Statements like: "the 'superbug' that last year destroyed $45 million worth of cotton is now attacking the nation's 42,000-acre supply of winter lettuce, destroying 10% to 20% of the early plantings'' and "It's threatening maybe 50% of the crop and if we don't get some kind of control, lettuce could go up to $2 a head"
Tag - book review
If you drive through the New River Valley region of southwestern Virginia -the Virginia Highland-you will see as beautiful a land as you could ever imagine. A rural land, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains on one side the Alleghenies on another, you'll see rolling hills and gentle valleys, forests on the steep...
One of America's first physicians could not convince his patients that they should pay for his services. They thought it appropriate to pay for the drugs that he supplied, but not for his attention and time. It seemed natural for one person to care about another, not to charge for it. This incident, related in Barbara...
Rapid technological change has in the past been accepted as the quickest and best method for developing a better society. Recently, widespread use of the electronic computer has rekindled the hopes of many people interested in using technology as a force for positive social change. Theodor Nelson's dual book, Computer...
Listen! We just read an incredible book. It's called The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home, and it's by Jonathan Kozol. Kozol demands that we gaze unflinchingly at the source of our feelings of impotence about changing society- the public school system. As Paul Simon once observed, "As I look back on all the crap I...
The question of what makes a woman or a man is not an easy one. Ridiculous, you might say. One can always tell who are the women and who are the men. Well, almost always. It's hard with babies. And with people bundled up in winter clothes. Long hair can be confusing until you see whether the person has a beard (which...
A few years back, a number of public interest groups in Washington got together to launch a "Food Action Campaign" aimed at alerting citizens to the concentrated power of the food industry and its evils. The Campaign called on a few wellknown people with particular credibility to travel around the country spreading...
Consuela Ramos, the brave and spirited woman of the title, is brown, female, fat, and crazy, an unlikely heroine for anything but a Saturday morning affirmative action TV cartoon show. She is as ordinary as any of us, and like so many of us, extraordinary when her story is known. But to the authorities, she is less...
Food For Nought is probably the most comprehensive book available on the subject of food cultivation, food manufacturing, food marketing, and food consumption. Hall, a professor of biochemistry at McMaster College, in Hamilton, Ontario systematically describes how the corporate world, agribusiness, and government work...
What motivates scientists to do tedious experiments, chemical dishwashing, mathematical manipulations that often lead nowhere? An aura of intellectual romance shrouds the scientific world. It hides scientists’ daily routines from public view, and mystifies the reasons they choose the work they do. For most people, the...