I've seen a bunch of press recently (at least the kind of press I read) about how monoculture is bad ecologically because it makes pest control harder (i.e. if a thing that eats wheat finds your 100s-of-acres-big wheat field it will go to town and breed like mad), reduces habitat for wildlife (critters thrive with biodiversity, especially the big critters), depletes soil and therefore requires increased fertilization (different crops need different nutrients and some kinds of crops actually put nutrients back - i.e. nitrogen fixers), and increases shipping distances (yes, let's grow all the rice in California and then ship it all to China!).

And all of those are good points and I agree with them. But there's one thing I keep distinctly NOT seeing and it surprizes me that it hasn't been brought up. And that's the issue of labor. Monoculture is also bad for farmworkers. There were two distinct things I recall hearing in the past several months that finally made this click in my head.

My boyfriend has a tradition of holding a ballot discussion party he calls "Pizza & Politics" every time before there's an election.

We don't actually have beer at it because neither of us or our friends are beer people, but someone suggested it made a more catchy title, PLUS other people are certainly welcome to have beer if they like this idea. Details below the fold...

I am about to send the following letter to two local network affiliates who were at an Angelides town hall meeting this morning. I'll let the content of the letter speak for itself because I go over pretty much the entire event in the letter.

I haven't actually sent it yet, so if people have any constructive criticisms in the next hour or so I would appreciate it.

Last night I got an automated call to my home phone in Sunnyvale asking me to sign a petition to get a parental notification proposition on the ballot again. It asked me to press 1 if I wanted to sign and 2 if I did not. I pressed 2. It told me they would not contact me again. I don't know what would have happened if I had pressed 1 - whether that would count as my signature, whether they would mail a form to my house to sign, or whether they would direct me to a place or website to sign. I went and did a googlesearch to see if I could find more information about this and this is the only article that came up:

http://www.gilroydispatch.com/...

Thanks to legal mandates in MA and IL and the expectation of more such mandates, WalMart has decided to change their policy regarding stocking morning after pills.

"We expected more states to require us to sell emergency contraceptives in the months ahead," said Ron Chumiuk, vice president of Pharmacy for Wal-Mart, in a statement.

According to IMDB, Brokeback Mountain was the #8 movie this weekend. Doesn't sound impressive? Well if you realize that it showed in only 69 theatres maybe it will seem a little more impressive.

Nationally, it averaged a sensational $34,194 per theater, which Daily Variety said was a record for any film released on more than 50 screens (except for those released in IMAX theaters, where ticket prices are substantially higher). (quote from above link).

I volunteered as an Elections Official for the first time after hearing on NPR that Santa Clara County (where I live) was short by 500 pollworkers for the Special Election today. My boyfriend and I both took the day off work and got assigned together to Precinct 2107 in Palo Alto. We attended a 3 hour training course about a week and a half ago and then showed up at 6am this morning to set up. We worked a 15 hour day. It was long, it was tiring, it was even repetitive, but it was never once boring.

So after reading NCYellowDog's diary the other day about the rape victim in Tucson, AZ being denied emergency contraception, I was pleased to check my LiveJournal friends list this morning and find a post from my girlfriend-in-law (ok, she's my boyfriend's brother's wife. what do you call that?) describing a protest she attended at the Fry's in question.

update 1318: For the record, that's Fry's Marketplace the grocery store chain, not Fry's Electronics, the geek emporium.

update 1327: Article about the protest in the Arizona Daily wildcat: http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/98/209/01_1.html

This is a pretty blatant push-poll given their biases but even as written I can easily find myself voting "no". Of course my real answer would have been "Of course they should both be taught, but evolution should be taught in science class and intelligent design should be taught in philosophy class". The problem isn't exposing children to different ideas - it's misrepresenting what those ideas actually stand for.

Should students be exposed to different ideas, or should they be shielded from information about intelligent design? Give us your opinion.  

• Yes, students should be exposed to the theory of intelligent design in public schools.
  
• No, the theory of evolution is the only theory which should be taught in public schools.

http://www.afa.net/petitions/intelligentdesign/TakeSurvey.asp

Just for the fun of it, the poll is reproduced below.

Apologies if this has been diaried before but if it has the recent diary search function failed to reveal it to me.