Australians seem to want to confront the inevitable conflict between ag and urban water use by buying out the farmers: Australia’s government promised Tuesday to spend about $2.9 billion to buy river water from farmers in a bid to address the country’s worst drought in a century…. But a mayor in the farming district targeted …
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provided my introduction to the strange world of western water, so I was intrigued by the findings outlined here, in the introduction to David Zetland’s thesis: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET), a cooperative of retail and wholesale water utilities, serves 18 million people. This case …
From the AP story on the Mars-Wrigley merger: “In terms of Warren Buffett’s sweet spot, these are exactly the kind of brands that he wants,” said Jet Hollander, a former candy industry executive who is president of the snack food consulting firm Pre-Eminence Strategy Group. I’m guessing they don’t have “snack food consulting firms” in …
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View Larger Map That’s the roundabouts in the shopping center north of Coors and Montano, on Albuquerque’s west side – the last piece in my “Roundabouts of Albuquerque” project. The blue line is the GPS track from today’s bike ride. Zoom out to see the whole thing.
My colleague Susan Stiger did a nice job in this morning’s newspaper of connecting the dots between global food and local bird food: Don’t believe everything is connected? At the moment, gasoline prices, Burmese cooking oil and potato chips are ruffling the feathers on your backyard birds. This is a good example of an effective …
kids in the bumper boats at Hinkle Family Fun Center first hummingbird, sitting on the power line in the backyard (2005: April 16; 2007: May 2) first bloom on the Harrison’s rose (yesterday, exact same date as first bloom last year) first of the main purple iris bloom in the front yard, over the last …
Roger Pielke Jr., my favorite thrower of inconvenient hand grenades, wrote a provocative post this week about the linkage between malaria and global warming. Malaria, Jeffrey Sachs writes, causes poverty. (( The End of Poverty, p. 197)) It does this by reducing economic productivity, creating a vicious cycle in which people get sick, can’t work, …
I’ve added a new goober over in the far right rail called “recommended reading.” The idea came from my old pal Chuck Taylor, who’s involved in an interesting experiment up in Seattle called “Crosscut“. More on that later (I had an interesting visit with Chuck, and I’m intrigued by what they’re attempting), but the easy …
I’ve been looking for a standard food price index comparable to the “barrel of oil” or the “gallon of gasoline” we’ve all come to know and love and, more importantly, intuitively grasp. The idea here is a number that’s standardized, readily available and easy to grasp. The Economist has its Food Price Index, but WTF …
Back in the late ’80s, Lissa and I were camped along the lower Colorado River somewhere near Blythe. It was winter, but it’s always warm there. Out in the middle of the river, on an island, we watched an enormous bird, just sitting. The bird book and binoculars suggested a great blue heron. Our old …