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+# Silent Spring
+
+> **Under primitive agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect
+> problems.  These arose with the intensification of agriculture — the
+> devotion of immense acreages to a single crop.  Such a system set
+> the stage for explosive increases in specific insect populations.**
+> Single-crop farming does not take advantage of the principles by
+> which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might conceive
+> it to be.  Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape,
+> but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it.  Thus he undoes
+> the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species
+> within bounds.  **One important natural check is a limit on the
+> amount of suitable habitat for each species.  Obviously then, an
+> insect that lives on wheat can build up its population to much
+> higher levels on a farm devoted to wheat than on one in which wheat
+> is intermingled with other crops to which the insect is not
+> adapted.**
+
+Emphasized portions are the sentences that conveyed the message
+efficiently to my taste: measurable facts punctuated with concise
+claims.
+
+The middle sentences probably appeal to people who already buy the
+author's point: they re-state their own convictions with added
+cosmological sugar ("the principles by which nature works"),
+antagonizing metaphors ("agriculture as an engineer might conceive
+it"), sweeping generalities ("man has displayed a passion for
+simplifying it"), and romantic allegories ("the built-in checks and
+balances by which nature holds the species within bounds").
+
+These sentences take a grim and uncomfortable (and well-documented)
+reality, and transform it into a lyrical fresque of Good versus Evil.
+They take what could be the basis for a technically deep and
+insightful report, and twist it into a sublime, emotional, and
+*simplified* depiction of some Universal Truth.
+
+What bothers we with this vocabulary is that it is indistinguishable
+from zealotry.  Cults successfully grow on broad, universal
+explanations for complex issues: Us versus Them, individual redemption
+for collective sins, Mother Nature…  To me, these tropes are red
+flags; when I see them, I instinctively wonder where the fallacy is:
+why should the speaker need to appeal to some nebulous higher
+principle?  Is it as universal as they claim?  Why can't they root
+their point into observable evidence?
+
+I actually do buy the authors's point; I merely wish it didn't come
+with fake gold plating, since it makes people I want to share it with
+go "Wait, what's up with that cheap cheesy decoration?  It looks
+silly".
+
+> Parathion is one of the most widely used of the organic phosphates.
+> It is also one of the most powerful and dangerous.  Honeybees become
+> ‘wildly agitated and bellicose’ on contact with it, perform frantic
+> cleaning movements, and are near death within half an hour.  A
+> chemist, thinking to learn by the most direct possible means the
+> dose acutely toxic to human beings, swallowed a minute amount,
+> equivalent to about .00424 ounce.  Paralysis followed so
+> instantaneously that he could not reach the antidotes he had
+> prepared at hand, and so he died.  Parathion is now said to be a
+> favorite instrument of suicide in Finland.  In recent years the
+> State of California has reported an average of more than 200 cases
+> of accidental parathion poisoning annually.  In many parts of the
+> world the fatality rate from parathion is startling: 100 fatal cases
+> in India and 67 in Syria in 1958, and an average of 336 deaths per
+> year in Japan.  Yet some 7,000,000 pounds of parathion are now
+> applied to fields and orchards of the United States—by hand
+> sprayers, motorized blowers and dusters, and by airplane.  The
+> amount used on California farms alone could, according to one
+> medical authority, ‘provide a lethal dose for 5 to 10 times the
+> whole world’s population.’
+
+It gets worse.
+
+> Potentiation seems to take place when one compound destroys the
+> liver enzyme responsible for detoxifying the other.
+
+Chapter 4 in a nutshell:
+
+> In 1943, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Army Chemical Corps,
+> located near Denver, began to manufacture war materials.  Eight
+> years later the facilities of the arsenal were leased to a private
+> oil company for the production of insecticides.  Even before the
+> change of operations, however, mysterious reports had begun to come
+> in.  Farmers several miles from the plant began to report
+> unexplained sickness among livestock; they complained of extensive
+> crop damage.  Foliage turned yellow, plants failed to mature, and
+> many crops were killed outright.  There were reports of human
+> illness, thought by some to be related.
+>
+> The irrigation waters on these farms were derived from shallow
+> wells.  When the well waters were examined (in a study in 1959, in
+> which several state and federal agencies participated) they were
+> found to contain an assortment of chemicals.  Chlorides, chlorates,
+> salts of phosphoric acid, fluorides, and arsenic had been discharged
+> from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal into holding ponds during the years
+> of its operation.  Apparently the groundwater between the arsenal
+> and the farms had become contaminated and it had taken 7 to 8 years
+> for the wastes to travel underground a distance of about 3 miles
+> from the holding ponds to the nearest farm.  This seepage had
+> continued to spread and had further contaminated an area of unknown
+> extent.  The investigators knew of no way to contain the
+> contamination or halt its advance.