Sometimes I learn about fascinating people only when they die

For example, Claud Levi Strauss. I do not think he is connected with the jeans. He was a philosopher and anthropologist.

His interpretations of North and South American myths were pivotal in changing Western thinking about so-called primitive societies. The accepted view held that primitive societies were intellectually unimaginative and temperamentally irrational, basing their approaches to life and religion on the satisfaction of urgent needs for food, clothing and shelter. Mr. Lévi-Strauss rescued his subjects from this limited perspective. Beginning with the Caduveo and Bororo tribes in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, he found among them a dogged quest not just to satisfy material needs but also to understand origins, a sophisticated logic that governed even the most bizarre myths, and an implicit sense of order and design, even among tribes who practiced ruthless warfare.

The full story is here.

No More Plastic

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Some Observations in a Story About Farm Runoff

Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells - Series - NYTimes.com

In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials.

Sounds pretty bad! This is a real problem with real consequences!

Yet runoff from all but the largest farms is essentially unregulated by many of the federal laws intended to prevent pollution and protect drinking water sources.

Hmm, why is "regulation" the first thing that comes to mind when rectifying a problem like this? Don't we all have an incentive to have clean drinking water?

...many of the agricultural pollutants that contaminate drinking water sources are often subject only to state or county regulations.And those laws have failed to protect some residents living nearby.

The tone here is surprising - the poor people are only protected by local regulations, not federal regulations. But, why indeed are local regulations not protecting the local residents?

To address this problem, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has created special rules for the biggest farms, like those with at least 700 cows.

Yay, feds to the rescue!

But thousands of large animal feedlots that should be regulated by those rules are effectively ignored because farmers never file paperwork

Boo! Paperwork!

And regulations passed during the administration of President George W. Bush allow many of those farms to self-certify that they will not pollute, and thereby largely escape regulation.

The tone here is interesting. "Self certify", "George Bush", "escape regulation". I think Bush was the worst president we ever had, but I do not feel that self-certification is a ticket to escaping regulation. I applaud anything that encourages self determination.

In Arkansas and Maryland, residents have accused chicken farm owners of polluting drinking water. In 2005, Oklahoma’s attorney general sued 13 poultry companies, claiming they had damaged one of the state’s most important watersheds.

Yay, the people are calling out these polluters!

It is often difficult to definitively link a specific instance of disease to one particular cause, like water pollution. Even when tests show that drinking water is polluted, it can be hard to pinpoint the source of the contamination.

The tests won't prove what is obvious to the people - like the brain not understanding what the heart knows. In a functional society, we listen to all intelligence. In this case the people know. It is obvious to everyone, including the polluters, the attorneys, the judges, and the local folks.

How Easy Credit Fuels Housing Bubble

I like this short article on the financial crisis - it leaves out the CDWs and other exotic financial instruments, and instead focuses on something closer to home for most of us - household debt.

First, the availability of cheap mortgages increases the demand for housing, which can push up house prices. In turn, as demand increases and house prices go higher, lenders become overconfident. They then begin offering mortgage credit on even cheaper terms, fueling a violent cycle where household valuations become increasingly unrealistic. In such a credit cycle, the growth in house prices reflects cheap debt, not the underlying earnings power of households.

The rest of the article is here: Lessons From The Fall: Household Debt Got Us Into This Mess - Planet Money Blog : NPR

Buying Land

Just had to reprint this message from Toby Hemmenway, my permaculture teacher, so I don't lose it!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Toby Hemenway
To: permaculture
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:04:03 -0700
Subject: Re: [permaculture] how to acquire land
Notes from my own experience and observations: In acquiring land, think carefully and honestly about what your goals are. In general, I urge buying the best soil and water you can afford (having once had steep land with heavy, exhausted soil and not much water). Yes, soil can be rehabilitated, in 5-10 years. And water can be harvested and stored, after swaling and pond building. But you will get a big head start by beginning with good soil and access to water, and can invest your energy in producing and enhancing habitat, rather than rehabilitation.

