos: yeah, it's great when you can properly ridicule and arrogant idiot who pretty much deserves it. Let's hear it for keeping an unblinking eye on our authority figures. But here's another
"Baltimore disgraces itself on national news again" moment.
What if your preferred genre is not investigative reporting or satire, but horror flicks?

[BillyGee]

"Where did Ms. Hudson get the idea that I, a renter, don't pay property tax? ... Does she imagine that landlords pay the property tax out of the kindness of their hearts, and that it has no impact on rents?"

Is that an admission that 'business' taxes are just passed along to consumers, who may be much worse off financially than the business owners?

[spinetingler]

I smell bacon.

I've got a few cops in the family, and that guy's a classic pig.

[David]

Is that an admission that 'business' taxes are just passed along to consumers, who may be much worse off financially than the business owners?

This seems like you're suggesting that we should not tax the rich, since in the end they will just get the money from the poor anyway. That seems like a pretty problematic line of reasoning. Obviously business taxes must be passed on in some way to consumers, since all income of any kind comes from them, but it's not at all clear that consumers pay a dollar-for-dollar increase with increased taxation (market equilibriums and all that). Your take on it seems a little overly simplistic, especially since its ultimate implication is that we can't tax anyone...

But then, maybe I'm feeding a troll, since you're simultaneously snide about the fact that property taxes are (necessarily) covered by renters, and still claiming that those renters, who are paying those taxes, should not be able to vote, because they somehow aren't paying the bills.

(I happen to think that the idea that only those who "pay the bills" can vote is a horrifying one for other reasons, but that aside, arguing both these claims at once seems disingenuous on your part even if you do legitimately believe in that philosophy. Your latter post seems to imply that everyone is "paying the bills," albeit indirectly...)

[Reynard]

Posted by 12xuser: There is NO excuse for what that jerk cop did. He was making it clear to those kids that he could do whatever he wanted to them for no reason at all, and they would just have to suffer. This is not "You must abide by the rule of law", this is "I have ultimate power over you no matter what the law says". He should be fired and prosecuted for misuse of his position.

And it's only gonna get worse. What do you expect when you have a President (enabled by the Justice Department, America's primary law-enforcement arm) that can order and plan illegal torture on a case-by-case basis? Those lower down on the food chain are going to start asking themselves "Well if *he* can get away with abusing his power, why can't I?" -- and no amount of Ethics training is going to convince them otherwise unless they see that such abuse of power (Political *AND* Legal) has *actual* negative consequences. (Which I *very* much doubt -- I simply can't see King George going to jail for his crimes. Million-dollar book and lecture deals, maybe; then retirement to a country with no extradition to the U.S.; but no suffering any of the consequences like the rest of us. George W. Bush, ever failing upward. What next? Godhood?)

[not_scottbot]

For those missing a salient point, toxic materials spread around places where 'they,' not 'us,' live, maybe this slightly tangential link will be an interesting read - http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/12/roommate_0413.html as it provides a bit of background about how somebody graduating from an university in the last couple of decades would be perfectly capable of doing something like that, without much concern about damaging the health of people who actually matter.

And yes, the story about how a white woman shouldn't be rooming with a black woman is from the 1980s, long after America solved almost all its race problems, except for that pesky discrimination against white men, as highlighted in a Jesse Helms campaign ad from that era.

You want bitter? Try being an Ivy League student who gets to experience what separate but equal means in modern America. I mean, at least she was allowed to attend an Ivy League school, which I guess means she should be grateful, not bitter, right? And for those that think racism is somehow less a problem than sexism - at least my mother graduated from the Ivy League institution of Pembroke (never heard of it? - she also attended Radcliffe), but there most certainly was not any separate but equal school for black students, male or female, at that time. And yes, by the way, when she went to school, separate but equal WAS the law of the land, not merely the custom as it seems more than occasionally today - note the elementary school student body.

