I get it.

Smoking is really, really bad for you. It can make you sick; it can kill you. It can make those around you sick. It can kill them.

I get the picture. I just don't need the pictures.

As The Times' Amina Khan reported, the Food and Drug Administration had ordered that, beginning in fall 2012, all cigarette packs would carry new labels that "would cover the top half of a cigarette box and include the number to a smoking-cessation hotline."

Among other graphic images, the labels show a man blowing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck, a pair of diseased lungs and a dead man with autopsy staples in his chest.

Nice. Too bad there's no room for video. Think of the possibilities: Death throes of an ex-smoker.

If there can be too much of a good thing, surely there can be too much of a bad thing. And these labels are both.

On Monday, a federal judge agreed. As Khan reported:

Five of the six largest tobacco companies sued the FDA on free-speech grounds and asked for a preliminary injunction to block implementation of the images, set for fall of 2012. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled in their favor Monday.

"It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never to start smoking -- an objective wholly apart from disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information," Leon wrote in court documents, the Associated Press reported.

Well, duh. Of course the images are intended to cause you to quit or to not start smoking. I mean, we crossed that Rubicon a long time ago.

We've been passing laws for decades intended to force people to quit -- to make it so hard to smoke that they'll give up in frustration, if nothing else. You think all of those folks puffing away as they stand outside in Chicago in December just want fresh air? 

But why only smokers? Why not, say, pictures of car-crash victims on beer cans, to cut down on drunk driving? Or shots of clogged arteries on that package of steak at the market, to warn of the dangers of too much red meat?  

No, seemingly our do-gooder, nanny-state instincts have been reserved mostly for smokers.   

But enough is enough.

By now, everyone knows the dangers of smoking -- the old warning labels spell it out for you.

And if you choose to ignore those warnings?

As we used to say: It's a free country.

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Photo: Two of the nine graphic warning labels that cigarette makers would be required to use by the fall of 2012. Credit: Associated Press

Gov. Jerry Brown banned the possession and sale of shark fins last week, giving cartoonist Ted Rall something tasty to chew on for this week's installment. What weird culinary find will foodies glom onto next -- harp-seal cutlet?

In all seriousness though, the news must have been a delight to Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic -- and ultimate foodie -- Jonathan Gold, who wrote in favor of the ban in an April 7 Op-Ed. Here's the piece, in case you missed it: "The taste of extinction."

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Cartoon by Ted Rall / For The Times

After years of food-safety bills that died in Congress, the country was finally on its way to protecting the public's health with the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Consumer groups liked it. The food industry liked it. It would have raised safety standards, increased oversight of foreign food producers and intensified food inspection domestically.

Then congressional Republicans moved in with their machetes and slashed funding for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to carry out the new law. The irony here is that they weren't saving taxpayers a dime. The money would have come from fees on food producers. Politicians might want to call that a job killer, except the food industry supported the fees as a way to ensure public safety, restore the industry's reputation and avoid costly disease outbreaks and the attendant lawsuits and sales drop-offs.

Fast forward a few weeks to the killer cantaloupes, listeria-tainted melons from a producer in Colorado that have killed 13 people and sickened 72 so far  -- the most serious outbreak of food-borne illness in 13 years, and that's saying something. The numbers are expected to grow. Meanwhile, other cantaloupe growers are suffering because consumers are shunning the fruit.

An explanation should be forthcoming about how situations like these qualify as a job saver.

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Photo: Federal and state officials have isolated a deadly outbreak of listeria to one cantaloupe farm near Holly, Colo. They have ordered a recall of 300,000 cases of melons grown on the Jensen Farms. Credit: Ed Andrieski / Associated Press

Sheriff Lee Baca has inexplicably picked up the preservation of shark fin soup as a pet issue, according to a press release from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. The chamber lauds Los Angeles County's top cop for his "concerns" about legislation that would ban trade in shark fins, the key ingredient in the very expensive and prestigious dish shark fin soup, sometimes served at Chinese weddings as an indication of affluence that honors the guests.

The problem with shark fin soup is that the larger Chinese middle class, both in the United States and abroad, has been able to afford the food like never before, with the result that an estimated 70 million sharks are killed just for their fins each year. The fins are cut off, and the shark is thrown back in the ocean to die.