How much land do you really need? If your goal is self-reliant food production, an acre or three is more than enough; really, a half acre will produce vast amounts. Or do you want more land to have privacy and control? Those are two very different goals. I once thought I wanted lots of land to manage, but I really wanted solitude. You don't need to own the land for that, and it just makes more work and higher taxes.

I'm familiar with Ran Prieur's project, and he spends most of his time working very hard on rehabilitation and dealing with the problems of acreage, and not so much, it seems, on actually improving (in the sense of building and planting) and producing on his place. He's been working there 5 years, lost and is still losing a huge proportion of his plantings, and doesn't have buildings up yet AFAIK. If just working hard on land is what you enjoy, that's fine. Or if rehabilitation is your goal, rather than production, get an exhausted or cut-over piece. But rehab is a lot more work, takes a longer timeframe before yields become apparent, and will take up a larger proportion of your time than growing food if you try to do both.

Community is very important. Eventually you will start being affected by your neighbors, and many parts of the country where land is cheap have inhabitants who may not share your values. At some point that will probably get to you.

I get a lot of consulting calls to look at steep, cut-over land in remote locations, and when I see how hard the people there have worked to get so little, my heart aches. Any savvy farmer wouldn't go near those places. City folk with dreams buy them. And my recommendation, if I'm blunt, is to move to better land.

You get what you pay for. From my own hard-earned experience, I'd rather have a small piece of good, level land with ample water near a supportive community than a big piece of burnt-out land in an unsupportive area.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com

Spuds

Here is a picture of the spuds the girls (Lila, Dessa, and Sophie) fished out of the potato patch tonight! I hope there are more in there.

Who is riling these people up?

I am really having a hard time understanding the "angry protesters" who are demonstrating against "obamacare." They speak as if they suspect a conspiracy to take something away from them. Here are some excerpts from the article Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent - NYTimes.com

Many said the Obama administration’s plans for a new health care system were just another example of a federal government that had again gone too far, just as it had, they said, with the economic stimulus, the auto industry bailout and the cap-and-trade program.

“This is about the dismantling of this country,” Katy Abram, 35, shouted at Mr. Specter, drawing one of the most prolonged rounds of applause. “We don’t want this country to turn into Russia.”

Did I say suspicion? No, it is stronger than that. Their is fear and righteous indignation in their voices.

“We believe there are several issues out there that leave the existence of the Republic at risk,” he added, “not the least of which is this Obamacare.”

I wouldn't call it conviction.

But for all his efforts, tempers boiled over 15 minutes into the meeting. Standing two feet from the senator, Craig Anthony Miller, 59, shouted, “You are trampling on our Constitution!”

Posession? That's nearer the mark.

Mr. Miller, shaking, stood his ground. He said he was furious that the senator’s staff had limited the questioning. “One day,” he said to loud applause, “God is going to stand before you, and he’s going to judge you!”

This looks more like projection - these folks are screaming at their own shadow.

Global Warming a Threat to National Security

In an article in today's New York Times, US policy makers are quoted as saying "the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest."

In a response, a spokesman for the earth responded "it is the so-called national interest, with its penchant for destroying ecosystems, that is the threat to world peace and stability."

My New Presentation Tool

Prezi - The zooming presentation editor, looks promising. Basically you create a single huge canvas, and put whatever you want there. Prezi has tools for adding images, pdfs, text, etc. And you can scale theese objects to whatever size you want.

Then, and this is the neat part, you orchestrate a tour of your canvas. As the presentation runs, it visits different parts of your canvas, zooming in on details, zooming out for a big picture, all as you specify.

It looks really easy, and really cool. A great alternative to sequential slide tools like Powerpoint, in which the context is easily lost.

Credit Crisis Visualation

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Return from Camp

Precious moments...

I picked up Schuyler at 11:30 last night. He had just returned from a 4-week trip to Morocco. I could tell from his conversation with Molly (she called 2 minutes after we got has bag and walked out) that it had been a life changing experience for him. Big things happened to Schuyler in Morocco.

At 1:30 AM I once again hopped in the car, this time on my way South. I knew that I had a 7 hour trip ahead of me, and if I got past Portland before the morning rush hour, I could steal a couple of hours of sleep and still make it to Camp Tamarack by the 10:30 deadline.

