Friday evening roundup

Al Madrigal on ag-gag:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Eat plants so that your son will have a healthy penis.

Eat plants because,

You do know that well over 95% of GMO soy is fed to farm animals, not people, don't you? @JulianWarme
— Vegan (@vegan) June 14, 2013

And in case you got bitten by the wrong tick.

Eat food not drugs.

I'm cool with this pro-industry argument for GMO labeling.

Snowden is no Ellsberg.

Rosa Brooks on public vs. private-sector surveillance:

Government data collection, as such, isn't really the problem -- at least not in a world in which practically everyone is collecting data on practically everyone else. The problem, insofar as there is one, is not a privacy problem at all, but an accountability problem, and we reasonably expect our government to be more accountable than corporations. Given the current lack of transparency, we don't know what rules govern who can see what data, under what circumstances, for what purposes, and with what consequences. We don't know if this sweeping data collection has led to mistakes or abuses that have harmed innocent people, and we don't know what recourse an innocent person would have if harmed in some way.

It's reasonable to worry about those questions and to expect government officials to offer a little more clarity. (And, no, this won't somehow "tip off" the bad guys; the bad guys will assume the U.S. government's lying and doing far more than it admits anyway.) If there are innocent individuals who have suffered some real injury as a result of these government data-collection programs, there needs to be a mechanism to remedy the damage and impose appropriate consequences on government wrongdoers. If these data collection practices (or any similar past practices) lead to innocent people getting stuck on no-fly lists, or getting harassed by federal agents, or ending up wrongly detained, there should be a prompt, transparent, and fair means for them to challenge their treatment, see the supposed evidence against them, and get the problem fixed.
The mere fact that large quantities of data are collected by the government isn't an outrage in and of itself, however, and it shouldn't be any more troubling than the fact that countless non-governmental entities also collect (or can gain access to) our "private" data. We should worry about how the data are used, not whether it's collected.

Patton Oswalt on understanding rape culture:

First off: no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limits.  No one is talking about censorship.  In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context.  Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.

 and,

I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.  Never had the impulse.  So why was I feeling like I was being lumped in with those who were, or who took a cavalier attitude about rape, or even made rape jokes to begin with?  Why did I feel some massive, undeserved sense of injustice about my place in this whole controversy?

The answer to that is in the first incorrect assumption.  The one that says there’s no a “rape culture” in this country.  How can there be?  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.
Do you see the illogic in that leap?  I didn’t at first.  Missed it completely...  

...just because I find rape disgusting, and have never had that impulse, doesn’t mean I can make a leap into the minds of women and dismiss how they feel day to day, moment to moment, in ways both blatant and subtle, from other men, and the way the media represents the world they live in, and from what they hear in songs, see in movies, and witness on stage in a comedy club.

There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any hard “evidence” exists.  It’s happening now with the concept of “rape culture.”  Which, by the way, isn’t a concept.  It’s a reality.  I’m just not the one who’s going to bring it into focus.  But I’ve read enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians and non-comedians) to know it isn’t some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase.