Month: July 2008

Biopact posts are always smart and thoughtful:

Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and 2002 World Food Prize Laureate, has some interesting numbers on the unsustainable costs of food aid.

They show that the multi-billion dollar food aid industry is in a crisis because of rising costs.

But there is a very positive side to this crisis: it has now become rational and profitable to invest in local farmers…

…at last, there is a glimmer of hope that this inefficient and morally questionable [food aid] industry can be phased out.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture drew on the work of 700 scientists:

The causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis. There are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate water supplies are steadily being used up.

Essentially every calorie of food requires a liter of water to produce it. Thus those of us on western diets, use about 2500-3000 liters per day. [up to 800 gallons each]

A further 2.5 billion people by 2030 will mean that we have to find over 2000 more cubic kilometers of fresh water to feed them. [finding nearly 500 cubic miles of new water supplies!]

This is not any easy task given that current water usage for food production is 7500 cubic kilometers and supplies are scarce. [story]

Geesh!

Just 9% of Democrats say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. About 8% of Republicans. And only 3% of independents give Congress a thumbs up.

Only 12% overall think Congress has passed legislation that’s helped their lives, while 62% say Congress has done NOTHING to improve life in America. [Rasmussen Reports]

It bugs me when news reports and pundit analysis display only a farmer and a tractor. Did Bush weasle biofuel incentives to help his friends on the farm?

Corporate control of key agrofuel feedstock

At grain.org, they’re saying “Green agribusiness? Don’t be fuelled!”

“Grass? But it’s so boring. It’s not colorful. It doesn’t attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms, and it’s temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?”

Incisive Mike Masnick at Techdirt has a clear view of the recording industry and its focus on fear and the courts. Lyle Lovett must have a clear view too when he reveals that in two decades of making music, selling 4.6 million albums, he’s “never made a dime” from album sales.

Yes. A man said he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while at a Knoxville church. He’s launched a lawsuit against Lakewind Church for $2.5 million to pay medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering….

so easy to say pioneers are history

old wagons along Kodak sand
old arms torn by scythe
old Dickens bones

Clip: The many tensions and similarities between the life and work of an artist and the life and work of a psychiatrist …

Comment: Precisely.

Task: Define sanity.

Forty years ago, the minimum wage was nearly $10-an-hour (adjusted for inflation). The federal minimum wage will rise to $6.55 an hour in July – a quick way to starve on the street. [inequality.org]

I think this snippet reveals a bit:

Cheney said that, in his view, the Bush administration hadn’t made any mistakes, and that in 15 years everyone will have recognized that the approach taken in Iraq was the right one. One cannot base policy on the public sentiment and on opinion polls, he said.

When the president of the Press Club asked a simple, but vitriolic question about why, if this were the case, the government would order so many opinion polls, Cheney frowned.

This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years — a careful and even-handed analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view. – Cass Sunstein

Top anti-gay loudmouth Alabama Attorney General Troy King is busted by his wife for having sexual intercourse with his male assistant in the couple’s bed.

Where’s the infomercial?

Get one for the rec room near you!

They call it “the best circular bike ever made” and they want you to leave it in public places where it can attract a variety of riders.

During the era when we retreated from S.E.Asia after the Vietnam War, 100s of 1000s of immigrants were suddenly qualified and several regions of the USA were confronting new cultures from the far ends of the earth.

In San Francisco, school teachers were quickly hoping to accommodate thousands of children that only a few months earlier were living in thousand year old villages.

China bans dog from Olympic menu

Reinsurance has been a popular topic since Warren Buffet noticed.

But protecting these funds will exceed the resources of most regional governments. The Army Corps of Engineers is stepping in, as it did after the Depression with projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Mississippi levees.

The recent news is the Army Corps proposes a 21st Century answer to control waterways and protect urban centers from the devastation of flooding – especially as global warming promises many storms ahead.

Am I teasing?

I’ve owned a few of these.

We called them Bugs.

trust random
trim to poise

Where’s the trouble?

The trouble is they attack.
The trouble is we attack each other.

“You can now make a new hypothesis that all food in the ocean contains plastic.” – Captain Charles Moore

Just a reminder while McCain/Gramm sell us debunked supply-side rhetoric:

“We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich. The Forbes 400 total net worth has gone from 220 billion to 1.54 trillion, an increase of 7-to-1. You see in legislature that there is lobbying carried on by the powerful over issues such as the estate tax and carried interest for private equity investments. We need to flatten income and payroll taxes, and those making under $30,000 shouldn’t be bothered.” – Warren Buffett 2/15/2008

The Washington Times interviewed Phil Gramm, the chief economic advisor on McCain’s team:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy.”

Britain is facing an election soon in a tiny region where liberty seems to be the issue. Bob Geldorf, knighted not long ago, is being highly praised for an essay published in The Telegraph.

He’s suggesting Britain, and other nations, are much too strong with the boots:

Let us be grand for once, for we talk of great subjects.

Ask “what is the point of Britain?” if we so casually give up the liberty which defines this country, its greatest gift to the world.

Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: “To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right.” Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?

What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha’p’orth of momentary panic?

What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This “war on terror” is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment.

How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.

An America where healthcare is more about health than medicine. – Melody Petersen

I believe Melody is offering one of the most astute and wise points of view on the health system of our country. Her diligently studied message is critically important and must play an important role as we revamp our public health system. We will make a terrific error if led only down the tired argument of whether healthcare is ‘socialism’ or ‘free market’.

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