Posted by jason@kottke.org on under michael pollan, senator obama, heart dease, greenhouse gases, commodity prices, agriculture sector, type 2 diabetes, agricultural system, new york times, food prices, cheap oil, healthcare costs, food policy, security threats, kottke, mean time, mccain, p | 
Senator Obama doesn't need to be paged...he's already read Michael Pollan's piece on US food policy.
I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
I wonder if McCain had a chance to read it. (thx, tim & jeremy)
(
link)
Tagi: michael pollan, senator obama, heart dease, greenhouse gases, commodity prices, agriculture sector, type 2 diabetes, agricultural system, new york times, food prices, cheap oil, healthcare costs, food policy, security threats, kottke, mean time, mccain, p
Posted by on under mold counts, indoor allergies, th spring, allergy sufferers, great indoors, great outdoors, pollen |
By Guest While many allergy sufferers will try to avoid the great outdoors this spring when pollen and mold counts begin to increase, the reality is that the great indoors may not provide much relief either. According to the EPA, the air inside a home can be up to five times more polluted than the [...]
Tagi: mold counts, indoor allergies, th spring, allergy sufferers, great indoors, great outdoors, pollen
Posted by on under dummy models, punjab university, worker bees, dramatic decline, queen bee, radiati, phes, mdash, hive, phe, collapse, hives, counterpart, pollen, eggs, telegraph, productivity |
krou passes along word from Telegraph.co.uk that researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim that they have proven mobile phones could explain Colony Collapse Disorder. "They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives — one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two 15-minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed. After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey. The queen bee in the 'mobile' hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive. They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen." We've talked about the honeybee problem before. Today's article quotes a British bee specialist who dismisses talk of cellphone radiation having anything to do with the problem.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tagi: dummy models, punjab university, worker bees, dramatic decline, queen bee, radiati, phes, mdash, hive, phe, collapse, hives, counterpart, pollen, eggs, telegraph, productivity
