Garlic Farmer Wards Off High-Speed Internet

DocVM writes "A Nova Scotia farmer is opposing the construction of a microwave tower for fear it will eventually mutate his organic garlic crop. Lenny Levine, who has been planting and harvesting garlic by hand on his Annapolis Valley land since the 1970s, is afraid his organic crop could be irradiated if EastLink builds a microwave tower for wireless high-speed internet access a few hundred meters from his farm."

Comments

Idiots

[Covalent]

His crop is already being irradiated...BY THE SUN. Idiots. Sheesh.

Re:Idiots

[Mr. Slippery]

If anything vegatables and milk should be intentionally irradated as is commonly done in Europe to:

...reduce their vitamin content, add toxic radiolytic products like 2-ACBs, and attempt to compensate for unsafe food handling practice that shouldn't have been allowed in the first place? Not to mention increasing the availability of radioisotopes that are perfect for a "dirty bomb"?

Yes, there are ignorant folks out there who think that irradiation makes food radioactive, which is plainly wrong. That does not mean that irradiation does not have deleterious effects.

Re:Idiots

[jeffasselin]

Lactose is only undigestible if you lack the protein to do so. Most people of Indo-European descent have this gene, which comes from a mutation that occurred something like 10-15k years ago.

Re:Idiots

[alaffin]

I don't know if you're a troll, ignorant of a basic understanding of the things you're talking about, a green nut job on the order of Mr. Levine in the article or some combination thereof. There are so many things wrong with your above statement that I'm honestly not sure where to begin. For starters, what makes you think that a thing has to be alive to be nutritious? The cow that the steak I ate for supper last night was once alive, but I assure you by the time it appeared on my plate it was very much an ex-cow. Dietary minerals (such as iron, copper, chloride and sodium), part of the essential nutrients subgroup, are not only not alive, they were never, ever alive.

Many studies of irradiated animal feed have been conducted over the years and no negative impact has been found. As is noted it is widely done in the EU and yet mass malnutrition is not there. Nonsense about nutrients is exactly the same type of nonsense Mr. Levine is pushing - fear mongering driven by ignorance.

Re:Idiots

[Eivind]

But everything is lethal in the right dosis, so that's an absurd statement.

Drinking water is generally considered safe, despite the fact that a few gallons drunk quickly may very well kill you (and people do die from drinking too much water on occasion)

Wrong kind of radiation

[fishnuts]

He should stick to farming and leave the radio vs radiation science up to the smart people.

Someone go point him to the definitions of "Microwave Radiation" and "Ionizing Radiation"

Re:Side note

[Demonantis]

Found it. Thought some people might be interested

Organic Food

Re:Side note

[Bigjeff5]

That's because "non-organic" food is *drumroll* completely organic. Oh my god. Seriously, it kills me that these assholes get away with calling their food "organic" (implying other food is not organic) and there are actually regulations on what you can call "organic" (even though it is all, in fact, organic).

I wouldn't mind if they called it pesticide free, or un-modified, or naturally grown (with a description of what exactly they mean by that), etc. But "organic"? WTF? Even the most unnatural, mutated, inedible freak of a plant is organic, because it is made of friggin carbon. That's the definition of organic. There are even organic rocks. Fucking GASOLINE is organic! Diamonds and graphite pencil lead are organic. For heaven's sake, this really pisses me off when I get thinking about it too much.

And people wonder why Americans are getting dumber and dumber, well shit like this certainly doesn't help the problem.

Re:Scientific ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. The last 'blind taste test' I saw involving the taste of organic vs non-organic food about 80% of the people chose the non-organic foods over the organic.

Everything about organic food is horse shit... It's been turned into a religion.

Re:Speaking of idiots...

[Sandbags]

Well, actually, the microwave internet system is a Line-of-sight point to point beam, so the amount getting to his crops in the ground is actually a number approaching zero. The microwave in his KITCHEN probaly puts more energy into his field than that tower would, not to mention the dozens of sattelites beaming down microwave radiation as well.

Also, if the atmosphere was THAT good at shielding that radiation, then why would Microwave solar orbital power even be a consideration? If the atmosphere only blocks 30% of visible light, but far more microwave was blocked, then how would that system be a net gain?

Of course, Microwave radiation is not ionizing radiation anyway, so the argument is completely moot... Mutation from microwave exposure would require rediculous doses of concentrated radiation, far, far more than it would take to cook the garlic outright.

"Radiation"...

[Entropius]

The scientific and engineering community doesn't mean the same thing by this word that you mean -- namely, that shit that makes your ass glow green, or whatever.

I propose that people not be allowed to rant and rave about this stuff until they:

--Learn the basics of the electromagnetic spectrum and the sources and engineering uses of radiation at each point along it.
--Learn the basics of nuclear radiation, and understand its effects and where it comes from
--Leave a Geiger counter near a nuclear power station and take one on a plane across the country at 40,000 feet, and compare the counts

I teach physics labs to premeds at the university. They come in and I'm munching peanuts off of a pretty bright orange tray, and offer them some; some of them accept.

A little later I'm showing them how to use a Geiger counter, and show them radiation from a few sources we have in the room -- lookie, radioactive rocks! Lookie there, a bit of caesium! Oh, wait ... where'd these radioactive peanuts come from?

The students freaked out. (For those who don't know, the bright orange glaze on old Fiestaware was made from uranium oxide. It's safe, unless maybe you eat the plate, in which case you have a .01% risk of cancer and a 10% risk of a perforated bowel.)

Re:Scientific ignorance

[Emetophobe]

It's all in your head. You want organic food to taste better, so it does. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsuT3mndOKE (watch from 0:20 to 1:30 and then fast forward to 3:40).

Re:Where's the proof?

[TheRaven64]

Not even a placebo. If, previously, she was using a microwave to heat lots of ready-prepared food then removing it may be a direct cause of her diet improving, leading to better health.