Say you woke up one day and your bed was gone. Your room, too. Gone. It's all gone. You wake up in an inky void. Not even a star. Okay, yes, it's a dumb idea, but just go with it. Now say you want to know if you move or not. Are you held fast in one spot? Or do you, say, list off to the left some? What I want to ask you is: Can you find out? Hell no. You can see that, sure. You don't need me to tell you. To move, you have to move to or away from ... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void. Sure. Okay. Now, let's add the bed back. Your bed is with you in the void. But not for long -- it goes away from you. You don't have any way to get it back, so you just let it go. But so now we have a body in the void with you. So does the bed move, or do you move? Or both? Well, you can see as well as I that it can go any way you like. Flip a coin. Who's to say? It's best to just say that you move away from the bed, and that the bed goes away from you. No one can say who's held fast and who isn't. [More]

Labels: fun, physics

Labels: fun, photo

Power firm E.ON said the development five miles (8km) off the Humber estuary would be capable of providing electricity to almost 200,000 homes. [More]

Wind power plants, or wind farms as they are sometimes called, are clusters of wind machines used to produce electricity. A wind farm usually has dozens of wind machines scattered over a large area. The world's largest wind farm, the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas, has 421 wind turbines that generate enough electricity to power 230,000 homes per year. [More]

In 2005, wind machines in the United States generated a total of 17.8 billion kWh per year of electricity, enough to serve more than 1.6 million households. This is enough electricity to power a city the size of Chicago, but it is only a small fraction of the nation's total electricity production, about 0.4 percent. The amount of electricity generated from wind has been growing fast in recent years, tripling since 1998.

Reasonable people can disagree on the merits of putting turbines on Nantucket Sound, as proposed by a private company. Though costs have come down to 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour from 6.1 per KWH in 1999, the technology is still not balancing out as cost-effective for some areas. Last week, Long Island scratched its plans to build a wind energy center in the Atlantic when costs were running up toward $800 million. Projects in windy Texas have also been scrapped over cost considerations.

But advocates often tout renewable energy not for its economics, but because it's virtuous. Many of those who are willing to impose the costs of various environmental schemes on other Americans based on "ideals" suddenly have started looking more closely at the tradeoffs when something they hold dear would have to be sacrificed, like a nice view. Wind energy is never going to be anything but a bit player in meeting the world's energy needs. The Nantucket tempest is useful mainly as a real-world test of whether some of the world's most privileged liberals wear their ideals all the time, or only when it suits them. [More]

Labels: energy, fun

Labels: fun

Though poorly known, radiation breeding has produced thousands of useful mutants and a sizable fraction of the world’s crops, Dr. Lagoda said, including varieties of rice, wheat, barley, pears, peas, cotton, peppermint, sunflowers, peanuts, grapefruit, sesame, bananas, cassava and sorghum. The mutant wheat is used for bread and pasta and the mutant barley for beer and fine whiskey.

The mutations can improve yield, quality, taste, size and resistance to disease and can help plants adapt to diverse climates and conditions.

Dr. Lagoda takes pains to distinguish the little-known radiation work from the contentious field of genetically modified crops, sometimes disparaged as “Frankenfood.” That practice can splice foreign genetic material into plants, creating exotic varieties grown widely in the United States but often feared and rejected in Europe. By contrast, radiation breeding has made few enemies.

“Spontaneous mutations are the motor of evolution,” Dr. Lagoda said. “We are mimicking nature in this. We’re concentrating time and space for the breeder so he can do the job in his lifetime. We concentrate how often mutants appear — going through 10,000 to one million — to select just the right one.” [More]

Lagoda who irradiates plants to produce mutants is being somewhat disingenuous when he says, "I’m not doing anything different from what nature does." True, mutations occur in nature all of the time, but it seems somewhat doubtful that plants out in a field experience anywhere near the number of uncharacterized mutations produced in a lab by gamma rays.

If anti-biotechies are so afraid of genetic changes in their foods, why aren't they out protesting varieties produced by means of mutation breeding? After all, most biotech crops merely change agronomic characteristics, whereas many irradiated varieties have different nutritional profiles.