[Ben]

Is "not_scottbot" a robot which impersonates someone who is not Scott? Or a person not pretending to be the bot that impersonated Scott? Or what ?

In any case you seem to be using our old friend, Yes Minister's irregular verb, Rich folk “improve the soil“ while Poor folk “use manure” and Scientists “spread toxic materials”.

Here's what Fred should have linked, or rather, what Fred should have gone away and read, and then not posted about because it's not actually a scary story about black kids being poisoned by white scientists as part of some dastardly experiment, nor even about scientists using poor urban families as cheap guinea pigs for potentially dangerous experiments.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15752494
“Biosolids compost amendment for reducing soil lead hazards: a pilot study of Orgro® amendment and grass seeding in urban yards”,
Mark R. Farfel, Anna O. Orlova, Rufus L. Chaney, Peter S.J. Lees, Charles Rohde, Peter J. Ashley in Science of The Total Environment, Volume 340, 2005.

You can buy it from the wicked war-mongering corporation that is Elsevier http://www.sciencedirect.com/ or you could probably write (politely, please) to one of the scientists involved and ask for a Postscript or PDF copy for your enlightenment.

[MercuryBlue]

David: "Side track: Who on earth is recommending "taking away" vaccines from the poor?"

If I'm guessing right on what Ben's talking about, it's the whole issue about a correlation between the age at which kids get particular vaccines and the age at which kids start showing signs of autism. Entirely too many people are certain there's causation, not merely correlation, and that autism is a horrible thing one doesn't want to inflict on their kids. And that the logical thing to do if there's a causation is raise every kid's risk of potentially fatal preventable diseases and send their own kids' risk of same sky-high, rather than deal with the one-in-150 chance of their kid's being on the autism spectrum. (Except there's no causation, so there's increased risk of preventable disease and the usual chance of being on the autism spectrum.) I'm not sure where the rich/poor thing factors in, though--someone wanna help me out?

[not_scottbot]

Ben-
there is/was (your choice -like 'is/was an alcoholic') a banned poster named Scott. Scottbot was an attempt to change/gently mock his increasingly robotic ranting (which failed - see point about banning). 'not_scottbot' is the same person, commenting on anything except posts prompted by the banned Scott's posts. More confusingly, several people here still maintain that the banned poster Scott is the same person as Scottbot/not_scottbot, which apart from being patently wrong (take my word for it, though you don't have to believe me), leads me to still use the name 'not_scottbot,' in part to avoid the charge of not using a consistent user name, generally made by the same people who refuse to believe that I'm not banned, compared to Scott, who is.

To the point about 'toxic' - I live in Germany, and spreading sewage around is no longer legal, in part because of the proven levels of materials which should simply not re-enter the food chain, ranging from various (generally heavy) metals and metal compounds to the presence of noticeable amounts of pharmaceuticals and their breakdown products. And considering that German use of agricultural antibiotics in animal husbandry is illegal, and that German consume considerably less medications than Americans, leads me to reasonably conclude that American sludge is even less likely to be non-toxic than the provably toxic German sludge.

Though you are welcome to debate the meaning of toxic, when it comes to heavy metals in soil, the problem is the long term, not whether today's load of sludge is toxic. But then, in the EU, battery recycling is mandatory, and mercury and cadmium are banned from use in batteries. Because simply tossing heavy metals into your environment is a demonstrably bad idea, regardless of where it comes from.

The inspired idea of spreading heavy metals around to help keep down heavy metal exposure is just the sort of thing I expect in America today.

Those of you who have enjoyed Ben's posts can find further enlightenment in this masterful analysis.

[Dash]

Reynard: George W. Bush, ever failing upward. What next? Godhood?

Well, it was Caligula's next step, and extrapolating from Bush's career to date, I'd say you've nailed it.

