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Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

In 1767, Carl Linnaeus was suffering from information overload. His solution: the index card, a turning point in the relationship between power and technology  Dewey Decimal Drawings  


Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake, Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy.
Cricket in the time of smog: Should Delhi be struck off the international venues list? Scroll.in
Beijing’s not alone in having massive air quality problems. Pity Kohli failed to score a triple ton. And see this: Smog kills thousands in England 
This Day in History

Potatoes reduced the number of civil wars



Scientific American. And yet we continue to throw food waste into landfills– or devise high-tech solutions to burn it to replace fossil fuels– rather than making composting a national (global?) priority.

Despite lawmakers’ warnings, few Iowa farmers face estate tax Des Moines Register. UserFriendly: “Great Grassley quote.” Moi: So, those who spend on wine, women, and booze: does that make them deplorables? All sarc aside, this is an important piece, as it debunks the popular Republican talking point that the estate tax threatens family farms.
Of course, if you need the heavy guns, bring out the bacon.

Trump Finds Loopholes in Chief of Staff’s New RegimeWSJ. In other words, Trump finds ways to be Trump– is anyone at all surprised by that? He is the President, after all, and the chief of staff works for him, after all. Interesting detail re Melania’s role– I always suspected there’s much more to her than playing the bland arm candy role she’s been assigned by the MSM.


WHY TRUMP’S TAX BILL COULD BE HIS DEATH WARRANT Vanity Fair. T.A. Frank. Hmmm– readers?


White House paranoid: ‘Everyone thinks they’re being recorded’ Politico. I wouldn’t call this paranoid, more a rational assessment of reality.


“Artificial intelligence systems pretending to be female are often subjected to the same sorts of online harassment as women.” [Jacqueline Feldman]
Swintec is a company in New Jersey that sells up to 5,000 typewriters a year to prisoners in the US. Their typewriters have clear plastic covers so inmates can’t hide anything inside. Transparent TVs, CD players and Walkmen are also available. [Daniel A Gross]
In the UK, marriages between couples over 65 have risen 46% over the last decade. [Cassie Werber]
A cryptocurrency mining company called Genesis Mining is growing so fast that they rent Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards to their Bitcoin mines in Iceland. [Joon Ian Wong]
Dana Lewis from Alabama built herself an artificial pancreas from off-the-shelf parts. Her design is open source, so people with diabetes can hack together solutions more quickly than drug companies. [Lee Roop]
In August, Virginia Tech built a fake driverless van — with the driver hidden inside the seat — to see how other drivers would react. Their reaction: “This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.” [Adam Tuss] (Fluxx have also been experimenting with fake autonomous vehicles in Cambridge)
Women are eight times more likely to ask Google if their husband is gay than if he is an alcoholic. [Sean Illing]
Men travelling first class tend to weigh more than those in economy, while for women the reverse is true. [Lucy Hooker]
Facebook employs a dozen people to delete abuse and spam from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page. [Sarah Frier]
Pro tip: Ask your current customers “What nearly stopped you buying from us?” [Karl Blanks]