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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 24, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Tuesday, May 24, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW GMOs neither villain nor cure-all The controversy over genetically (GMO) proponents was that we need genetic engineering to feed the modiied organisms will make an world, and we’re going to use genetic interesting chapter in some future engineering to make that increase historian’s cultural analysis of our in yield go up faster. We saw no time. Rarely have so many worried evidence of that,” said the leader of so much about so little. That is the underlying message of the academy study. This month also saw judicial a omnibus study released this week rejection of local by America’s GMO bans in pre-eminent National Academy GMOs are a distrac- Jackson and counties of Sciences. The tion from far more Josephine in Southwest academy found GMOs — largely important basics of Oregon, based a state law the seed crops agriculture. Such as on preempts such designed to survive weed and soil conservation and activism. Neither a magic insect sprays, or imbued with other protection of farmland bullet for world nor a theoretically useful from urban and desert hunger Frankensteinian traits — aren’t threat to our risky to eat. encroachment. existence, GMOs This lies in are a distraction the face of a from far more important basics favorite phobia of modern Western of agriculture. These include civilization — that genetic tinkering will in some manner turn around and such unglamorous topics as soil conservation, protection of farmland bite us, a trope that fuels countless movie and television scripts. To give from urban and desert encroachment, improving worldwide distribution worrywarts their due, carelessly networks to stave off famine and monkeying around with the genetics ensuring the adequacy of fresh water of germs would warrant such supplies. concerns. But tweaking corn and We should care about what our soybeans in minor ways ought to be families eat and the consequences close to the least of our concerns. of food production for earth’s plants On the other hand, the national and animals. However, it’s time to academy also punctured much corporate hype touting GMOs. GMO breathe easy about the easy villain of GMOs, and instead refocus on crops aren’t a game-changer when agriculture’s fundamental practices it comes to enhancing crop yields. and ethics. “The expectation from some of the Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. Culture corner If you love movies, check out Tony Zhou’s YouTube channel “Every Frame a Painting.” Zhou is a ilmmaker and editor, and his video essays on YouTube are superb mini classes in ilm. I came across his work in late 2014 with the episode “The Silence of the Lambs — Who Wins the Scene?” Inside of three minutes, Zhou breaks down how the camera work sets the tension in the 1991 thriller during the irst meeting between FBI newbie Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) and serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). After that, I was hooked. Zhou delivers his lessons in plain language and uses plenty of examples from popular movies and popular ilmmakers. Zhou’s work brings you inside what makes for good ilmmaking, and what does not. The longest episodes run a little more than nine minutes. Some of the best moments come when he is critical of what Hollywood does poorly. Zhou’s “Jackie Chan — How to Do Action Comedy” reveals why so many Hollywood- lick ight scenes stink. Zhou also draws lessons from bad ilmmakers (“Michael Bay — What is Bayhem?”) and shows off what makes the best ilmmakers so good. Blockbuster maker Steven Spielberg, for example, is more subtle about his craft than you might guess. — Phil Wright YOUR VIEWS The old shell game What does the city manager do when he doesn’t want to budget money for a project? He asks the city council to get approval from the Pendleton Development Commission, which is made up of the mayor and city council. They in turn ask the Pendleton Development Advisory Committee for their recommendation. This is the committee formed to do the actual legwork on proposals. The PDC was formed to administer projects for the Urban Renewal District and is funded through bank loans, which in turn provides funding for projects through loans and grants to increase the tax base. Those loans are then repaid with the increase in taxes received. Since I had decided to run for city council, I began attending different commission and committee meetings to see if I could get a glimpse of “The Big Picture.” In the case of the two downtown parking lots, the committee decided, since PDC funds were so scarce and the city budget had not yet been inalized, to recommend that the city fund the projects rather than take funding from the PDC since no increase in the tax base would be realized. Jordan McDonald presented an alternate plan that would enable the project to be funded out of the general fund, and Chuck Woods agreed. At the ensuing PDC meeting, the mayor objected to the advisory committee’s recommendation and Chuck Woods failed to present Mr. McDonald’s sensible approach. I did catch a glimpse of “The Big Picture” and it wasn’t pretty. It was a shame our newest council member missed both meetings. Rick Rohde Pendleton OTHER VIEWS How Facebook warps our worlds hose who’ve been raising swarm in defense of Sanders or the alarms about Facebook are surreal success of Donald Trump’s right: Almost every minute that candidacy, whose historical tagline we spend on our smartphones and may well be “All I know is what’s on tablets and laptops, thumbing through the Internet.” favorite websites and scrolling Those were his exact words, through personalized feeds, we’re a blithe excuse for his mistaken pointed toward foregone conclusions. assertion that a protester at one of his We’re pressured to conform. rallies had ties to Islamic extremists. Frank But unseen puppet masters on He’d seen a video somewhere. He’d Bruni Mark Zuckerberg’s payroll aren’t to chosen to take it at face value. His Comment blame. We’re the real culprits. When intelligence wasn’t and isn’t vetted it comes to elevating one