URLs du Jour

2017-08-27

■ Yesterday, it was a quarrelsome wife. Today, in Proverbs 21:10 it's the bad neighbors:

10 The wicked crave evil;
    their neighbors get no mercy from them.

Fortunately, Pun Salad Manor has been blessed with unwicked neighbors for decades. As far as I can tell.


■ At Reason, Baylen Linnekin writes on an issue that actually, non-theoretically, impacts me, as a longtime consumer of Poland Spring water: Lawsuit Shows Muddied Waters over What Counts as 'Spring Water'.

Earlier this month, a group of plaintiffs filed a federal class-action lawsuit against food and beverage maker Nestlé. The 325-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, argues Nestlé's Poland Spring Water is not actually spring water but is instead "common groundwater that doesn't meet the [FDA] definition of spring water."

Oh oh. At Pun Salad Manor, we rely on Poland Spring for drinking/cooking water, ever since Mrs. Salad noticed the occasionally worrisome arsenic levels in our tap water.

Linnekin notes the lawsuit has its roots in the FDA's "standard of identity" tules:

Like every standard of identity, the FDA's standard of identity for spring water, which the plaintiffs in the present lawsuit cite in support of their claims, tends to confuse consumers and food makers alike, and can spur litigation where none might otherwise exist.

Linnekin cites historical examples. Often such lawsuits are brought by competitors; this one seems to be brought by class-action lawyers looking for a big payday from Nestlé, while members of the "class" get (maybe) a few bucks or a coupon.


■ At NR, Kevin D. Williamson writes on A Little Diversity, springing off the recent outlawing of the Muslim “triple talaq” divorce in India. You can probably learn a lot about Indian history by reading the article. But there's a take-home point for us Americans:

Modern liberal societies value diversity. They tend to welcome immigrants and travelers, to tolerate radical differences, and to accommodate many different modes of living. A certain level of diversity is healthy for a polity for the same reason it is helpful to any other organization: Different people have different ideas and try different things, which is a good way of running a lot of social experiments to figure out what really works best. This often produces results that are maddening to the partisans of rationalism (rationalism in Michael Oakeshott’s sense) who want to impose their plans and efficiencies on society at large and bite their thumbs in frustration that in 2017 we’re still giving students three months off in the summer, a vestige of earlier agrarian habits. They believe that there is a best, most efficient way to do things, and a society that produces 100 ways of doing the same thing must be wrong 99 percent of the time. Correcting those wrongs is what progressives understand their mission in public life to be.

As usual after reading Williamson, I'm in awe: how did he get to know so much about so much?


■ OK, it's a truism that a joke you have to explain is a joke that isn't funny. I hope this is an exception. To set up this Ramirez cartoon, I first have to embed this ACLU tweet…

OK, so ACLU flatters its members' moral superiority. But… oh oh! That kid is white! You can read about the resulting kerfuffle at the Washington Times. In short, (1) people chastised the ACLU; and (2) the ACLU tweeter responded by asking its chastisers to get a life thanking its chastisers for reminding the ACLU "that white supremacy is everywhere".

So, OK, now the Ramirez cartoon:

[ACLU PC Tweet Baby]


■ And finally, our Google LFOD alert was triggered by an LTE in the [Torrington CT] Register Citizen from Milford CT resident Edgar Russell,Jr.: A search for freedom

Thinking of recent events in Charlottesville, Va., I’m reminded of the Live Free or die clarion cry that is imprinted on state of New Hampshire license plates.

Mr. Russell's letter is an eloquent and wide-ranging plea that "Freedom should be color blind."


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:51 AM EDT