[Lauren]

A couple more days or so, and not_scottbot will be no more. Until then, no more disclaimers. -not_scottbot, March 17th

It's not "several people" who claim/think/tease that scott=scottbot, it's only Jesurgislac (and don't we all know about Jesurgislac). The rest of us would really rather you'd let it rest, like you promised to.

*deep breath* IWNFTT, IWNFTT...

[Ben]

(In Germany) “spreading sewage around is no longer legal”

That's fascinating. Ocean dumping is illegal everywhere in the EU, burning it is an environmental disaster, and you say that apparently putting it back in the ground is now illegal in Germany. So I don't really want a link to your legislation banning it (since I can't read German well enough to understand what it specifically says) but rather, I'd like a picture of the warehouses full of shit building up as a result of the ban. Because, if there aren't warehouses full of shit, then doesn't it seem more likely that you are ?

Humans shit. The waste has to go somewhere. I've already pointed out that the five-year-old style "It's tainted, get rid of it" approach only works on a small scale, and human civilisation hasn't been small scale for a long time. Turning it into fertilizer is controversial, in the specific sense that people think it's "icky", but otherwise it makes good sense. Obviously as with anything you're going to see tighter safety standards over time, most EU countries have restrictions concerning heavy metal, pathogens etc. which mandate more treatment processes --- but it's a continuous process. Today Europe's financial capital, the City of London, discharges raw sewage into the otherwise picturesque Thames river whenever there's sustained heavy rain. When it was originally designed this system was a hygienic break-through, a marvel of engineering. But today it's illegal and is in the process of being cleaned up. The sewage won't just vanish though, it has to be piped downstream to be treated and then most of it by volume will still end up in the Thames.

[not someone else]

This research was published in a peer-reviewed journal. But, isn't that strange, this "informative" news article doesn't link to that paper, or provide a full citation for it.

No, it's not strange. On the other hand, one couldn't know whether the paper was referencing anything sensible or not beforehand, because they're not citing it. The rational thing to do there is to give the benefit of the doubt either way.

Almost as though they don't want their readers to have a third party source which might undo the scare-mongering value of this little piece? What we do get are fragmentary quotes from several sources, none of whom do anything to actually point at a problem.

Please stop. You're ruining a perfectly good point by running around in circles and frothing just as badly as the people you're trying to insult.

Thank you for citing something. If I have time later I'll poke through it.

[not_scottbot]

Ben-
have you heard the expression that the Rhine is the clarified sewage of 27 million people? A translation, more or less, and yes, I do live somewhat near the Rhine.

Animal manure is often spread on fields around where I live - it smells quite bad for a week or two, and the trailer that does this has a technical name - 'Güllefass' Decent shit is far too valuable to waste, after all.

What isn't too valuable to waste, however, is what can be considered contaminated shit (see point about Rhine above). Which is where the part about not using the sewage from a city comes in - that sewage is full of things, from cleaning chemicals to industrial chemicals that 'wander' their way into the waste stream to all sorts of other things that no one really wants to spread around a farm field.

But which could be sold at a profit if it was just marketed as a 'fertilizer.' There is also a reason why the ash from an incinerator is not considered a fertilizer. And what happens to such waste? Well, mineshafts have been found pretty useful in regard to incinerator waste, for example, but it turns out to be fairly high grade toxic waste, even in a country where trash separation and recycling is not only mandatory, but widely practiced.

The real problem is trying to keep various compounds from entering places where they previously weren't present. Simply saying that shit happens and you need to spread it around is not very attractive thinking, to be honest. Which is the basic reason why Germany, a place where the word 'Scheisse' is not exactly a swear word, but a fact of life, actually paid attention to its shit, and then stopped the practice. If the shit is cleaned up, especially in the way that animal manure is already 'clean,' then the practice will undoubtedly be resumed. After all, it has a long tradition here.

Most Europeans will agree that if anyone knows their shit, it is the Germans.

[damnedyankee]

"Only citizens who live in the district and own property there would be allowed to vote in referendums"

They're the ones paying the bills.