I poured myself a double cappuccino, and packed 4 cool cans of EMV for the trip, and headed out. By 5:30 I was way past Portland and one exit away from my turn off, so I got off at the rest area and set my alarm for 7:30. I curled up in the back seat, and slept as the brilliant rising sun warmed my skin.

I got out of there at about 8am, and headed east on Highway 20. I grabbed an egg mcmuffin to go from McDonalds (funny how those places are so popular for breakfast in the country) and a coffee in the town of "Lebanon." There was road work and some slow pokes, so I did not make as good time as I had counted on. At 10:29 I pulled up at Suttel Lake campsite, threw on my swimsuit, and jumped in the lake. By 10:50 I was at Camp Tamarack, and by 11:00 I walked up to the horse corral. Across the field I saw a hand waving vigorously at me, and knew that it was Lila though I could not make out her face with all that gear on (and her hair up to boot).

The camp staff came out and made their presentations to the parents. I learned that many of them (perhaps half, if not more) were college age and coming from overseas. South Africa, England, Scotland, Australia. It was a good crew.

After the intros, the beginner horse class performed a demonstration. One by one they guided their horses around the course, in which there were barrels which they had to circle. I could see that there is some subtlety to the art of guiding a beast 10 times your weight and with a will besides. Lila did well.

As I watched the next class come up, I noticed a figure approaching out of the corner of my eye. It was Lila, and she was making a beeline for her Daddy before she burst into tears. All that fun, all that great camp stuff, and still when a Mom and Dad show up she realizes how much she missed them. I burst into tears myself!

I got the quick camp summary - she was friends with everyone - every single person in the camp. The food was great, she loved her horse Roxie, and this was so-and-so from Portland and that was so-and-so from Seattle and so on. A girl named "Lyric" had helped her to transpose "Let It Be" into a better key, and Lila had performed it for the camp to thunderous applause.

"I might not go to camp Nakanawa next year" she said, with gravity. That means she really liked camp Tamarack!

For the next hour or two I tried to extricate my little girl from her 11-day sleepover camp, but there were lots of goodbyes, hugs, and stories to share. It was a great, healthy, wholesome experience, and though she was still my little girl, she had grown.

We packed up the jeep, and set off back to Seattle at about 1 in the afternoon. It was hot outside, in the 80s at least, and the only air conditioning was the wind. Lila told me more details. The meals. The skits. The rafting trip. The "tadger" who mysteriously rearranged furniture in the middle of the night. The girl no one liked but whom Lila and a friend had made efforts to include. The girl who was mean. The crazy counsellor with multiple pairs of outrageously colored spandex tights. Oh, and by the way, most of them have facebooks.

She fell asleep. I drove. We stopped and swam in "Lake Detroit", a welcome cooler. She slept some more. Molly called and we talked almost all the way to Portland. I drank another EMV - I don't think I would have had such an easy time without that WunderGetränk.

The heat was getting to us, especially after the traffic in Portland. We decided to stop at the next town - it was Longview, an old logging town which has seen better days. We ate at a fish & chips place, and Lila regaled me with more stories. We got gas, and I was struck by the skinny Asian lady in the business suit, stilettos, and a Russian accent. What was she doing here? I imagined that she was part of the casino scene.

More driving. How much longer, daddy? Two hours. She laid down to sleep, and I said that she should try to stay up so she can sleep at home. How about reading. Its too windy. Its true, driving at 75 with all the windows open makes it hard to read.

I remembered what we used to do on long trips when we were kids, when Papa (my Dad's father) joined us. The rosary. That was it. Nothing made miles go by like the rosary did.

So, I quickly refreshed Lila on the Lords Prayer, and then taught her the second part of the "Hail Mary". Then I dedicated the rosary to Papa, and commenced to praying. Our father... give us this day. Hail Mary... Holy Mary... Hail Mary... Holy Mary... and so on. I could not remember the important bits, about the five glorious mysteries, but I improvised. It was marvellous.

When we used to say the rosaries with Papa as kids, we said it so fast that Papa started the hail marys before we had finished the holy marys. I pondered - was that just mechanical, or was there some inner rhythm to the whole thing that made it real at that pace. Lila and I were much slower. She had to think about the words, and I'm afraid that some of them are not the ones you find in catechism.

