Peak Everything = Collapse

(via Syd O) The Oil Drum has an excellent - comprehensive - explanation of Peak Oil theory. It's a long read but well worth it because it goes into the causes, the effects, and confronts the usual counter-points.

A Defense of Industrial Farming

There's a lot to agree with - and a lot to consider - in this piece by a Missouri farmer in the AEI journal The American. Its true that the slow food movement has been harsh on traditional farmers, and de-humanized them to an extent, and that we aren't yet in a place (and may never be) where organic farming is the primary method of farming. But the author, I think, sounds like someone who would be happy to adjust methods if they were profitable and convenient ... and that's the general purpose of the green/slow-food movement - to create a market force and integrated systems so that organic farming is a reasonable and cost-effective option to farmers. He makes good points about nitrogen content and the need for artificial fertilizer, and I don't know enough to comment on that point, but I would think that that would be a problem to tackle with further innovation - and may become intractable in its own right with peak oil/natural gas curbing nitrogen production.

How Medical Breakthroughs Happen

This post in response to Megan McCardle's post on "Why [she] Opposes National Health Care" is worth reading. One of McCardle's reasons was that "monopolies are not innovative" - and she says that Phrma, for instance, is way more productive than government run operations like the NIH. Well, Ben Domenech took issue and wrote a nice response.

GE and NewsCorp Censor Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann

This is very scary. Read Glenn Greenwald's account, but essentially GE and NewsCorp -the parent companies of Fox News and MSNBC - felt that the O'Reilly/Olbermann feud was bad for business (GE and NewsCorp's ... NOT bad for the news networks) so the agreed to censor both guys .... and lo and behold, since they put the order out both Keith and Bill have been silent.

Corporate Censorship.

I know that news organizations censor their own - and have a point of view, or a slant - but it's pretty disturbing when a parent corporation has control over news content, and even more scary when 2 parent corporations get together to stifle competing news shows.