![\"clip_image002\"](\"http:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/clip_image0024.gif\" "\\"clip_image002\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nToday\u2019s Wall Street Journal has an article by a Ph.D. candidate named Adrienne Rose Johnson \u201cFor the Starving, \u2018Eat Local\u2019 Isn\u2019t an Option,\u2019 which points out the day of the local self sufficient community is over, and the way the world feeds itself is through shipping food from vast plantations and feeding ranches all over the world. http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702303670804579233921148739770<\/a><\/p>\n The \u2018developed\u2019 world pretty well feeds itself and doesn\u2019t have famines. Local pasturage isn\u2019t particularly green, either: the transportation energy is less than the energy savings from mass production, or so she says and my back of the envelope calculations don\u2019t contradict that. Toward the end of this she says <\/p>\n Hunger is an issue that requires a mature social conscience and political will to look beyond the garden into the global. According to the United Nations World Food Program, 842 million people in the world don’t have enough to eat. Nearly all of these people\u2014827 million\u2014live in developing countries, where 14.3% of the population is undernourished. Some 66 million primary school-age children "attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone," according to the U.N. organization. It calculates that $3.2 billion is needed per year to reach all 66 million of these hungry school-age children.<\/p>\n In this global sense, the often-heard eat-local slogan of "vote with a fork" is well-intentioned but na\u00efve. It doesn’t satisfy our moral obligations as global citizens. If you want to cast a food-related vote, find a candidate talking about global hunger and do it at the ballot box. <\/p>\n What struck me in reading this was the use of the term \u201cdeveloping countries\u201d and \u201cdeveloping world.\u201d I can recall in my graduate political science classes that while the newspapers used terms like \u201cunderdeveloped\u201d and \u201cimpoverished\u201d and \u201cprimitive\u201d and \u201cUnproductive\u201d for such places, it was considered more polite to call them \u201cdeveloping\u201d countries.<\/p>\n I went along with this, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea. It may make people in primitive countries feel better to be called \u2018developing\u2019 but it doesn\u2019t do much for development. I recall many years ago being interested when the Old Regime of Tubman and his True Whig Party offered a huge chunk of 5\u00b0N latitude land to be developed into a space port. His only requirement was that companies that came in to exploit the area build schools for the children of all the workers, and establish some other basic government services and law and order. Liberia at the time was governed by the descendents of freed slaves who had been sent back to Africa to a colony established by the US and was, if slowly, definitely a \u201cdeveloping\u201d country. In 1980 an army sergeant overthrew the government and the country descended into civil war that has only recently ended, and much of the previous development was gone.<\/p>\n At the time \u2013 the 1970\u2019s \u2013 I studied some of the governments of Africa, most of which were kleptocracies which liked to be called \u2018developing\u2019 but all too often the only things developed were overseas bank accounts for the ruling classes. Needless to say it was considered racist to refer to these places as primitive, uncivilized, or even under-developed. \u2018Developing\u2019 was the satisfactory word even if there were no visible signs of development.<\/p>\n Development seems largely to consist of transfers of food from productive countries to the \u2018developing\u2019 countries. In the old colonial days the theory at least was that tribal societies would become civilized through law and order and education; compulsory education was tried in some places but generally could not be afforded, but there were schools for those who wanted to go to school. As I said earlier, under the True Whig government in Liberia, a condition of foreign investment was that the children of anyone employed in Liberia be given an education and at least nominal \u2013 sometimes quite good \u2013 medical care. There were often medical technician apprenticeship education facilities as part of the health care program. All that is gone, but the Liberian officials I talked to were well educated and referred to their country as primitive but developing \u2013 and they had a definition of developing. They hoped in a few generations to have 75% literacy in the country\u2026<\/p>\n I did manage to interest some investors in a venture to exploit Liberian resources as part of a construction of a space port \u2013 there are considerable advantages to a near equatorial launch site, and the region was suitable as a test station for a receiver for space solar power \u2013 but all that was wasted when a tribal revolt insisting on one man one vote (which turned out to be once) brought all that to an end, and Liberia went from \u2018developing\u2019 to \u2018war torn\u201d. At least there hadn\u2019t been a lot of investment yet.