The Weight of a Tomato

Letter to the Editor? -- see submitted version in comments
   Flyers and chalkings currently cover our campus, declaring "Tomato pickers carry the equivalent of two liberty bells (4000 lbs) a day for only $50 -- Boycott Taco Bell!!" While the image of a tired worker carrying two huge bells is one that certainly offends one's sense of what farm workers should be doing, I'd like to point out that the alarming propaganda is actually quite misleading. Obviously, the workers are not carrying two tons of tomatoes at one time as implied by the image. In fact, lets do some math: say they work for 12 hours per day, that works out to about 55 pounds of tomatoes, a large basket (a "bushel basket" to be precise), every ten minutes. Certainly they'd be very busy, and I'm sure their task isn't a pleasant one, but its not comparable to the shocking image of carting around two huge bicentinarian bells, and boycotting Taco Bell will certainly not help them.

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   Incidently, the US Supreme Court in 1893 declared that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruit (Nix v Hedden). Personally, I find this case to be a shocking convolution of botanical fact.


   Justice Raff and I were sitting in the MU today, and Raff was ranting about his disagreement with a certain article in the opinion section of the Aggie. He resolved to write a letter to the editor, which hopefully will appear on Thursday, but then we were faced with the question of what his title would be (in signed in the letter), as he's currently the Court's second in command -- Alternate Presiding Justice? Alternate Chief Justice? Vice Chief Justice? Lieutenant Chief Justice? Would that make me Captain Justice?? We decided I'd need a cape if we went with that route.


   In other news, opinion columnist Russ Fagely thinks America should get over the groundhog day ritual. I think Fagely should stop hating on groundhogs.


   Also today, we actually had an AGASA meeting again.

Previously on EMOSNAIL
   Two Years Ago Today: Scarf Party - and my heater is broken
   One Year Ago Today: Amie's Dance Party - whereupon codetoad and pavelthegeek are "quite abundant."

Eat A Tomato - Kill a Farmworker

   This is what I'm talking about.

   There's at least three on every single bulletin board on campus.


Related
   Letter to the Editor: Taco Bell Boycott Campaign is Inaccurate -my letter got published. (they actually didn't make any painful edits from the original version this time.)
   "On April 1, 1996, the fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it to "the Taco Liberty Bell." Thousands of people who did not immediately get the April Fool's Day hoax protested." -Wikipedia.org.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: The Ozma Show - you guys still remember Ozma right? They've broken up since then. Ozma show was perhaps one of the most awesome shows ever in the CoHo. It was packed. And Matt Jojola got a kickass picture of it from through the roof. And I had dinner with Ozma and got bandmember Star's screen name.