perspective but viral — and conveniently suited above all others and herding people into to his argument and needs. With a creative or culturally and ideologically inlexible tribes, credulous enough Google search, a self- nothing that Facebook does to us comes close serving “truth” can always be found, along to what we do to ourselves. with a passel of supposed experts to vouch I’m talking about how we use social media for it and a clique of fellow disciples. in particular and the Internet in general — Carnival barkers, conspiracy theories, and how we let them use us. They’re not so willful bias and nasty partisanship aren’t much agents as accomplices, new tools for anything new, and they haven’t reached ancient impulses, part of “a long sequence of unprecedented heights today. But what’s technological innovations that enable us to remarkable and sort of heartbreaking is the do what we want,” noted social psychologist way they’re fed by what should be strides Jonathan Haidt, who wrote in our ability to educate the 2012 best seller “The ourselves. The proliferation of cable television networks Righteous Mind,” when we and growth of the Internet spoke last week. promised to expand our “And one of the things worlds, not shrink them. we want is to spend more Instead they’ve enhanced time with people who think the speed and thoroughness like us and less with people with which we retreat into who are different,” Haidt enclaves of the like-minded. added. “The Facebook Eli Pariser parsed all effect isn’t trivial. But it’s of this in his 2011 book metabolizing or amplifying “The Filter Bubble,” noting a tendency that was already how every tap, swipe and there.” keystroke warps what comes By “the Facebook effect” next, creating a tailored reality that’s closer he didn’t mean the possibility, discussed extensively over recent weeks, that Facebook to iction. There was subsequent pushback to that analysis, including from scientists at manipulates its menu of “trending” news to Facebook, who published a peer-reviewed emphasize liberal views and sources. That study in the journal Science last year that menu is just one facet of Facebook. questioned just how homogeneous a given More prevalent for many users are the Facebook user’s news feed really was. posts we see from friends and from other But there’s no argument that in an era people and groups we follow on the network, that teems with choice, brims with niche and this information is utterly contingent marketing and exalts individualism to the on choices we ourselves make. If we seek extent that ours does, we’re sorting ourselves out, “like” and comment on angry missives with a chillingly ruthless eficiency. We’ve from Bernie Sanders supporters, we’ll be surrendered universal points of reference. confronted with more angry missives from We’ve lost common ground. more Sanders supporters. If we banish such “Technology makes it much easier for us outbursts, those dispatches disappear. to connect to people who share some single That’s the crucial dynamic, algorithm or common interest,” said Marc Dunkelman, whatever you want to call it. That’s the trap adding that it also makes it easier for us to and curse of our lives online. avoid “face-to-face interactions with diverse The Internet isn’t rigged to give us right ideas.” He touched on this in an incisive 2014 or left, conservative or liberal — at least not book, “The Vanishing Neighbor,” which until we rig it that way. It’s designed to give belongs with Haidt’s work and with “Bowling us more of the same, whatever that same is: Alone,” “Coming Apart” and “The Fractured one sustained note from the vast and varied Republic” in the literature of modern music that it holds, one redundant fragrance American fragmentation, a booming genre all from a garden of ininite possibility. its own. A few years back I bought some scented We’re less committed to, and trustful of, shower gel from Jo Malone. I made the large institutions than we were at times in the purchase through the company’s website. past. We question their wisdom and substitute For months afterward, as I toggled through it with the groupthink of micro-communities, cyberspace, Jo Malone stalked me, always many of which we’ve formed online, and on my digital heels, forever in a corner of their sensibilities can be more peculiar and my screen, a Jo Malone candle here, a Jo unforgiving. Malone cologne over there. I’d been proiled Facebook, along with other social media, and pigeonholed: fan of Jo Malone. Sure, I deinitely conspires in this. Haidt noted that it could choose from woody, citrus, loral and often discourages dissent within a cluster of even fruity, but there was no Aramis in my aromatic ecosphere, and I was steered clear of friends by accelerating shaming. He pointed to the enforced political correctness among Old Spice. students at many colleges. So it goes with the iction we read, the “Facebook allows people to react to each movies we watch, the music we listen to other so quickly that they are really afraid to and, scarily, the ideas we subscribe to. step out of line,” he said. They’re not challenged. They’re validated But that’s not about a lopsided news feed. and reinforced. By bookmarking given blogs It’s not about some sorcerer’s algorithm. It’s and personalizing social-media feeds, we about a tribalism that has existed for as long customize the news we consume and the as humankind has and is now rooted in the political beliefs we’re exposed to as never fertile soil of the Internet, which is coaxing it before. And this colors our days, or rather toward a full and insidious lower. bleeds them of color, reducing them to a ■ single hue. Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for The We construct precisely contoured echo New York Times since June 2011, joined the chambers of afirmation that turn conviction New York Times in 1995. Over his years, he into zeal, passion into fury, disagreements has worn a wide variety of hats, including with the other side into the demonization of chief restaurant critic and Rome bureau chief. it. Then we marvel at the Twitter mobs that T Every tap, swipe and keystroke warps what comes next, creating a tailored reality that’s closer to iction. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.