Drought Crop

Per the BBC:

Researchers in Finland and the United States say they have discovered a gene that controls the amount of carbon dioxide a plant absorbs.

It also controls the amount of water vapour it releases into the atmosphere.

This information could be important for food production and in regulating climate change.

Back, Food

Big news today: USDA ordered largest recall of meat in history after employees blew the whistle on Hallmark Meat Packing:

The tape, made secretly by a slaughterhouse worker and provided to the Humane Society of the United States, showed electric shocks and high-intensity water sprays administered to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own, and the use of forklifts to roll such animals. Government regulations prohibit slaughtering for food cattle that cannot stand or walk on their own.

There are plenty of folks who'll grab the soapbox on this one. They'll no doubt mention that most of the meat went to school cafeterias and institutional food programs. I'll leave the scolding to them.

Also, bananas is out! Fungus, the CIA, Victorian antipathy for penis-shaped fruits. Another illustration of how our diet is motivated principally by commerce and politics.

I don't want to give anyone the short shrift: there is another banana book on the market.

Manning Will Outperform Brady

Who else is excited about the Super Bowl?

The Love You Save Today May Be Your Own

Janisse Ray packs a walloping punch. She's smart, passionate, and clearly a practiced speaker. She needs to be rhetorically gifted because, after all, it's her job to make the auditorium feel guilty about all the things it's not doing to save the environment. Styrofoam cup anyone?

I can get behind her immediate moratorium on heated patios and garden lights. And I like her idea, which I think she borrowed from Eugene Odum, that the exodus of smart people from our rural counties has created a critical brain drain and political crunch in those places. We must go back to reinvigorate them.


"Not to live my value is to live a lie, to live in a kind of schizophrenia."