Sharks might not have many fans, but they do serve an important ecological function in the ocean, and their plummeting numbers are reason for environmental action. The Times' editorial board has supported the legislation, which awaits Gov. Jerry Brown's signature. Hawaii, Oregon and Washington already have passed bans.

According to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Baca opposes the proposed ban as "a distraction from more pressing employment issues and suggested that the Legislature refocus on the economy." He went to Sacramento to voice these concerns in person to the governor, the release says.

The Chinese American community has called the bill discriminatory. There is not much demand outside that group for shark fin soup, to be sure, and they point out that other shark goods, such as shark skin wallets, have not been banned.

Fair enough. If banning those wallets would save tens of millions of sharks, I'd certainly agree, those should go as well. But that's no reason for vetoing the ban. The idea of the legislation was to focus on a limited item that causes a tremendous amount of damage and that requires extraordinary waste -- the disposal of an entire animal for one small part.

Is the proposed shark fin ban more a distraction for the Legislature or for Baca himself, plagued with a report  claiming that his deputies are abusing jail inmates and allegations by the FBI that a deputy was bribed to smuggle a cellphone to an inmate?

State government, meanwhile, has many important functions. One of them is to tend to the budget and the economy. Another is environmental protection and, especially in a state whose identity is so closely entwined with the ocean, marine protection. Brown should sign the bill.

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Photo: Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. Credit: Alex Brandon / Associated Press

It's a familiar story: government extravagance in trivial matters. This time it's the revelation that the Justice Department paid $16 apiece for muffins served at a conference. What makes stories like this so popular is that they allow ordinary folks to feel morally superior to public employees (or, better yet, politicians).

 Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) complained: "The Justice Department appears to be blind to the economic realities our country is facing."  The implication is that buying cheaper muffins -- or muffin tops, as on "Seinfeld" -- would appreciably reduce the deficit or provide more aid for the unemployed. Actually, the practical effect of the overcharging is minuscule. It's the symbolism that matters.

I know, $16 here, $16 there, and it all adds up to real money. But the price tag covers not only the cost of the muffins but the joyful indignation citizens will experience reading about them.

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Photo credit: Jay L. Clendenin  / Los Angeles Times

It's a high-tech world.  It's also a high-unemployment world, especially in California.

Not to be a scaremonger, but I'm starting to think there's a connection.

On Friday, The Times reported that California's jobless rate rose to 12.1% in August, the second highest in the nation. According to the story, "California lost jobs in construction, financial activities and government."

OK, same old sad, familiar tale. But sooner or later, the economy will pick up and jobs will return, right?

Not so fast, Candide.

Consider this story from The Times' Business section Friday: "Some restaurants serve up iPads for customers to place orders." 

In the last few months, restaurants scattered around the country have installed iPads and other technologies on which customers can place orders and perform additional tasks usually handled by staff.

At Stacked in Torrance, which opened in May, iPads mounted on 60 tables enable patrons to flip through a touch screen to view pizza, burger and salad offerings. Diners can choose entrees and sides, pick out toppings, send their orders to the kitchen and divvy up the bill, all without talking to a staff person.

To pay, customers swipe credit cards through slots built into the iPad holders.

The co-founder of the restaurant, Paul Motenko, said he spent more than a year and $1 million developing the digital ordering regimen. It allowed him to open with a smaller-than-average staff, but he maintained that the hands-on system made customers feel more involved in the process.

Yep, it caught your eye too, didn't it? That "smaller-than-average staff" phrase.  That's the sound of jobs going bye-bye.

Having turned to the dark side, I then remembered a story this week from The Times' Money & Company blog: "Cornell lab prints food, says digital cuisine could change restaurants."

There are printers that can spit out 3-D model cars and others that can make paper solar panels. Next up: technology that can print food for restaurants and homes.

Cornell Creative Machines Lab, featured recently in Fast Company, has a printer that can create a scallop nugget shaped like a miniature space shuttle. The machine has made cakes that, when sliced into, reveal embedded messages.

Using edible inks such as liquid or juiced meats, the printer uses electronic blueprints and technology that can create new food textures.

The ability to print food could have significant ramifications for chefs and industrial food producers alike, according to scientists. And the average American, who spends more than 30 minutes a day preparing meals, could save more than 150 hours each year using a commercial version of the machine.

"Significant ramifications for chefs and industrial food producers alike"?  I don't know about you, but  that sounds like another way to say "you won't need as many workers."

