Ag-gag laws

I find it deeply disturbing. It is being made illegal (and already is in parts) in some states of the United States to tell people how their food is being "produced." This is going to the point of attaching prison time to filming inside slaughterhouses exposing terrible conditions for the animals and workers. Horrible! I wrote about this before but just wanted to reiterate after reading the above linked blog entry. Mark Bittman also recently wrote another, longer blog entry recently about this.

Crazy, horrifying

Firefighters let a house burn down because the occupants did not pay their "subscription fee". Just horrifying. Undoubtedly they did not dare call it a tax, so they made "fire protection services" a voluntary subscription. I like Daring Fireball's take on it: "Not from The Onion." Certainly feels that way.