For Whom the Dell Tolls
Dick Dell is an author and editor who lives in Chicago and, at one time or another, has lived almost everywhere. When we told him about the butter fudge you can order from the Toffee Shop in Penrith, England (http://www.thetoffeeshop.co.uk/) and that Prince Phillip has shopped there, he thought we meant Prince Charles, and that got him started:
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“Prince Charles often held up the buildings on the Thames waterfront in Richmond, where we lived, as examples of what modern architects should design. And, of course, it was a very undistinguished group of buildings that could have been designed and built in the 1890s. The guy is a jerk, a snob, and an organic farmer who personally owns a 40,000 acre hunting preserve in north England. What more is there to say. I hope you don’t get ripped off buying ‘organic.’
“The Europeans may be ahead of us in their religious and social mores and laws, but their refusal to understand the benefits of genetically altered grains and other foods is mind boggling. Genetically altering rice and corn (maize to the rest of the world) saved India from massive starvation in the 50s and has increased grain production in this country tenfold.
“When I was teaching at EWU in Cheney, Washington, an area of immense grain ranches 700 to several thousand acres each, barley grew over two feet high and left an incredible volume of mulch after harvest. Same for wheat. Because of genetic engineering, barley plants now grow about half that high and produce at least 50% more than when they grew higher.
“That fact, however, does not make me support and sympathize for the outrageous subsidies those grain ranchers get from the US government that hurts the grain growers in the rest of the world and is simply welfare to a group of quite wealthy people. These guys pay $150,000 for their harvesters and spend their winters in Florida. And vote Republican, of course.”
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I’m honored that you can turn a mistake of mine into something useful for your terrific blog. Incidentally, Phillip is a wuss too!
Comment by DD — April 27, 2007 @ 1:24 pm