While this month’s Shuttle is a trim 24 pages, there’s still plenty of fodder for the type of snarky and puerile humor you’ve come to expect, if not actually enjoy, in this column. There is “Local Beer 101” (Following on last month’s Parchment 101. Local Beer 101 was hugely popular when I was in college and it’s great to see it available as continuing ed.); expansion (According to Norman Weiss, the delay has something to do with being stuck in “phase 2,” which I think is denial, or maybe anger. Both probably. By now, the building is so gutted it’s hard to imagine where any more surprises would come from, but if we saw them coming, they wouldn’t be surprises, would they?); and the future of our Gimme 5 program (You might assume the next step would be Gimme 6, but you’d be wrong).

But we did have to leave some stuff out, like how the USDA is seeking comments on deregulating a new strain of genetically engineered (GE) corn from Syngenta. Deregulated GE crops can be planted anywhere, and once the pollen gets out, there is no getting it back, meaning nearby farmers could no longer say their product is GMO-free. Maybe more troublesome is the development of “Superweeds” (which might sound like a new Judd Apatow movie, but actually refers to weeds that have incorporated the properties of the GE crops). There is also the attitude of Syngenta CEO Michael Mack, who recently said organic food is the “productive equivalent of driving an SUV.” I doubted he drove a hybrid (unless it was a genetic hybrid), but maybe he had some horrendous gas-guzzling megahummer, and next to it, an SUV was positively benign. But he also said the whole planet switching to organic farming “would be an ecological disaster,” and that compared to pesticides and GE seeds, “organic food is not only not better for the planet. It is categorically worse.” Hmm.

The deadline for comments is March 15 (see www.weaversway.coop). I’m not saying oppose deregulation just because Mack seems like a jerk, but if you do leave a comment, why not make it a snarky one?