The point here is NOT that mutation breeding is inherently dangerous. Given a solid record of 80 years of safety, it's not. The point is that the more precise methods of modern gene-splicing are even safer and should therefore be subject to even less regulation than crops produced by mutation breeding. [More]

Labels: biotech, GM

Yesterday the U.N. announced that opium production in Afghanistan hit a record level this year. You may feel as if you've read this news before: Opium production in Afghanistan also hit a record level last year. This year 193,000 hectares of poppies were cultivated, up 17 percent from last year's 165,000. Thanks to favorable weather that led to high yields, opium production rose even more, from about 6,700 tons in 2006 to about 9,000 tons this year, an increase of 34 percent. The U.N. says Afghanistan's opium now represents 93 percent of the world total, compared to 92 percent last year. [More]

Labels: drugs

But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics. [More of a brilliant NYT article]

Labels: environment, pork, trade

Years ago I learned something about aging -- that it wasn't so much the date of your birth but the place you were living in that determined whether or not you were old. There was a geography of aging in America. I began to notice this when I moved from Manhattan to Los Angeles in the nineteen seventies and stayed there through the nineties working as a script writer for various studios. I don't have any East Coast snobbery about the culture or lack of it in LA: nice, sentient, intelligent, art loving, caring people actually live there -- but it became clear to me that every time I returned home to New York to visit my folks I felt ten years younger, and every time I stepped out of the terminal at LAX I aged a decade. At first I didn't have a clue as to why that was happening -- I figured that it wasn't just because my parents still viewed me as their youngest child in New York it was the LA experience. I eventually learned that one became an official senior citizen at fifty in Los Angeles, and New York was holding fast to sixty five. Sure, I could get into movies cheaper, but in LA people canvassing in malls failed to ask my opinion on any topic -- I was outside the cherished demographic of 18-40. Then it happened. When I reached fifty nine, my important LA agent called me into his office and sadly, gently fired me -- noting that although I had many awards for writing, indeed too many which gave away the length of my career, and I was a helluva nice guy, he couldn't sell me to the studios or the networks. The message the agent conveyed was that I was old news... out of touch with the zeitgeist... incapable of understanding or creating what America wanted -- an America dominated by the young, and the youth worshipers. As the father of two young sons I was stunned by this -- I felt I knew more about how young people felt and acted than most young people. But the tide was too strong to fight it, and I soon went to Germany to work on a film, and later managed to do a series for the BBC. [More]

Labels: culture, future, rural life

Camp and bad French aside, the lighthearted marketing video articulates a watershed moment in the global wine industry: after hundreds of years of tradition, more and more winemakers are turning away from cork closures — and oenophiles are finally getting used to the idea. Bonny Doon, a boutique winery south of San Francisco, had used Portuguese cork for 19 years, but was losing 0.5% to 2% of its wine to "taint" — the unmistakably moldy or musty smell and taste of a contaminated wine, caused by a compound called TCA, which is sometimes found in cork. So, the winery decided to make a change in 2002. "It's not a lot, but it's enough," says Burke Owens, Bonny Doon's marketing director, of the switch to screwcaps. As the sommelier puts it: "The days of the cork are numbered." [More]

Labels: culture, food, fun

Sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contain high levels of a potentially dangerous compound often found in the blood of diabetics, a new study concludes.

It could be cause for concern, experts say, because the "reactive carbonyls" in these sugary drinks could bump up diabetes risk, particularly in children. [More]

Bottled water sales in the U.S. have skyrocketed in recent years, and with it consumers aren't making a concerted effort to recycle, adding more plastic to the nation's garbage dumps.

An environmental movement is mounting in some states against the one-and-done nature of bottled water, and negative myths about tap water quality. [More]

Labels: culture, environment, food

Mr. Bush comes to this fight with an understanding of how Schip has played out in the states, which is why his administration recently instituted reforms to the program that aim to restrict eligibility to those it was originally intended to serve -- the truly needy -- and not provide an incentive for middle class parents to drop their private health insurance. Moreover, he has threatened to veto federal legislation that would allow states to expand their Schip programs.

