Ethanol and Meteorites... what could possibly go wrong?

Corn ethanol is useless, but we could have told you that...

Something else I'll need to beat to death when it shows up at my door...

The blind leading the blind.  What ignorance is doing to teaching evolution.

Cereal that looks you in the eye.

Oops... the NYPD attempts to hashtag its way to popularity.

Is the seafood you're eating illegal?

Tracking the meteorites that have hit Earth.

Weirdness and beyond

The weird things we've found to eat.  Can you imagine how hungry we had to be to figure out how to eat them?

Wells Fargo.. foreclosing people one client at a time.

Hobby Lobby... going after birth control.  The definition of rape culture.

Anybody have an invention they'd like to have produced?

Women in the gaming industry.

Should we worry if the engineered bacteria making jet fuel (which is fantastic) escapes into the wild?

Ten cooking tips for the kitchen.

Maybe there's a Super Earth out there too?

And speaking of weird things... a spider as big as your face.  That's one more country I'm not visiting....

Friday follies and a cat

Logical fallacies.

The story of Haydn's skull.  And King Alfred's bones.

Worse than Enron.

USDA Moves to Approve "Agent Orange" GMO Seeds

It is expensive to be poor.

WWI corpses of soldiers uncovered as glaciers melt.

The stealth war on women's rights.

And working on silencing the poor.

There is enough food in the world to feed everyone.  Even cats.

Scattershot news

Americans throw away 40 percent of their food every day

Less government...

Someone who is very displeased with Windows 8.

Why Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law Is Unconstitutional

But will the pharmaceuticals let this kid ruin their business?  I bet no.

Depression comes from eating too much trans-fats.

Never insult an Irishman:

Michael D. Higgins (who was elected president of Ireland last year) is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn't afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham on everything from health care to foreign policy in this heated exchange from 2010. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one.

The Drought Map.  And those who make money off of food shortages caused by drought.

The Problem with Men Explaining Things.

This is how I cook for the family

Here we go again....

These GOP Budget Cuts Might Make You Puke (or Worse): How food safety could fall victim to the Republicans' budget-slashing mania.

Krugman convinced me...

Time to get on the garden and begin restocking the pantry....

But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

[snip]

Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

The usual suspects will, of course, go wild over suggestions that global warming has something to do with the food crisis; those who insist that Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands tend to be more or less the same people who insist that the scientific consensus on climate reflects a vast leftist conspiracy.

But the evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we’ll face in a warming world. And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come.

To hell with the bees

Better living through chemistry and all that.

Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags

So... our food and the bees we rely on to help make that food are not as important as the corporations which make the pesticide?

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

The colony-collapse phenomenon is complex and still not completely understood. While there appears to be no single cause for the annual die-offs, mounting evidence points to pesticides, and specifically neonicotinoids (derived from nicotine), as a key factor. And neonicotinoids are a relatively new factor in ecosystems frequented by honeybees -- introduced in the late 1990s, these systemic insecticides have gained a steadily rising share of the seed-treatment market. It does not seem unfair to observe that the health of the honeybee population has steadily declined over the same period.

According to PANNA, other crops commonly treated with clothianidin include canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat -- all among the most widely planted U.S. crops. Bayer is now petitioning the EPA to register it for use with cotton and mustard seed.

The short answer is yes.

H/t to mahakal for the link.

Hmmm....

Eyes the stew pot...



The BBC asks:

Is squirrel the perfect austerity dish?

Yes. Especially after they've eaten my apricots and tomatoes...

Playing with your food

Bees ... or no bees

At all...



It's worse than we thought:

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

Blog sprinkles

Via Bryan of Why Now?, the latest updates on the horrific oil leak from NOAA.

Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly : PUTTING CONSERVATIVE JUDICIAL ACTIVISM ON THE RADAR. (It's not just for evil liberals judicial activists anymore.)

It would be funny but Onion can hardly keep ahead of reality: Shell Executives Accuse Oil-Covered Otter Of Playing It Up

China: Diplomat beaten, injured by Houston police.... an excellent diplomatic move.

The weirdness of our elected officials.

Phila of Bouphonia reminds us we can still hope.

Honoring Dr. Dorothy Height.

Food Inc.

Google Maps option allows you to avoid Arizona.

President Obama at the White House Correspondents dinner

Roger Ebert, unable to eat, drink or speak

Tells us who can what we are missing.

A beautiful post about what eating really means.

Food Monopolies

A Credo petition:

For years, the Department of Justice has blindly looked the other way while merger after merger has consolidated market share and power in the food and agricultural markets into the hands of only a few giant multinational corporations.

Today only a handful of companies control our food supply:

• 1 company (Monsanto) controls the seeds of 93% of soybeans and 80% of the corn grown in the U.S.2
• 4 companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift & National Beef Packing Co.) control 83% of the beef packing industry
• 4 companies (Smithfield, Tyson, Swift & Cargill) control 66% of the pork packing industry

It's time to send a message to Washington and Wall Street, that the rights of farmers, citizens and consumers matter more than maintaining the already bloated bottom line of vertically integrated companies.

Sign here today to encourage the DOJ and USDA to enforce antitrust legislation, restore competition in agriculture and give farmers a chance.

Monsanto, getting between your food and you.

Making sure it will be making money when we are starving.

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Other articles and posts on the wonderful world of Monsanto: food and milk mafia trying to control farmers and dairies, trying to control living genetic material, frankenfoods, cause of suicides, anti-trust investigations.

Although not all internet rumors are true.

But, I'm sorry, anyone who develops a 'Terminator Gene' to force farmers to continually buy seeds from Monsanto, and thinks this is a good idea is inherently evil.

Bush's legacy

More American households had difficulty putting enough food on the table in 2008

In 2008, 85 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the entire year, but 14.6 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during that year, up from 11.1 percent in 2007.

This is the highest recorded prevalence rate of food insecurity since 1995 when the first national food security survey was conducted.

"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without"

Starting with your fresh fruit and veggies:

Timothy Jones of the University of Arizona studies food loss; he told CBC radio that 50 percent of the food in America, with a value of a hundred billion dollars, is just wasted. It rots in the field when prices are low and farmers don't bother picking it; it is thrown out from supermarkets because it doesn't look perfect or has been on the shelves too long; huge amounts of it are thrown out at fast-food restaurants that leave cooked food on the steam trays or under the heat lamps and throw it away after specified times.

In the home, Americans waste 14 percent of their food purchases, including leftovers and stale dated products. Jones estimates that the average family of four tosses out close to $ 600 per year in fruit, meat, vegetables, and other unidentifiable substances at the bottom of the crisper drawer.

h/t to Megan of Care2 Make a Difference.

We knew it was bad for us

Just not THIS bad:

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.

h/t to Bryan of Why Now?

I've heard of inhaling your food....

But the utensils as well?:

(CNN) -- "I know I didn't chow down on a spoon!" declared John Manley, who recently discovered that an eating utensil was the source of his two years of ill health, coughing, vomiting and pain.

The Wilmington, North Carolina, resident had surgery last week to remove part of a plastic spoon from his lung. And it wasn't just any old plastic spoon; it came from the fast-food chain Wendy's, with the restaurant logo clearly visible on the handle.

"It must have been in the food or drink," Manley told CNN affiliate WECT.

His doctor found the spoon after looking into his lungs with an endoscope, a medical instrument with a long, thin tube containing a light and a video camera.

How about we not feed you for a week

Until you find your brains and your heart?

Missouri lawmaker on child hunger: ‘Hunger can be a positive motivator.’