Just what we need: HCN endorsing pseudoscience (HCN, 11/22/10). Sam Western exhibits a pathetic lack of critical reasoning in his puff piece about Vern Bandy’s supposed dowsing abilities. Bandy’s claim to have accurately dowsed thousands of wells is apparently supported only by his own records. As the son of a well-driller, it is hardly surprising […]
Ben Haller
Posted inOctober 26, 2009: The newest Westerners
When cows are outlawed …
In a letter to the editor, rancher John Marble writes, “I doubt many items in the organic produce aisle are grown with as little environmental impact as our beef” (HCN, 9/14 & 9/28/09). A while back, I discovered a remarkable statistic: Making a pound of beef creates 36 times the greenhouse gas emissions that creating […]
Posted inApril 27, 2009: Got warriors?
The mythic Westerner
Your latest issue on “great ideas” from the West contained some instances of historical revisionism (HCN, 3/16 & 3/30/09). For one thing, far from having to “scratch out a living … competing against the likes of saber-toothed tigers, cave bears, dire wolves, mastodons, woolly mammoths and giant beavers,” the evidence suggests that “early Westerners” actually […]