Photos: Land Use Destruction to Grow Biofuels - Big Picture Agriculture
On the Anniversary of D-Day: Making World War II Personal - John Tierney. See also, The Profound Contradiction of Saving Private Ryan - John Biguenet
How to live without air conditioning - Boston Globe, via Katie Baker's twitter feed. That article covers practical ways in which we could re-adapt to life without air conditioning. One of her followers posted a link to Arthur Miller's wonderful reminiscence of the sights, sounds and smells of New York in summer in the late Twenties.
Why Freakonomics Freaks Me Out - Bloomberg View
Your Vanilla Ice Cream Is About To Get Weirder - Tom Philpott. I don't know, using synthetic yeast to produce vanillin seems no more weird than using beaver anal secretions (castoreum) in your vanilla ice cream or schnapps.
Monarch Butterflies under Threat from Rising Herbicide Use - Scientific American. I've mentioned it before, but you just don't see milkweed anymore.
A Theory of Jerks - Aeon
A Horse Owner's Biggest Gamble - Wall Street Journal. The owners of California Chrome have already gambled more than I probably would. I like that the worst-case scenario below is $6.8 million.
Non-Triple Crown winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness:
| Year | Horse | Belmont Result (Winner) |
| 1932 | Burgoo King | (Did not start) |
| 1936 | Bold Venture | (Did not start) |
| 1944 | Pensive | 2nd (Bounding Home) |
| 1958 | Tim Tam | 2nd (Cavan) |
| 1961 | Carry Back | 7th (Sherluck) |
| 1964 | Northern Dancer | 3rd (Quadrangle) |
| 1966 | Kauai King | 4th (Amberoid) |
| 1968 | **Forward Pass | 2nd (Stage Door Johnny) |
| 1969 | Majestic Prince | 2nd (Arts and Letters) |
| 1971 | Canonero II | 4th (Pass Catcher) |
| 1979 | Spectacular Bid | 3rd (Coastal) |
| 1981 | Pleasant Colony | 3rd (Summing) |
| 1987 | Alysheba | 4th (Bet Twice) |
| 1989 | Sunday Silence | 2nd (Easy Goer) |
| 1997 | Silver Charm | 2nd (Touch Gold) |
| 1998 | Real Quiet | 2nd (Victory Gallop) |
| 1999 | Charismatic | 3rd (Lemon Drop Kid) |
| 2002 | War Emblem | 8th (Sarava) |
| 2003 | Funny Cide | 3rd (Empire Maker) |
| 2004 | Smarty Jones | 2nd (Birdstone) |
| 2008 | Big Brown | DNF (Da'Tara) |
| 2012 | I'll Have Another | Did Not Start (Union Rags) |
| 2014 | California Chrome | ??? |
You've written about the demise of CRP before, but this.....well, it's staggering. As an aside, I went to the local machinery display/parade the other day. The organizer, a local mega-hog producer, had a few of his personal pieces of equipment in the lineup. Oh, I neglected to say that, according to the local paper, his intent was to illustrate to the community the immense cost of today's machinery. So the price tags were on display, too. One tractor, an IH quad trac was tagged at $399,500. The other one, also a new four wheel drive, was just short of $300,000. I guess where I'm going with this is that the biofuels effort has become a nightmare for the land. But the supplier economy is doing just fine. I'd like to blame this whole mess on the Bushies, but let's face it, the dem's have been on board all along.
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