Colonial Exploitation

We just got back from a week in St. Croix, USVI. We spent the week diving, eating and relaxing.The picture to the left is from a beach cafe in the town of Fredriksted at the west end where we ended up after an afternoon drive & hike in the "rain forest" on the wetter side of the island. We stayed on the north shore, towards the east end near the other main  town, Christiansted. The names reflect the Danish colonial heritage of the island, which came after the British colonial period, which followed the French and Spanish colonial periods and preceded the US colonial period. Thanks to the Brits, cars drive on the left.

For some reason, although Denmark sold the USVI to the US about 100 years ago, it's still a destination for Danes on holiday. There are charter flights non-stop from Copenhagen to St. Croix. On one of our dive trips we met a young woman from there who came, among other things, to visit her ancestral estate. According to a waitress in one of the restaurants, Danish tourism keeps the local economy afloat (barely). Some of the restaurants have Danish menus.

We were surprised at how low key and quiet the tourist areas were, even though it was the peak spring vacation time. Restaurants were at most half full and often less. We actually appreciated the quiet and absence of spring break rowdiness, but it also gave the tourist areas a depressed vibe. Some of this might have to do with the legacy of hurricane Hugo which apparently damaged or destroyed something like 80% of the island's structures in 1989. The hotel on the cay in the main harbor has still not been fully restored, and there were abandoned buildings scattered all over.

Slavery was abolished on the island by the British in the 1830s, but the slaves' descendants still live here along with hispanics from neighboring islands, wealthy American retirees and a handful of younger wanderers. Front line service jobs like wait-staff were mostly filled by white US expats, with the occasional Cruzan local.

The diving was so-so. Visibility was never more than about 50', and sometimes as little as 20-30. I think both Grand Cayman and Bonaire are better. A lot of the reef structures are overgrown with algae. We did see reef sharks, a few turtles, a couple of rays and a moray out of his crevice. Also lots of fish carrying what I think were parasitic isopods under their gills, which was kind of creepy. We also did a night dive in the shallows under the Frederiksted pier, where we saw sleeping turtles, an octopus and a sea horse, among other things.

We also visited the Cruzan Rum factory, which was kind of fun. Their process is somewhat old fashioned, especially compared to the nearby Captain Morgan's factory which looked like an oil refinery. We saw (and smelled) the open fermentation tanks and the aging casks, which were first used for scotch or bourbon. If I understand it right, then, the barrels are first used for sherry, then for whisky, and finally for rum. Cruzan makes a "single barrel" rum that's a blend of 5 to 12 year old casks and has a slight trace of a scotch taste. I thought it was great, but they were all out of it at the gift shop. I'm happy to give the standard stuff a miss.

Here's Catherine in front of the windmill remnant at the center of the property. (These cones are all over the island, mostly unused, but one in the harbor is now a functional part of a restaurant.)

Consolations of Philosophy

for Valentines Day singletons:


http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Sinhababu-Possible-Girls.pdf

"Given that every possible world is real, I shouldn’t feel lonely. There are many possible girls out there in worlds where modal realism is widely accepted. Some of the girls are single, and are pining for a boy in a world that isn’t their own. Some of them are pining for a boy who fits exactly my description, down to the smallest detail. Some worlds hold legions of girls who desire a boy from a world other than theirs, and who fits exactly my description."

Separated at birth

Jeffrey Gundlach

Le Chiffre

Nerd amusement

Emacs M-X calendar g m l shows today's date in the Mayan long count.

 

Via Kieran Healy.

GMO Labeling

The election's over, so this is temporarily a non-issue. But it's sure to keep coming back. I've been thinking about it a bit, partly because people who I respect came down on the other side of the issue.

I voted "no" on prop 37 in California. Mainly that's because I think it was motivated by scare-mongering by a small cohort who got funding from the "natural food" industry, which saw it as a way to increase market share. I think the science is pretty clear - that GMO foods are not different from non-GMO foods in ways that are even remotely likely to affect nutrition or health. The variation in products of conventional breeding is far larger, less controlled, and, unlike GMOs, not subject to any regulatory approval process. Mark Bittman, who advocated for prop 37 in several columns, agreed on the science in his last one.

But the science is neither here nor there. Some people have what Marion Nestle refers to as values-based reasons for not wanting to consume GMOs - a variety of concerns related to corporate control of the food supply and how GMOs affect the agricultural economy. Bittman falls into that camp, as does Michael Pollan. Whether they're right or wrong is not the point. Arguments about values are generally thought impolite and anyway are usually fruitless.

I have no issue with this values-based desire to know which products contain GMOs. I might even agree with some of the values. But here's the thing: there are lots of other values-based consumption decisions that people make, and there are very few where the government steps in with a labeling mandate. The only one I can think of is country of origin on clothing, and that almost surely started with demands from the US garment industry. So it's really a result of special favors for industry, not a groundswell of values-based consumer demand.

Where there is a lot of demand for values-based labels, what usually happens is that private certification processes spring up. A few obvious examples are kosher products, organic foods and vegan processed foods. Also "Made in America" on manufactured items, thought I doubt there's any actual certification organization. And, by the way, there's already a private certification organization for GMO-free food. So my question to the pro-labeling camp is, why isn't this adequate? Private certification and labeling allows you to get your values-based outcome while leaving me free to ignore the issue and, more importantly, not pay higher costs coming from your values, which I might not share. Imposing your values (such as  your religious beliefs) on others, particularly if they are costly, is usually not considered fair.

Judging from comments on some blogs, some pro-mandatory-labeling folks just don't want to pay that cost - or rather, they want the cost to be spread over all consumers, not just them. Well, that doesn't seem like a very good argument. Most of the "no" campaign's ads prominently mentioned the additional cost, and it's a safe bet that that was focus-group tested. If the pro-labeling camp is going to get some version of what they want, I think they're going to have to confront squarely the fact that for most people, "your values don't justify imposing a cost on me".

Gerrymandering

The national vote for Democratic congressmen was 51%, vs. 49% for the GOP, essentially matching the Obama-Romney outcome. But the new Congress has only one or two fewer GOP seats than the last one, and they still have a substantial majority. That's the result of the clever redistricting done by GOP-controlled legislatures in 2000 and 2010. (And some off-cycle shenanigans in Texas, if I remember right.)

This figure shows just how well that worked. The blue and red bars are histograms of the district level votes, blue for Dem & red for GOP, natch, showing the fraction of districts with given vote margin, grouped by 5% bins. The GOP peaks at center right are in the 55-60% and 60-65% ranges, where they crafted districts of safe but not concentrated seats. The buckets at 65% and higher are all strongly blue dominated - those are the districts set up to hold the resulting "excess" of Dem. voters.

There's only one way to fix this (short of armed insurrection). Get Democratic control of more state legislatures (difficult because of the gerrymandering) and governorships (less difficult because those are statewide offices). Then turn the tables.

More BART Art

More great posters by Owen Smith - from the MacArthur and Berkeley stations.