It would be easy for Mr. Bush to give in on this fight. He is, after all, in the twilight of his administration. But next month, he'll square off against Congress to oppose an incremental advance of socialized medicine. We are fortunate he is today willing to do so at a time when Republicans in his home state were quick to abandon the fight. [More]

Labels: farm bill, farm program, policy

Labels: blog, economics

A driver who was high on cocaine destroyed an entire cornfield in an attempt to escape from the police. Four police cars were destroyed before the 35-year-old crashed into a ditch and was arrested, near the village of Dussen in the south of the Netherlands.

Labels: fun, photo

It goes against the grain for farm subsidies to be handed out to the rich. But that's precisely what the House version of the next farm bill does -- it continues big handouts to wealthy farmers and landowners. It's going to be up to the Senate to get it right when Congress resumes next month.

Under the current farm bill, which expires this year, subsidies to farmers are cut off if their yearly incomes are above $2.5 million. The $286 billion, five-year House bill lowers that limit to $1 million -- an improvement, but far higher than the $200,000 limit suggested by President Bush and the $250,000 cap contained in a "Fairness Amendment" that was defeated on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't support tougher reforms because she was trying to protect some first-term farm-state Democrats. [More]

It goes against the grain for farm subsidies to be handed out to the rich. But that's precisely what the House version of the next farm bill does -- it continues big handouts to wealthy farmers and landowners. It's going to be up to the Senate to get it right when Congress resumes next month.

Under the current farm bill, which expires this year, subsidies to farmers are cut off if their yearly incomes are above $2.5 million. The $286 billion, five-year House bill lowers that limit to $1 million -- an improvement, but far higher than the $200,000 limit suggested by President Bush and the $250,000 cap contained in a "Fairness Amendment" that was defeated on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't support tougher reforms because she was trying to protect some first-term farm-state Democrats. [More]

Gosh, golly - you'd think with all this editorial outrage Congresshumans would be scrambling to build a better farm policy. Well, citizen, you would be wrong. As we saw in the House, reform is the last thing on Senate leaders' minds.

There is no change in the big ticket item in this farm bill cycle: $26 billion in direct payments, a leftover from "freedom to farm" payment contracts begun in 1996 that will be made, regardless of crop prices, over the next 5 years. Chairman Harkin has repeatedly criticized direct payments as "hard to justify" when crop prices are high, as they are now, and farmers will be making good money (in some cases record money) in the marketplace.

But with this draft he formally endorses continuing those very payments at the same level. He (suddenly) indicated he would do this a few weeks ago, just after Speaker Pelosi's House farm bill did the same.

They're simply accepting the reality that this is what every major farm and commodity group wants. And that's probably the most important take-away from this farm bill cycle. [More]

Regardless of your position the sheer immobility of farm policy would seem to demonstrate some powerful lessons:

• There are more people than just farmers benefiting from those billions. The idea that a few hundred thousand voters who split their votes unpredictably can reliably raid the Treasury would be mildly believable if we were cunning financiers, but we're farmers, fer crying out loud! My theory is the farm lobby is so whackin' huge it has become the tail that wags the dog. Indeed, an interesting economic study could be made of the net proceeds to farmers after the effort of feeding these K street mouths is subtracted.
• If you need proof of the dwindling readership and clout of the print media, this is Exhibit A. Following this argument the slow motion train-wreck that is the Chicago Tribune is hardly a surprise.
• If change should miraculously come, it would be shattering to a number of institutions and arguably due to on-line campaigning for change. Not this blog, necessarily, but a much wider spread network of reform activists who have finally found a outlet.

Labels: farm bill, farm program, media

Tragic accidents on the farm were all too common last year, claiming the lives of 19 people, according to statistics from the Danish Agricultural Advisory Service and the Agricultural Working Conditions Board.

The 2006 figure is equal to the number of deaths from 2001-2005 combined. Among the 19 deaths were three children.

‘It is often older workers that lose their lives, but the farmers’ children are also killed on occasion by the heavy machinery,’ the board’s joint secretary, Anne Marie Hagelskjær, told employee union 3F. ‘The sharp increase in the number of agricultural accidents is extremely worrying.’