Yes, life would be so much easier if only the property owners made all of the important decisions, and to hell with all of this liberal claptrap of "inalienable rights" and such. Even fascism doesn't go far enough in guaranteeing that the voice of the oppressed property-owning minority in this country gets heard!

So rah, feudalism! I'm taking applications for serfs at my brand new castle! At the back entrance, please.

"Only citizens who live in the district and own property there would be allowed to vote in referendums, though renters and other nonproperty owners living in the district still could vote in school board elections."

Following that logic, they should only allow people who have school-aged children to vote in school board elections.

[smgt]

You know what the solution to having human waste in large quantities is? A septic tank that vent the gases produced by the decomposing waste in such a way as to make it burnable to run a generator. Shockingly, three people and a goat can produce enough waste to produce enough energy for about three people.

If folks would just switch to powering their lives with shit, we'd all be better off.

[smgt]

You know what the solution to having human waste in large quantities is? A septic tank that vent the gases produced by the decomposing waste in such a way as to make it burnable to run a generator. Shockingly, three people and a goat can produce enough waste to produce enough energy for about three people.

If folks would just switch to powering their lives with shit, we'd all be better off.

[smgt]

Oh, and did anyone else kinda choke when they saw the "Casting Crowns" spammer? There's just sometime a little sickening about the concept of someone enjoying that soulless, washed out nois-ic.

[LL]

When I was younger and dumb, I actually believed that most adults a) knew what was in the Constitution and b) cared about it and wanted to protect it. I know now that both those things are incorrect. Most people don't know what's in the Constitution (esp. that it is a check on the powers of the govt, not private entities) and they don't want to protect it, at least not when it applies to anyone but them. Freedom of speech for me, but not you. Freedom of assembly for the people we like, but not the ones we don't.

People are dumb.

As for the sludge issue, not sure what to think there. Do black children regularly eat dirt? In large enough quantities to cause brain damage? I think the recent lead hysteria is exaggerated. Yes, lead, when consumed, causes bad things. But lead in things that are not normally consumed (dirt, toys)? Is this really a huge problem? Those people in Baltimore should be far more worried about what's in their water, which I assume does not come from directly underneath the lawns they're worried about. Their water is likely contaminated by pesticide runoff or whatever shit various entities dump into the ocean (which apparently makes its way back into our water or food, eventually).

[Bugmaster]

Do black children regularly eat dirt?

I'd imagine that they eat dirt about as often as white children. So, the answer to your question is, "yes".

[not someone else]

Do black children regularly eat dirt? In large enough quantities to cause brain damage?

Not deliberately, but young children do tend to get dirty a lot and either forget or not bother to wash off before eating.

The main problem with dirt is that it's what food grows in (and what grows the things that food eats), though in a residential area that's obviously less of a problem.

[Mad Latinist]

Yes, lead is mainly in things that one doesn't normally eat. The problem is that babies and toddlers don't make that distinction: they'll put dirt, paint, toys in their mouth at the drop of a hat. And kids are much more susceptible to lead than adults are.

[elef]

Coming in late, so you may already have heard about one of our illustrious Illinois legislators:
Rep. Monique Davis tried to order Rob Shermanout of his seat as he was testifying about a government grant to a church. Although he's an atheist he wasn't testifying AS an atheist. She said, (and you can read about it here)

"It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!"

[elef]

Sorry - the link in my previous post about Rep. Monique Davis didn't come through:
http://tinyurl.com/59mmzk

[Dymphna]

I work at a jail (as a counselor) and you can usually tell right off the bat which guards are likely to abuse authority. They are the ones who look stressed out, afraid, and not very powerful. They tend to give the impression of being slight and frail even when they are not, or awkward and ridiculous even when they are quite earnest and serious. Their internal sense of diminishment is so strong that they actually seem to warp reality around them to highlight their insecurities and inadequacies.

