Letters for February 7, 2002

Slaughtering radiation

Re “Irradiated Food Fight” by Chrisanne Beckner (SN&R News, January 31):

Food irradiation is a very complicated issue, one that your paper recently sought to present in a balanced fashion. Allow me to raise a few critical points that were not included in the article.

The contention by government-funded food marketers that irradiation is a cure-all for foodborne illness is false and dangerous. Irradiation cannot kill all the E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria and other pathogens that occur in our food. Undercooking irradiated chicken that still contains salmonella can result in the bacteria quickly multiplying and sickening someone operating under a false sense of security.

Additionally, the taxpayer-funded “food safety” program overseen by UC Davis’ Christine Bruhn—a consumer behavior professor, not a medical or health expert—is in reality a marketing and advertising campaign being orchestrated on behalf of the food industry. Her work does a disservice to educational integrity by promoting a technology that 50 years’ worth of research has shown to be unsafe on numerous counts.

Instead, our government should pay for studies to assess the safety and wholesomeness of irradiated food, rather than serving as the marketing arm of industry at our expense. Professor Bruhn’s efforts will only assist the food industry’s campaign to turn back the clock 100 years to the days of “The Jungle” by eliminating publicly funded inspectors, who are our best line of defense against foodborne illness. Without inspection, slaughterhouses and food processing plants will once again become breeding grounds for bacteria, which thrive in unsanitary conditions. The math is simple: faster line speeds means more mishaps during slaughter, which means more contaminated meat and, at the same time, more worker injuries.

Quite simply, irradiation stands to create more problems than it could ever solve. Our government and public universities should be in the business of finding thoughtful answers to the challenge of foodborne illness. Throwing money at a technology with a 50-year record of failure would further delay sustainable solutions.

Ian Sitton
Oakland

Rock, not talk

Re “Boys Will Be Boys” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R News, January 24):

I really enjoyed that article. The state of radio in this town is deplorable. There are no decent rock stations left. I used to listen to FM radio for music; so much for that. I don’t want to hear this crap—nasty vile little people spewing garbage. That is not entertainment to me.

You know when I heard about satellite radio I thought it was ridiculous, but now I’m thinking it may not be a bad idea if we can get some decent music without continuous commercials or vile nasty people talking dirty and degrading others all day long. I have quit listening to all the local stations that I listened to for years, because of their current programming. I guess I am outside of their demographic range.

Could it be I finally grew up?

Jack Lehman
via e-mail

Boys to men

Re “Boys Will Be Boys” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R News, January 24):

Dear Chris and Jason,

This is not one of the irate responses you are bound to receive. Rather, I grieve for you. You and women who participate in your sideshow seem to me more severely disabled than the intern, Brad. You and your porn star guests are both products and co-producers of a very sick culture.

I am deeply concerned for the younger people who are influenced by your distorted view of human relationships. When the shock-radio fad passes, along with your popularity, youth and raging hormones, what will you be qualified to do? Will you show “educational” videotapes of your performances to your grandchildren? Please reconsider your career choices, with professional help, if need be. Otherwise, when you reach your life-review time, as I have, you may feel a great deal of remorse.

Just as the right to free speech does not extend to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, just because exits are provided—the inflammatory material you broadcast cannot be excused on the grounds of radios having knobs. Boys, become men!

Lenora Spear
Roseville

She’s playing dumb!

Re “Sara Jane Olson Speaks” by Greg Goldin (SN&R Cover, January 24, 2002):

Let me get this straight: Olson was smart enough to go college, smart enough to set herself up as the judge of entire civilizations, smart enough to elude the police, smart enough to formulate a manifesto, smart enough to understand the liberal position that ‘guns are designed to kill people,’ smart enough to get her hands on illegal weapons, smart enough to hide and have a successful and happy life, and now, so help me Hannah, she claims she was too stupid to understand someone might get killed in an armed robbery.

To quote a very large segment of the liberal establishment: “She is in denial.”

Rudy Iwasko
California

Pacifism is dead

Re “Love Not Bombs” by James Logan (SN&R Letters, January 24):

Pacifism died on September 11, 2001. Thirty years of passivity led right up to the cockpits of the doomed airliners, where able-bodied adults sat passively and watched their flight crews have their throats slit with simple box cutters. How profoundly dumb is that, at 30,000 feet. Never again.

And the tiresome refrain that America is responsible for all the evil in the world is what passes for scholarship in our universities and analysis in our newspapers. A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we still hear the hysterical rhetoric about global nuclear annihilation at the hands of the U.S. by the phony pacifists who lack the courage of their convictions.

Yes, pacifism is dead, but as the saying goes, “There’s always 2 percent that don’t get the word!”

Denis McMurray
via e-mail

Evil speaks!

Re “Paradise Lost Across the Causeway” by David Bruns (SN&R Lead Arts, January 24):

Many thanks for the interesting article.

Ah yes, the memories. I was a DJ at KDVS 90.3 FM radio for 20 years from 1980 to 2000. I have many a happy memory of seeing the bands you mention in your article playing in someone’s garage or living room. I seem to remember the scene starting around the mid ’80s and yes, going to about the early- to mid-’90s. I remember there were a few “regular” venues around Davis in the ’80s and ’90s that you could count on seeing the local talent play—there was 616 Anderson, the Olive Pit, the Old Davis Hotel, even the old U.C. Davis coffee house.

Sadly these are all gone now, perhaps due to changing times and a touch of the yuppies creeping into Davis. At least I have those great memories of 20 years of being involved with one of the best radio stations in the country and the Davis music scene.

Rich “The Evil One” Luscher
via e-mail

Smart move

Re “Get Smart” (SN&R Editorial, January 24):

Thank you SN&R for your supportive editorial regarding Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg’s AB 680. Clearly, something has to be done. AB 680 will create a powerful new incentive for cities and counties to work together to share the wealth to make the entire region a better place to live. Instead, what we have now are cities and counties that compete against each other for sales tax monies while developers get richer and the region’s quality of life goes down the toilet.

Roseville, Elk Grove and other provincial, narrow-minded cities mistakenly think by isolating themselves and sucking sales tax monies for themselves, that somehow Sacramento’s problems will disappear at their doorstep—get real! If urban sprawl is not contained in our region, crime will increase and spread, more inner neighborhoods will turn into ghettos, school facilities will get worse, more jobs will be lost, more farmland will be given away to suburban residential development that only outsiders can afford, neighborhood stores will be torn down for strip malls and Home Depots, traffic congestion will worsen and impair our ability to get around all day, not to mention we will be breathing the most polluted air in the county. Think it won’t happen? Think again—one can only look at L.A.

Again, thanks again SN&R for having the courage, foresight and the smarts to stand for AB 680. I also want to thank Assemblyman Steinberg for doing something for all of us to combat sprawl. It appears everyone else is too busy looking after themselves.

Stuart Mori
via e-mail