That got us as far as Tacoma. By the time we hit Seattle the sun was setting. It had been a beautiful day all throughout the northwest, and the end was superb. We pulled into the house. I expected Xander and Schuyler to have left a mess, but it was all pretty fine. Tula and Sweety were overjoyed to see Lila again.

Unpack the car. Lila looking at her room, taking it all in. I'm Back. Ahhhhh.

Time for bed. I read a story. A Jewish folk tale from the land of Chelm, about the first Schlemiel. Excellent. Lights out. Cuddle.

A few minutes later, and I try to get up but Lila pulls me back. "Sweetheart, I need to go downstairs. Welcome back home. Time to go night night."

"I enjoyed the car ride, Daddy. That was fun."

Landmark on Speedometer

Organic Scalability

Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008 | Mother Jones

Real sustainability, he argues, is defined not by a food system's capacity to ensure happy workers or organic lima beans, but by whether the food system can sustain itself—that is, keep going, indefinitely, in a world of finite resources. A truly sustainable food system is inherently resilient—more capable of self-correction and self-revitalization than its industrial rival.

..

In fact, most of the familiar candidates for alternative food would have trouble operating on the kind of scale necessary for a world of 6.7 billion people. Consider what it would take to make our farm system entirely organic. The only reason industrial organic agriculture can get away with replenishing its soils with manure or by planting nitrogen-fixing cover crops is that the industry is so tiny—making up less than 3 percent of the US food supply (and just 5.3 percent even in gung-ho green cultures like Austria's). If we wanted to rid the world of synthetic fertilizer use—and assuming dietary habits remain constant—the extra land we'd need for cover crops or forage (to feed the animals to make the manure) would more than double, possibly triple, the current area of farmland

Strawberries!

Hey guys, look what we are enjoying from our strawberry patch!

 

A Girl and her Dog

Lila and Sweety sharing a moment at breakfast.

Bubble in College Tuitions?

Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst? - Chronicle.com

Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking whether it is worth spending $1,000 a week to send their kids to college. There is a growing sense among the public that higher education might be overpriced and under-delivering.

Composting Doggy Doo Do

Here are some links on composting dog waste. I find myself picking up a lot of this stuff and throwing it in the garbage. It is not the most pleasant experience, and I hate the idea of sending all that plastic-wrapped poo to the landfill where it will decompose anaerobically.

• http://www.cityfarmer.org/petwaste.html
• http://www.intergate.com/~saluki/doggydoo.html
  

Baobab

Op-Ed Contributor - What Will Happen When the Baobab Goes Global? - NYTimes.com

The baobab was approved for European markets last year, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow suit soon. The fruit’s dry pulp will be sold as an ingredient in smoothies and cereal bars. Already, a small jar of African baobab jam made in England sells for around $11. According to the Natural Resources Institute in Britain, an international baobab industry could bring in about $1 billion a year and provide jobs for 2.5 million African families. On paper this sounds great, but there’s another side to the picture.

Holy Cow

Ex-President of South Korea, Roh, Dies in Hiking Fall - NYTimes.com

“I can’t look you in the face because of shame,” Mr. Roh told reporters before he presented himself for questioning by prosecutors in Seoul, who had accused him of taking $6 million in bribes from a businessman while in office. “I apologize for disappointing the people.”

Italian K2 Conqueror Dies

Achille Compagnoni, a Conqueror of K2, Dies at 94 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

The Italians’ moment of glory came when competition to conquer the Himalayas was fierce, said Agostino Da Polenza of the Everest-K2-CNR Committee, a mountain research group in Italy. Less than a year earlier, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had become the first to reach the summit of Everest.

The K2 ascent became a source of national pride; the climbers were decorated by both the Italian and the Pakistani governments.

Lead in Urban Gardens

Today's NY Times has an article about lead in urban gardens.

Soil is likely to contain high levels of lead if it is near any structure built before 1978, when lead-based paint was taken off the market, or if a building of that vintage was ever demolished on the site.