I mean, not to be facetious, but it sure looks as though thousands of unemployed actors in Southern California are about to become unemployed waiters and waitresses too.

Fortunately, I couldn't find any stories about iRobot busboys, so starving college kids still may have a shot at work.

It's not just food services, though.  Check out this Technology blog item: "IBM's Watson supercomputer to give instant medical diagnoses."

WellPoint, the nation’s largest insurer by membership, is tapping IBM's Watson supercomputer to diagnose medical illnesses and to recommend treatment options for patients within seconds in a new system that will debut at several cancer cancers early next year.

Executives at the two companies say that Watson, best known for defeating “Jeopardy!” quiz champions on the popular television game show this year, can sift through millions of pages of data and produce diagnoses virtually on the spot.

WellPoint said the computer system will not supplant doctors but instead provide them with instant information to make better decisions to improve the quality of care and save money.

It "will not supplant doctors"?  OK, sure.  It's not as if insurance companies would be interested in cutting staff and saving money, right?

But we'd better hope doctors' jobs are safe. After all, someone is going to have be left to patronize all those restaurants featuring digital cuisine made by 3D copier "chefs" and brought to you by iPad "waiters."

What about the rest of us? Well, technology can giveth too.

Consider this item: "Get a CLOO'? App will rent your bathroom to strangers."

When you have to go, you have to go.

That's the basic philosophy behind the smartphone app CLOO', which wants urban dwellers to open their private bathrooms to strangers desperately seeking a toilet.

CLOO', short for community plus loo (plus an apostrophe mark to represent a GPS marker), aims to create a network of "member loos" from trusting, sympathetic people who will trade a few minutes in their personal facilities "for the cost of a latte," the company boasts on its website.

That's right. All is not lost.

If you're lucky enough to still have a roof over your head -- well, there's gold in your toilet. Maybe one of those doctors -- or high-tech innovators -- will be heading home from a night at iRestaurant and nature will call. 

And now it's your turn, budding bathroom entrepreneur.

Heck, maybe you could even put an iPad in there and charge by the minute.

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Photo: Customers navigate the iPad ordering system at Stacked restaurant in Torrance. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times

Every time there's a food recall, like Tuesday's listeria outbreak and August's salmonella scare, I think back to Nicholas Kristof's June 11 column in the New York Times, "When Food Kills," which points to an alarming statistic.

Every year in the United States, 325,000 people are hospitalized because of food-borne illnesses and 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's right: food kills one person every two hours.

Yet while the terrorist attacks of 2001 led us to transform the way we approach national security, the deaths of almost twice as many people annually have still not generated basic food-safety initiatives.

In his column, he called for "more comprehensive inspections in the food system, more testing for additional strains of E. coli, and more public education."

One of his demands was met Monday, as the Daily Beast/Newsweek's Eve Conant reports in a Sept. 13 story:

Monday's decision to regulate the six E. coli strains comes after years of efforts by food-safety advocates like attorney Bill Marler, who celebrated the announcement: "I am more than a little pleased." But there is much more to be done. "Food safety is one of the things you can't rest on; government has done its responsibility and now industry has to step up." He says he has a strong suspicion -- and hope -- that meat inspectors "will start looking at antibiotic-resistant salmonella in the same way."

Accordingly, Conant's article is cautiously optimistic at best. She paints a grim picture of innocent people dying while food inspectors dwindle in the face of budget cuts and the Obama administration drags its feet.

In March, I asked readers if they thought canned goods should come with warning labels that alert consumers to the health risks of eating food that's been bathing in BPA, a substance linked to cancer. My personal opinion is that we should get our fair warning just like smokers do, so that we have the opportunity to make informed decisions about what we eat. And the government should also prioritize basic food-safety measures, a domestic threat that we know impacts more Americans than terrorist attacks.

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Photo: Since breaking off from its close cousin E. coli more than 100 million years ago, the salmonella bacterium has evolved into more than 2,500 strains. Credit: Los Angeles Times

In his Blowback submission, John Sabo takes on both Victor Davis Hanson's Aug. 7 Op-Ed, "California's water wars," and Doug Obegi's Aug.10 response, "It isn't fish vs. farmers." Sabo is an associate professor in the School of Life Sciences and senior sustainability scientist at the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. He was a visiting scholar at UC Santa Barbara for the past year.

If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy. 

