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There's also the unsupportability of it. If we all switched to organic, most of us would die of starvation. It's a less effective agricultural technique. Organic food is a luxury item for rich westerners.

The whole concept of "organic" exists only because rich westerners decided to sell the future for cheaper food now. By destroying our topsoil and relying on petroleum-based fertilizers, we've created an unsustainable system. You're simply affirming what the GP said - saving an extra five or ten percent for food is more important than the poisons in the food you feed your family. Further, integrated "organic" systems are much more effective on normal farms.

And before you worry about starvation, the US wastes nearly 50% of food grown. Some loss will be unavoidable in any agricultural production system but nearly 15% of the waste was at the consumer end of the process. A big part of the remaining loss is an inherent cost of centralized and mechanized agriculture - waste that could be significantly reduced with more traditional farming practices and local consumption.

No it didn't, it had a little paper sticker on the front telling me to activate and sign it.

Yes, some banks don't do so. Most do, however.

The card readers need it to be practically touching it to work,

An idiotic statement. Mass market RFID readers need to be within about 6 inches. However, there's NOTHING stopping someone from cranking up the power and getting far more distance out of it. How does 11 meters sound? http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Supply-Chain/Long-distance-RFID-reader

I don't think people are mass scanning my mail.

With enough money on the line, they will be... Criminals go to great lengths to get credit card numbers with skimmers, fake ATMs, and the like. A tine scanner in a post office would be relatively easy and low-risk.

It's worth pointing out that in Europe many, many people were directly affected by Chernobyl, and still are. For instance, there's a large area of northen England / southern Scotland that *still* isn't allowed to be used for farming -- the produce is too radioactive (in 2006 they tested animals from the area and decided they were still too radioactive).
The restrictions for Northern Ireland areas were lifted in 2000.

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/UK-sheep-above-radioactive-safety-libits-due-to-Chernobyl

It's all very well saying accidents won't happen, but they said that last time. And when they do happen, they can affect people for many years.

(I was recently reminded of the petrol/kerosene fuel storage depot in Hertfordshire, a few miles north of London, which blew up, causing the largest ever peacetime explosion in Europe. The sky was purple from the smoke and vapours for the rest of the day, and it made a mess of the area around the depot, but the lasting effect seems minimal. Even with toxic chemicals, the effects would probably have been confined to the local area.)

Quit shouting, it makes you look like a freaking idiot. Try reading http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?id=52356-long-distance-rfid , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID for starters. Or google and find the article when a guy build an rfid sniffer that could eavesdrop on an rfid exchange between a reader and chip from 30-meters away. It's not as implausible as you make it sound.

Why bother putting cameras on all the street corners and deal with face recognition software to track people, like England? It's easier to put rfid readers on all the street corners and record all the rfid tags. The credit card companies are starting to put rfid in the credit cards and those would be damn easy to track or copy if you're a thief. Or similar to http cookies, notice the combination of size 11 purple nikes, walmart brand socks, size large fruit of the loom mini-briefs, and trojan condoms in the wallet passing by the scanner.

The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.

You've chosen a bad example. The French wine industry has been in a depression for years. They dump wine into the rivers! What happens when you have a long-term investment in your field and it's comparative advantage disappears? I guess this is "creative destruction" (such a handy phrase for an economist).

The USDA approved the protocol in 2002 and afterwards there was a short trial done but the feedback was terrible. The irradiated products have a big ugly "this fruit is irradiated" sticker on the box which tends to turn off people. There was also a big anti-radiation movement from "green" groups that didn't like the idea of using radiation in edible products. This article is an example, check out the cartoon on the right. No basis in fact, just preying on peoples' fears.

There is a state-of-the-art facility on Kauai that was built specifically to irradiate Kauai pineapples other subtropicals for shipment to the mainland. The facility has gone largely unused because after the public's initial bad reaction major retailers became scared to bring in any product using that protocol. You won't find irradiated fruit in Safeway but some of it ends up in the terminal markets and distributed to smaller community stores.

Only in the alcoholic beverage industry would spend millions on R&D and scientists to engineer the perfect champaigne bubble, or how to make the perfect beer tap. IT doesn't come as a surprise they would try to engineer the perfect wine. :)

We got bozos, they got bozos, bozos for all!