Soil with a pH level above 7 binds with lead, making it less likely to be absorbed by plants and the human body if the dirt is inadvertently inhaled or ingested.

But some experts advise planting greens, specifically Indian mustard and spinach, for a couple of seasons as phytoremediation, or plant-based mitigation, before growing crops intended for food. By growing spinach for three months, researchers at the University of Southern Maine lowered the lead count in one garden by 200 p.p.m. Of course, the lead-leaching crop cannot be eaten or composted and must be disposed of as toxic waste.

For Urban Gardeners, Lead Is a Concern - NYTimes.com

Liars Poker author calls "The End of Wall Street"

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable.

Composting Wisdom

Just read this little article on home scale composting. Malcolm Beck is the author. Great read. Think I'll tear apart my wooden box and replace it with a 9-foot long chicken wire section wrapped into a circle.

Pirates

Johann Hari purports that You are being lied to about pirates. Interesting read, and all the comments are great.

Edible Forest Gardens in 45 minutes

Executive Pay solution in 45 minutes

The executive pay hubub that has been in the news of late has recently brought the administration to consider new regulations and government oversight. Certainly the market for executive pay has demonstrated excesses in the past decade, with some exceutives snaring packages that reward them ridiculous sums no matter how the company performs. In this 45-minute paper I will examine this as a market problem - that is, I propose that the executive pay problem is a market distortion, and I will seek to correct that not by rules and regulations, but rather by introducing structures into the market for executives.

So, how do these execs get these lavish pay packages, anyway? Well, there is a whole recruiting process, in which the BOARD enlists the help of a HEADHUNTER firm to locate candidates for the position. The headhunter will present a list of candidates to the board. The board can themselves nominate people to the list, which would include ASSOCIATES OF THE BOARD, or INTERNAL CANDIDATES. Then presumably the board, or a subcomittee of the board, considers the list. It is narrowed down. Interviews are conducted. The COMPENSATION COMMITTEE is consulted for "appropriate compensation rates." Eventually an offer is made, and the FINAL CANDIDATE accepts.

To recap, here is a list of players in this process

• the BOARD - makes all hiring decisions, including selection and compensation
• the HEADHUNTER firm - locates external candidates
• INTERNAL CANDIDATES - existing officers in the company
• ASSOCIATES OF THE BOARD - friends and aquaintences of the individuals on the board
• COMPENSATION COMMITTEE - recommends the compensation package based on "market rates"
• FINAL CANDIDATE - the exeuctive who is chosen and accepts the offer

Now, to look at things another way, lets consider which of these players is involved in the "supply" of executives, and which is involved in the "demand"

Player	Supply	Demand	Notes
BOARD	x	x
HEADHUNTER	x
INTERNAL CANDIDATES	x
BOARD ASSOCIATES	x
COMPENSATION COMITTEE		x

Looking at this chart, a few things are interesting. First of all, the ones who actually pay for the executives, the SHAREHOLDERS, are not in the picture. Also, the BOARD is involved both in the supply and the demand, as they determine the pool of candidates from their associates.

One thing that is not shown in the chart is that the membership of the board are usually composed of executives at other firms. Thus, these people have an incentive to increase the pay of the executive they are hiring because it influences the market price of executives, and thus the price thay are entitled to demand. The compensation committee is itself compensated by the board, and thus has an incentive to recommend higher prices.

So, it is apparent that there are some relationships in this market that have the effect of pushing prices up. What could we introduce into this situation that might have a beneficial effect. Here are some ideas.

1. Involve the shareholders - they are the ones who pay for this, and perhaps they should have a say in such an important and expensive company expense

2. Change the composition of the board - since they are executives themselves, they are incentivized to push up the price

3. Increase the supply of applicants - there are lots of people that have the skills to run a company, mor than the boards friends or other execs.

4. Involve folks from all pay levels in the company in the hiring process - this would introduce some level of sanity in the process.

Note: I wrote this in 45 minutes of spare time

Promising resournce on permaculture design in the west coast

West Coast Food Forestry

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Permaculture Health

Is it worthwhile to plant wheat in a 12'x2' strip?