 I agree with Doug Obegi's thesis that the California water war is not as simple as fish versus farmers, but the story is not as simple as the dollar value of salmon versus tomatoes either.  In either case, water shortage means jobs lost and the end of a way of life for families who have known that way of life for generations. The California water war is one symptom of a larger sustainability problem we face across the Southwestern United States: how to balance freshwater needs for farms, cities and ecosystems. Balancing these needs in a region that is already chronically water stressed will present some difficult lifestyle choices.

Rivers are the only renewable supply of freshwater in the Southwest, including California and six other states dependant on Colorado River water. These seven basin states appropriate the equivalent of 76% of the flow of all rivers in the Southwest, and many of them run dry.  Add to this climate change.  The freshwater in rivers is projected to decline by as much as 30% over the next 50 to 90 years.  Demand will also increase.  California's population is expected to reach 60 million by 2050, a 1.5-fold increase in 50 years.   

Thus, water authorities are in search of new or reused sources of water. Reclaimed water is certainly central to the solution in cities.  Half of all household use is sprinkled on the yard, and a sizable fraction of the other half is used to flush toilets.  Reclaimed water could be used instead of precious drinking water in these cases, reducing domestic demand by more than 50%.  Unfortunately, the infrastructure for reclaimed water is not widely available, and it is costly.

Tap water and even domestic water use is a small drop in the bucket.  Farms use 80% of the water consumed in the West, and more than half of this water reaches the crops via flood irrigation, which is inefficient but inexpensive. Some center pivot and most drip irrigation applications are up to 38% more efficient.  Conversion of all farmland under flood irrigation to a more efficient application would save 5.6-18.8 million acre feet, depending on the assumed volume of return flow that can be reused in flood irrigated farmland.  The low estimate is equivalent to 43% of the total withdrawals for all domestic, public and industrial use across the seven basin states in 2005. The high estimate is greater than all of these withdrawals and equivalent to more than half the volume of Lake Mead in water savings, every year. Not a trivial volume. 

Should we mandate farm efficiency measures?  Why don't we make farmers convert to more efficient irrigation technology to save water for cities and ecosystems? 

The answer is cost and lifestyle. Do you like to eat a baby green salad with heirloom tomatoes drizzled with organic olive oil, pistachio crusted salmon with an avocado aioli or sip a fine Pinot Noir?  I have a soft spot for all of these delicacies grown or harvested in the Golden State. But that prospect might be in jeopardy if farmers have to pay to upgrade their infrastructure.

That cost exceeds $18 billion. This is just the startup cost. This cost would likely be passed on to consumers at top eateries and farmers markets in terms of higher food prices. 

Question: What is the solution to this important problem? 

Answer: Tiered water pricing and increased water tariffs at home. 

We should expect to pay more for water in cities as they grow. This revenue should then be earmarked for financing startup costs for irrigation efficiency, reclaimed water systems and to buy back water for ecosystems. Call it what you like. The "T" word.  An environmental surcharge.  A farm subsidy. I like to think of it as a lifestyle choice. I like affordable, nutritious produce, and I like that it comes from a farm that is not too far away. Moreover, my water bill is much less than my grocery bill. So I would rather pay more for the water I use at home and see agriculture and salmon persist in the West than see my grocery bills soar while most of the West waters lawns with tap water.

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Photo: Workers for Wente Family Estates strip unwanted shoots from vines at Silva Ranch in Livermore, Calif. Credit: Jim Stevens / Contra Costa Times / MCT

Is our appetite worth the ocean’s ecosystem? Between genetically modified salmon that could pollute the gene pool of wild-salmon fisheries, which the editorial board weighed in on last week, and Jonathan Gold’s Sunday Op-Ed about banning shark’s fin, it’s been a question that’s hard to ignore. Here’s Gold explaining his position:

As important as shark's fin is to traditional Cantonese banquet cuisine, we have reached the point where some shark populations have been reduced to 10% of historical levels, and nearly a third of shark species are approaching the point of extinction.

We need sharks: As top-dog predators, they keep the ocean's ecosystems in balance. And we need to stop eating shark's fin, at least until shark populations have had a chance to recuperate. […]

But Chinese culinary culture has proved resilient over the centuries, as able to absorb such foreign ingredients as chiles and squashes as it has been to withstand the absence of sea turtle skirt and bear paw, whose preparation obsessed the earliest Chinese gourmets. There is no third way with shark's fin — we either stop eating it because we choose to preserve the species, or we stop eating it because soon there will be none left to eat.