The four principle causes of farm accidents are falls, unattended children, machinery and farm vehicles in traffic. [More]

Labels: rural life, safety

To be fair, we excluded community colleges, technical schools, and the kind of places that advertise in subway cars, limiting our search to accredited four-year institutions with brick-and-mortar campuses. We started by gathering statistics on academic offerings, admissions, and student life from a diverse array of sources, including Princeton Review, U.S. News, and the U.S. Department of Education. Then we factored in criteria like low SAT scores, incompetent professors, rock-bottom admissions standards, unbridled alcohol and drug consumption, rampant criminal activity, and dubious alumni. To complete the picture, we added reviews from online outlets like Students Review, Campus Dirt, and College Prowler. Finally, we tallied up the numbers in a variety of categories, ranging from worst Ivy to worst party school, and of course, the very worst college in the country. (Hint: The Moonies are involved.) Below, the nine colleges that made our dishonor roll. [More of a great read]

Labels: education, fun

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $268.32. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service
© Copyright 2007, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.

1. It's almost all land.
2. The meager amount of cash is guarded by people who know how I write my name, spend my money, and sound like on the phone. Heck, I took square-dancing lessons with the bank president. (Very funny - HER name is Connie).

Labels: Internet, money

Labels: blog

The US is reviewing its federal Renewable Fuel Standard, which calls for the production of 7.5bn gallons a year of alternative fuels by 2012. This is expected to be reached well ahead of target, and the Bush administration has called for a benchmark of 35bn gallons by 2017, about half of it from ethanol.

Bill Veazey, Cargill's chief financial officer, said there needed to be "some kind of waiver" in any state-backed mandate. "There needs to be escape mechanisms so that you don't distort the food markets," he told the Financial Times.

Cargill said three of its five divisions delivered record results, and played down the importance of its asset management business, which has been the largest contributor to earnings in recent years.

"What we have is a broader and more diversified earnings' stream than last year," said Mr Veazey, pointing to the restructuring of the financial services business into two standalone entities, which have secured third-party investors to reduce Cargill's exposure.

However, Cargill's heavy investment programme - which it will continue to fund internally - and the potential volatility of financial services income have prompted ratings agencies to shift their outlooks for the group to negative in recent months. [More]

Labels: economics, ethanol, taxes

Labels: fun

While Mr Paulson sought to reassure Americans yesterday that the economy was strong, Mr Dodd warned that up to 3 million people were in danger of losing their homes in the fallout from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. "I would urge every possible step to be taken to keep people in their homes," said Senator Dodd, describing the likely rate of foreclosures as "deeply, deeply troubling".

For many new homeowners, low-interest "teaser" rates fixed in 2004 and 2006 will expire later this year. Senator Dodd said that in some cases, repayments would leap from $400 to $1,500 a month. He added that when a home is repossessed in an economically vulnerable area, the value of nearby properties slumps by up to $5,000. "Think of all the ripple effects," he said. "If we don't deal with this, it could spill over and become more serious." [More]

Already-battered U.S. auto sales could be the next victim of the problems with mortgages, declining home and stock prices as potential car buyers delay purchases due to uncertainty.

Industrywide U.S. auto sales in August could be off 10 percent from a year ago, according to an early read from sales tracker Edmunds.com. That follows July sales that were 19 percent below year-earlier levels.

Jesse Toprak, executive director of industry analysis for Edmunds.com, said that the downturn in home values and credit issues that were seen in the July numbers could be an even bigger factor this month.

"I think the issue is becoming more pronounced," he said. [More]

Labels: economics, finance, future

Labels: blog, Farm Journal

The World Bank study defines natural capital as the sum of cropland, pastureland, forested areas, protected areas, and nonrenewable resources (including oil, natural gas, coal, and minerals). Produced capital is what most of us think of when we think of capital: machinery, equipment, structures (including infrastructure), and urban land. But that still left a lot of wealth to explain. "As soon as you say the issue is the wealth of nations and how wealth is managed, then you realize that if you were only talking about a portfolio of natural assets, if you were only talking about produced capital and natural assets, you're missing a big chunk of the story," Hamilton explains.

The rest of the story is intangible capital. That encompasses raw labor; human capital, which includes the sum of a population's knowledge and skills; and the level of trust in a society and the quality of its formal and informal institutions. Worldwide, the study finds, "natural capital accounts for 5 percent of total wealth, produced capital for 18 percent, and intangible capital 77 percent."