Deciding if it is practical to grow some grain on the property. Like how much would I need to grow in order for it to be worthwhile. Found this nugget on the Howling Duck Blog:

presuming that you want to grow enough for your food needs and have enough left over for a subsequent year’s sowing, and are able to sow and harvest adequately, I suggest you could purchase a single 25 kg bag for example. If you sow 1/2 of it in good fertile soil with adequate spacing (30 lbs would sow about 1/4 acre….and save the other 30 lbs in case of need to resow due to natural disaster such as hail…) and it grows well, you could anticipate harvesting up to ~ 6 bushels (360 lbs) and that is based on a good yield of 25 bushels/acre.

A single bushel of harvested and clean wheat kernels would make ~70-80 regular sized loaves of bread.

- Grow your own bread « Howling Duck Ranch

Putin Blames Capitalists for Crisis

At Davos Forum, Russia and China Blame Capitalists for Economic Crisis - NYTimes.com

In the official opening address of the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke of a financial “perfect storm” that has decimated the old system, rendering it obsolete.

“A year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the U.S. economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects,” he said, speaking through a translator. “Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist.”

But the damage goes beyond Wall Street, he said. “The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional center manufactures inexpensive goods and saves money printed by other governments, has suffered a major setback.”

Vegetable Garden at the White House

Obamas Hire Chef From Chicago - NYTimes.com

Mr. Kass’s appointment should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters’s dreams, could be on the horizon.

Git on, Gitmo

Obama Issues Directive to Shut Down Guantánamo - NYTimes.com

President Obama signed executive orders Thursday effectively ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program, directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year

Where art thou, Polonius?

From today's NY Times:

Even more than their American counterparts, borrowers in Britain turned
to local banks to fuel a real estate boom that was as much a national
pastime as a rational decision about what to buy. Household debt as a
percentage of disposable income hit 177 percent in 2007, compared with
141 percent in the United States.

Obama increases government transparency

Day One and the government is opening up its windows to the people. This from the Wall Street Journal

In an attempt to deliver on pledges of a transparent government, Mr.
Obama said he would change the way the federal government interprets
the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was directing agencies that
vet requests for information to err on the side of making information
public -- not to look for reasons to legally withhold it -- an
alteration to the traditional standard of evaluation.

I feel like I imagined that Eastern Europeans felt when their autocrats fell. Feels pretty good!

The Military Industrial Perrenial Polyculture Complex

The RAND corporation has a paper out in engineering perrennial polycultures - interesting perspective: http://www.endgame.org.uk/pdfs/polyculture.pdf

Said another way, had the first inhabitants of the prairies found that there were enough
edible grasses there for their needs, they would not have needed to become annual tillers and
sowers. They could have survived simply by reaping what they needed from the prairie year
after year. Indeed, when human populations were smaller, many societies did subsist on what
wild ecosystems provided. Prairie ecosystems—with their perennial polycultures and mixed
intercropping—required no maintenance, yet provided food for a variety of animals, continuous
ground cover and deep root systems to prevent erosion, legumes to provide natural
fertilizers, and natural disease and pest control measures. Thus, if we could engineer more
bountiful prairies, we could dispense with much of the machinery, energy, fertilizers, irrigation,
herbicides, and pesticides that are mainstays of modern agriculture. That, in turn, would
have secondary benefits in environmental remediation, biodiversity, energy use, and—as I will
argue below—in combating global problems such as poverty, hunger, and even disparities in
education.

Speculation is merely one aspect of what happened...

I have been wondering how much of the rise in oil prices was due to speculation, or recursive market effects. I guess 60 minutes discussed this subject last night - although I missed it, Barry Ritholtz has written a nice response. Here is an excerpt from his great post on the rise and fall of oil:

There’s a lot more, but the bottom line is this: Higher energy prices
were caused many many factors over the past 8 years. Certainly,
speculation played a part at the end of the run — but it always does.
Oil fell more precipitously than it rose, but don’t all markets do
that? Didn’t the S&P just plummet nearly 50% in a year, after a 5
year run?

Are antibiotics bad for you? Hope not...

Crops absorb livestock antibiotics, science shows — Environmental Health News

For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places.

Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.