Everyone else knows them too - when you report what they have done, the supervisor can usually guess who you are talking about before you even open your mouth. Which goes to show that abuse of authority is only in its most overt form at the lowest levels of the employment ladder and cloaks itself in bureaucratic distance very quickly as you ascend. At the lowest level, it's "I'm gonna purposefully slam this lady's foot in a metal door because she didn't move it fast enough when I ordered her to do so in a non-crisis situation involving exactly zero inmates" (something that actually happened to me). Go higher up and it's "yeah, sigh, that guard is always causing problems - guess I'll transfer him to a different department where less people complain" or "how very odd that our guards appear to be operating on hair triggers when they have totally insufficient training and equipment, poor communication with superiors, and are sleep deprived from working swing shifts and massive overtime to try to feed their families."

I've worked in mental health facilities that were similar. There I've had the singular "pleasure" of watching people trained in a helping profession, who probably started out wanting to be healers, become sadistic and absurdly controlling as a result of being held legally responsible for things over which they had no actual control and being exposed to conditions in which it was possible to become polarized into an "us" and a dehumanized "them." The "thems" are almost always less powerful stand-ins for the more powerful "thems" who are actually causing the stressful situations but who aren't viable targets for animosity and acting out due to being the bosses.

I read the Making Light post, which does a great take-down of knee-jerk defenses of this type of abuse. I should clarify that a) I'm trying to explain rather than defend it. It's indefensible. Not trying to understand why it happens and stop it is also indefensible. And b) I pretty sure that I'm totally capable of behaving just as badly given the right set of circumstances.

[Jesurgislac]

Lauren: it's only Jesurgislac (and don't we all know about Jesurgislac).

Except me. I maintain utter innocence.

[Amaryllis]

Dymphna: interesting post. Yes, people often behave badly under stress, and I believe that one of the classic definitions of stress is "all of the responsibility and none of the power." So the mid-level manager is under more pressure than the CEO; which may explain the cavalier attitude of the CEO and the tyranny of the petty bureaucrat.

I've wondered if this accounts for some of the stressful nature of parenthood also. Parents often feel responsible for every aspect of their children's lives and behavior, but there's only so much you can control. And mostly, what you can control is your own behavior to them, they way you nurture them, teach them, respect them and love them; their genetic predispositions and personalities, and the world they live in, are beyond your control. But society is quick to blame the parents, particularly the mother, for a child's unhappiness, misbehavior or illness: stress. (Not saying that blame isn't sometimes deserved, of course, but I'm not talking about abuse, mental or physical, just ordinary well-intentioned parenting.)

Good screen name for a mental-health worker! I don't believe I've ever met a Dymphna, live or on line, before.

[purpleshoes]

Wow. Just wow. I am completely behind the Humanure concept when we're talking a small community with a segregated waste stream where all you get in your sludge is poop and some straw/sawdust. But the process becomes infinitely sketchier once you throw in all the various and sundry things that go through urban sewer systems, including industrial effluents and all the things people flush down their toilets to get rid of. And doing sketchy experiments in front of poor family's homes without doing - from the sound of things - previous testing on a non-residential site (please tell me I got that wrong) is pretty, well. Shitheaded.

(To anyone who's all "but babies don't eat dirt!" - babies usually hang out on the floor, especially in small houses where adults are busy. Adults who walk through lawns or yards track dust and dirt in; fine dust, of the kind that harbors lead and pesticides, tends to build up in carpets. Babies crawl on the carpet, babies put their hands in their mouths, bam, elevated lead levels in poor children. (Plus, dust gets blown around and winds up where you eat and sleep.) This is a huge problem with farmworker families that live near the fields, by the way, because pesticides drift and get tracked into areas with small children.)

[Lauren]

Jesurgislac: Except me. I maintain utter innocence.

Nudge, nudge, wink wink. Say no more.