Social institutions are most crucial. The World Bank has devised a rule of law index that measures the extent to which people have confidence in and abide by the rules of their society. An economy with a very efficient judicial system, clear and enforceable property rights, and an effective and uncorrupt government will produce higher total wealth. For example, Switzerland scores 99.5 out of 100 on the rule of law index and the U.S. hits 91.8. By contrast, Nigeria gets a score of just 5.8, while the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo obtains a miserable 1 out of 100. The members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-30 wealthy developed countries- have an average score of 90, while sub-Saharan Africa's is 28. "Rich countries are largely rich because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity," the study concludes. According to Hamilton's figures, the rule of law explains 57 percent of countries' intangible capital. Education accounts for 36 percent. [More of a great interview]

Labels: economics, wealth

Now comes another woe, this one as icky as a biblical plague: millions of mouse-like rodents called voles feasting on everything from beets to potatoes in an infestation that has prompted a desperate, scorched-earth policy in one of Spain's agricultural heartlands.

Farmers unions say the Castille-Leon region in north-central Spain is crawling with an estimated 7.5 million voles, and the local government is baffled: It doesn't know the cause — or the solution. The invasion began gently 10 months ago but has snowballed to stunning proportions.

Spanish television aired footage of scores of voles darting in and out of holes in what would normally be rich, healthy farmland, or quivering in the throes of death brought on by pesticide. Some of the critters have even made it into gardens of homes in the region's main city, Valladolid, according to news reports. [More]

Labels: ethanol

Commodity investors may never have a better time to buy corn, cotton and sugar instead of oil and copper.

Sugar, the world's primary source of ethanol, is the cheapest it has ever been relative to crude oil. Corn this year dropped the most since 1998 after U.S. farmers planted the biggest crop since World War II. Cotton is the worst commodity investment over the past three years.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's biggest securities firm, is recommending corn after correctly predicting a rally earlier this year. Former hedge fund manager Jim Rogers and Marc Faber, who told investors to sell U.S. stocks a week before the 1987 crash, also say agricultural commodities are the ones to buy. Wheat, coffee and corn this month outperformed almost all commodities in the UBS Bloomberg CMCI index. Oil tumbled 8 percent and copper fell to the lowest price since March as loan losses hurt consumer demand. [More]

The culprits were not the typical ones — heat waves, fires or drought — but thieves, who have been stripping the copper wires out of irrigation systems throughout California. The rampant thefts have left farmers without functioning water pumps for days and weeks at a time, creating financial loss and occasional crop devastation in a region still smarting from a spectacular freeze last winter.

Theft of scrap metal, mostly copper, has vexed many areas of American life and industry for the last 18 months, fueled largely by record-level prices for copper resulting from a building boom in Asia. Common in developing counties, metal theft is now committed in nearly every state, largely by methamphetamine users who hock the metal to buy drugs, the authorities say.

Thieves have stripped the wires out of phone lines, pulled plaques off cemetery plots, raided air-conditioning systems in schools and yanked catalytic converters from cars, all to be resold to scrap metal recyclers.

But perhaps no group has been as been as consistently singled out as California farmers, who provide roughly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. Irrigation systems, a treasure trove of copper, tend to be in remote places, out of the eyes of farmers and, until recently, law enforcement. [More]

Labels: economics, money

Labels: food, fun

• we are getting less from Iraq than in 2006
• we are getting more from Russia
  
• we are getting more from Algeria
• Saudi Arabia has replaced Mexico as #2
• Mexican production is slumping seriously.

Labels: ethanol

The chemistry of dreams goes back to before biochemistry began.

Scrooge blamed his nocturnal ghosts on a "crumb of cheese", and I know what he meant. I find it almost impossible to get an undisturbed night's sleep after eating the stuff and - worse - after drinking red wine.

The effect is very real - the last time I tried a refreshing bottle of red late at night I ground my teeth so hard that I smashed a molar.

Now the substances behind such unwanted nightmares are being tracked down. Tyramine, the main culprit, is based on the carbon ring of Kekulé's dream, and is broken down by the same enzymes as those hard at work during paradoxical sleep.

Aged cheeses, like Stilton, and heavy red wines are most to blame, while soy sauce and smoked fish are both rich in the stuff. [More]

85% of females who at