We’ve all heard the phrase, “one bad apple ruins the whole bunch.” It’s an old school idiom. (Like, really old school … Shakespearean, maybe even earlier.) Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack” (circa 1736) put it this way: “The rotten apple spoils his companion.”
In these days when we buy a half dozen carefully selected apples out of a frequently refreshed produce bin, that idiom loses some meaning. Those of us who have bought our food…