[Kristy]

The video... I'm reminded of an incident when my brother was in high school. He and a friend were stopped by the cops in front of a video store, questioned extensively (in the process intimidating the friend enough that he locked his keys in his car - which they declined to help with, btw), separated on opposite sides of the car and questioned again, and generally detained in the parking lot for about an hour or so, during which time 3 other squad cars and a police helicopter showed up. The purported charge? Ringing doorbells and running away.

I wish I were making this up.

I'd love to believe my brother was exaggerating, but the owner of a video store was a friend of the family's (who watched this entire incident from inside, laughing his ass off - very helpful), and he confirms it. 4 squad cars, a helicopter, and an hour of browbeating interrogation... for ding-dong-ditch. Which they hadn't been doing. And could have proven it, except that the receipts from the places they'd been were - you guessed it - inside the locked car.

[LL]

RE "Yes, lead is mainly in things that one doesn't normally eat. The problem is that babies and toddlers don't make that distinction: they'll put dirt, paint, toys in their mouth at the drop of a hat. And kids are much more susceptible to lead than adults are."

Understood, I just think that a lot of the coverage (and thus reaction) to the various lead scares was out of proportion to the actual risk. I know kids (very small kids) chew on stuff and put things in their mouths, not meaning to minimize the danger to very small children who don't know any better. Clearly, we have legal limits as to lead content for a reason. Just sayin', if I was a parent, I'd be more concerned about the crap in the water (actually, as a person who drinks water, I'm pretty concerned already) than the lead content of toys or dirt.

And RE my comment about "Do black children regularly eat dirt?" - didn't mean that to sound racist, as it apparently did to some people. I was assuming the threatened children in question are black (they live in the poorer parts of Baltimore - maybe assuming they are also black is wrong, but I suspect not), and thought it was kinda weird that people were concerned about them eating dirt. Kids eat weird stuff, I know, but I can't imagine very many children eat enough dirt for its lead content to be a concern. I could be wrong. I was just askin'. Clumsily. Sorry for any unintended outrage or insult or whatnot.

[Dan S. lead is not the only sweetener]

"Understood, I just think that a lot of the coverage (and thus reaction) to the various lead scares was out of proportion to the actual risk."

A recent (11/07) study out of Cornell found that Even minute levels of lead cause brain damage in children:

"Even very small amounts of lead in children's blood -- amounts well below the current federal standard -- are associated with reduced IQ scores, finds a new six-year Cornell study. . . .
In the United States over the last several months, nearly 50 specific products, including millions of toys for young children, have been recalled due to excessive lead in the paint, plastics and metal. "Our findings emphasize the very real dangers associated with low-level exposures, to which lead in toys can contribute," Canfield said. U.S. children are exposed to lead primarily from household dust contaminated by deteriorating interior lead-based paint. In addition to toys, other potential sources include contaminated soil, imported food stored in lead-glazed pottery and certain plastic, metallic and painted products."

____________

"Try this experiment. Take a potty, and put into it some milk drink, dilute fruit juice or other beverage suitable for young children. The older children won't want to drink it, even if you explain that the potty was hygienically cleaned before you put the drink in there. They're conditioned to follow a taint rule, bad stuff cannot become good again, it has to be disposed of. If bad stuff touches good stuff, the good stuff is bad too. . . . Taint is just a primitive way of explaining a much more complicated situation that we now have a pretty good handle on."

When I first encountered this idea -ie, popularized research on how moral-magical purity/contamination habits of thought often mismatch rational reality - as interesting as it is, I got a rather bad feeling about how it might be misused to scoff at and undermine entirely reasonable concerns, whether moral or practical, that were inconvenient for the PTB*. I have to say that my initial qualms are being reinforced here.

Is that an admission that 'business' taxes are just passed along to consumers, who may be much worse off financially than the business owners?

Posted by: BillyGee

Is that an admission that individual taxes are just passed along to employers?

This is the song that never ends ...