| Apr 30, 2014 | Food / FarmingFrom the Gatling gun to the nuclear bomb, from hot air balloons to drones, the military has enlisted scientists to develop ever-more effective war technologies. Now comes a long-sought scientific breakthrough that the military brass consider the ultimate advantage for...
| Apr 23, 2014 | Food / FarmingIf you want to buy a fresh, whole chicken at the store, it’ll run you about $1.54 per pound. But if I buy it from my local farmer, it costs $5 per pound. I live in an expensive part of the country — California — but even the farm I visited last year in rural New...
| Apr 22, 2014 | Food / FarmingIn 79 A.D., a volcanic eruption buried Pompeii in ash. Nearly 2,000 years later, an eruption of hot legislative ash is spewing from Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) is threatening U.S. consumers. Pompeo is the right-wing Congress critter from the Ideological Republic of...
| Apr 16, 2014 | Food / FarmingAs a vegetarian, I have to walk a fine line. Really, I’m not judging you. But I often find it necessary to establish myself as “not a threat” to meat eaters. I also occasionally bump up against militant vegans. Consider this collision I had the other...
| Apr 9, 2014 | Food / FarmingA recent Scientific American blog post blamed environmentalists for costing poor, malnourished people an estimated 1,424,000 life years in India alone. Why? Because they presumably kept Golden Rice off the market for over a decade when it could have been helping the...
| Apr 1, 2014 | Food / FarmingAh, progress. In the 2012 elections, Republicans cast themselves as budget-balancers by promising to whack welfare programs for the poor, snarling that such people are “takers” and “moochers.” Such vindictive sourness didn’t play too well...
