FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. The consequences of the current system include food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity.

Offering healthier, sustainable alternatives, they put forth a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris is one of the best business/life books I’ve read in a long time.   Really, I almost hate to call it a business book, as it really helps us to take a look at our lives and then design a business around our ideal lifestyle.

These are a few of the interesting quotes cited in the book:

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much form its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses is own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking – Albert Einstein

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate—Dave Barry

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it – Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the AM Turing Award, the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science.”

Anyways, it’s a good read and the new expanded hardcover is $12.99 at Amazon.com.   His fourhourworkweek blog is also worth a look.

“As Jesus left the house, he was followed by two blind men crying out, ‘Mercy, Son of David! Mercy on us!’ When Jesus got home, the blind men went in with him. Jesus said to them, ‘Do you really believe I can do this?’ They said, ‘Why, yes, Master!’

He touched their eyes and said,

‘Become what you believe.’ It happened. They saw.”

Matthew 9:27-30

For chicken farmers, genders are most unequal.  Males are destined to be “broilers” whereas females are ”layers” that have a longer life producing eggs, most of which are also meant for human consumption.  On egg farms, chicken sexing allows chicken farmers to use technology to sort the future egg producing mothers from the low value male embryos, which often wind up in pet food.

China and Northern India are also using technology to segment and prioritize by gender.  But they are doing it with people and this time it is the females who are getting the short end of the stick.  Because of cultural bias, as well as political and/or economic forces, family’s are using ultrasound scans to determine the gender of their unborn child and are often choosing to abort the child if their baby is a girl. 

Economists estimate that 100 million baby girls have been killed as a result of this terrible practice.  Gendercide is practiced by both the poor and the wealthy.  While the problem is at its worst in China and Northern India, gendercide is also practiced in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore.   

In addition to the many ethical concerns with this mass murder, it will come as no surprise that the results produce negative societal effects.  Any time you have a large segment of unattached young men it leads to trouble including increased crime, human trafficing and sexual violence. 

These countries need to change their value systems and recognize that daughters, girls and women are just as worthy as their male counter-parts to inherit land, carry on family names and keep the family’s blood line alive.   It seems they need a reminder that women are what is best in this world and without women the human species will collapse.  

Reproductive capabilities aside, I have no doubt that society would be doomed without women.

Source:  The Economist, March 6th, 2010  Gendercide and The Worldwide War on Baby Girls

Last week Glenn Beck urged Christians to abandon their churches if they found the phrases “social justice” or “economic justice” on their churches’ web sites.    The famously loud mouthed talk show host went on to say that those are code words that mean the churches support communism and Nazism.  

Most church leaders responded very kindly by simply pointing out that Mr. Beck clearly does not know what he is talking about.  One church leader said that it is a core Christian value to give aid to the poor, but that according to Glenn Beck if you dare to question why they are poor that makes you a Communist.

Mr. Beck Beck is a convert to Mormonism.  Some members of the Latter-day Saints have noted that it appears that Glenn Beck was asking them to leave their own church, as the church has a long tradition of supporting social justice.

1.2 billion people are now considered to be urgently hungry, which is the highest number ever recorded. The world’s cattle consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. There are currently 6.7 billion people on the planet earth.

It takes 16 pounds of grain and 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In the United States alone we feed farm factory animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats, enough to feed more than 5 times the country’s population.

via Simple Math Points to Global Solution | Change Your Diet, Change Your World .

Thorium is an inexpensive and readily available element that can be used to create nuclear reactions with no risk of a melt down, improved efficiency with fewer dangerous byproducts than uranium, and no dangerous byproducts that can be used to create weapons.  In short, Thorium powered energy is real and can do what the “clean coal” movement dreams of doing.  

China and India already are making investments in Thorium reactors, but America has thus far lagged far behind spending just $250 million to begin to develop this.  The Wired Magazine Article Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke gives an excellent overview of this exciting development.

Is Thorium the answer to safe energy independence in America?  I certainly hope our country will invest more money to develop this energy source.

Saw a message on the ticker of a local news show suggesting that viewers send a text message to donate $10 for the relief in Haiti. Later that I day I learned that the phone company takes a cut of that and it can take 3 weeks for your money to get to the charity. They suggested you are better off going directly to the web sites of trustworthy charitable groups to make donations.

Today Google threatened to pull out of China after suffering from repeated attacks that originated in China.  It seems that Chinese hackers have been trying to hack the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.   Google is contemplating closing the doors on its China based operations altogether.   It appears the attacks were orchestrated by the Chinese government.

“I think that with the increasing demands that were being placed on Google vis-à-vis censorship combined with these very troubling cyberattacks, Google reached a tipping point,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “It is a principled decision.”

After 2 weeks of deal making, yesterday at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagan, the major nations of the world delivered a 12 paragraph accord with specific targets for reducing climate change.

The deal worked out in Copenhagen was forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies.  However critics say that even if the greenhouse emission targets were reached that they are woefully inadequate to significantly reduce climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps.

While the accord that was reached may not be enforceable, it is a step in the right direction. More meaningful talks will need to take place between the 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. Perhaps a smaller group of countries can achieve more with more focused direction.