Deputy design director Wes Bausmith illustrated the art for Gold’s Op-Ed, capturing the danger -- and risk -- of eating a delicacy at the cost of sharks’ extinction.

Never tried shark’s fin soup? Continue reading Gold’s piece, which describes the soup’s preparation and fin’s taste -- or lack thereof.  

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Illustration by Wes Bausmith / Los Angeles Times

If only helping the people starving in Somalia were as simple as sending food. In a July 22 Op-Ed by U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, he pleaded with readers:

That is why I reach out today: to focus global attention on this crisis, to sound the alarm and to call on the world's people to help Somalia in this moment of greatest need. To save the lives of the people at risk — the vast majority of them women and children — we need about $1.6 billion in aid. So far, international donors have given only half that amount. To turn the tide, to offer hope in the name of our common humanity, we must mobilize worldwide.

Of course, food is just part of the solution for a region afflicted by a severe drought, unrest and corruption. But we have to start somewhere, and there should be a sense of urgency surrounding this very basic need. Without food these people will die.

Still it’s possible to understand the instinct people might have to hold onto their money, especially after Tuesday’s anti-climactic debt deal and Thursday’s news about the Dow Jones industrials plunging 400 points. And then there’s the additional reservation about food possibly not making it to its intended location because of violent interventions by the terrorist organization Shabab, which controls much of Southern Somalia.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration did its partto help create an easier path for humanitarian aid groups to deliver food. Here’s what opinionators are saying must come next:

Hold leaders who don’t help accountable

Charles Kenny, Foreign Policy:

For all its horror, starvation is also one of the simpler forms of mortality to prevent -- it just takes food.  Drought, poor roads, poverty -- all are contributing factors to the risk of famine, but sustenance in the hands of the hungry is a pretty foolproof solution. As a result, famine deaths in the modern world are almost always the result of deliberate acts on the part of governing authorities. That is why widespread starvation is a crime against humanity and the leaders who abet it should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Help increase agricultural productivity

Stewart M. Patrick, The Atlantic:

The causes of this emergency are complex, and the international effort to address the situation is well-intentioned, but the crisis demands a broader and dramatic reaction, which sadly, remains improbable. […]

Even if aid organizations could penetrate the areas held by al-Shabaab, food aid alone will not eliminate the underlying causes of the crisis mentioned above. Barring the construction of a well-functioning state by internal forces--which sadly appears unlikely given the past twenty years -- addressing the underlying causes would require long-term strategy from the international community. The 9,200-strong African Union peacekeeping force currently restricted to Mogadishu will not be able to provide political stability, and UN member states, including the United States show little appetite for a robust mission in the region. Still, the international community has the power to tailor food aid that doesn't disrupt local economies and increases agricultural productivity so farmers can save surpluses, through support for technological improvement like irrigation systems.

Establish a government that respects basic human rights

Washington Post editorial:

Notwithstanding the drought, much of this misery is man-made. Al-Shabab has driven out Western aid groups, which have not operated in southern Somalia since early 2010. It has waged perpetual war against the Somali government and U.N. peacekeeping forces. It has killed Western aid workers. According to a report in the New York Times, it has diverted water resources from poor farmers and imprisoned starving people trying to escape the country. […]

The only durable answer to Somalia’s famine is the establishment of a government that can control the entire country and that respects basic human rights. Sadly, there is little prospect of that. But the United States and other Western governments must do what they can to prevent mass starvation.

Foster peace and stability

EJ Hogendoorn and Ben Dalton, CNN’s Global Public Square

It’s no surprise that the crisis is much less serious in Somaliland and Puntland, autonomous regions in northern Somalia that have been relatively stable. Immediate, short-term food aid must be followed by longer-term efforts to promote stability and good governance. That means looking beyond the narrow focus of defeating Al-Shabaab. Given a corrupt and ineffective Transitional Federal Government, international donors should not focus exclusively on the central government in Mogadishu, but also support stable, responsive and accountable local authorities. Because of longstanding clan competition and mistrust, a decentralized form of government is much more appropriate in the current Somali environment.

Here's a look at the unrest and devastation in Somalia:

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Photo: A child from southern Somalia eats a piece of bread inside a destroyed building where people from the south have camped out after fleeing prolonged drought in their region. Credit: Farah Abdi Warsameh / Associated Press / July 11, 2011