<\/p>\n Unlike Ms. Johnson, I am very much in favor of local truck gardens and food production, but that\u2019s really a topic for another time. I had a hydroponics greenhouse in the back yard at Chaos Manor until Hammer made us enough money to afford a swimming pool.<\/p>\n My friend Ron Unz has an odd theory: that raising the minimum wage would allow cutting welfare benefits. http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/12\/03\/the-minimum-wage-cure-for-illegal-immigration\/<\/a> My own view is that minimum wages destroy employment opportunities for the unskilled and inexperienced, and it won\u2019t matter if you raise minimum wages because you\u2019ll never be able to cut entitlements to suit, but Ron is a very intelligent guy and worth listening to. I\u2019ll try to work up an analysis, but I can\u2019t believe Unz will convert me to his view.<\/p>\n caps lock key tone<\/strong><\/p>\n You said: I was able to go into the accessibility settings and set the tone for CAPS LOCK .<\/p>\n How did you do that, where are the ‘accessibility settings’ ?<\/p>\n thanks<\/p>\n JG<\/p>\n John Galt<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Make The Keyboard Easier to Use > Turn on Toggle Keys<\/p>\n It used to be under Accessibility which had a wheelchair icon but that route is gone. Turn on the toggle. Do NOT DO ANYHING ELSE or if you do, write down what you did. The toggle to tone ought to work as soon as applied and needs no reset. When you hit the Caps Lock key a tone sounds. Hit it again and a tone sounds when you turn it off. There are other settings in there, some useful, but beware. There is a way to make the keyboard invisible to the computer after the password is typed in; I don\u2019t know how I did it or how I turned it off, and I am not going to experiment to find out how to do it again. <\/p>\n FYI, obviously not something to post.<\/p>\n You quote Obama as making his transparency statement on January 31, 2009.<\/p>\n I had occasion to quote this today, and I (almost) never quote without attribution. I found the statement explicitly near the end of Obama’s January 21 (twenty-first), 2009 welcoming address to staff. I cannot find it documented as being said on January 31.<\/p>\n Here’s the source:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/remarks-president-welcoming-senior-staff-and-cabinet-secretaries-white-house<\/a><\/p>\n Today’s Frank & Ernest cartoon addresses the issue at<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.gocomics.com\/frankandernest\/2013\/12\/03<\/a><\/p>\n Best regards,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Well, I don\u2019t have the location of my source, but there was one, with date, that I considered satisfactory. He has famously said this more than once, and it is not an atypical promise from Mr. Obama. It hasn\u2019t worked out that way. Thanks for the information, but on consideration I do not consider it unfair to leave it up there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lamarck and Lysenko<\/strong><\/p>\n experience modifies genes<\/strong><\/p>\n hi Jerry,<\/p>\n This article about passing an aversion to smell onto offspring shows some of the first evidence that evolution is not completely random.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/health-25156510<\/a><\/p>\n Jeff Marshall<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This may be the most important genetic data since the discovery of DNA. It is nothing less than evidence for some of the Lamarckian hypothe<\/a>sis of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The last important advocate of that was Lysenko. If acquired characteristics can be inherited, then the mechanism of evolution changes dramatically.<\/p>\n We know that social characteristics can be \u201cinherited\u201d in villages \u2013 my cocktail party theory of the role dogs played in the evolution of human intelligence is an example, and I only call it a cocktail party theory because I haven\u2019t the time to make a formal investigation and defense of the theory \u2013 but that only explains why there have been such rapid developments in humans.<\/p>\n We have certainly not heard the last of this discovery.<\/p>\n Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. <\/p>\n View 801 Tuesday, December 03, 2013 \u201cTransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.\u201d President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009 Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave. Syrian Freedom Fighters What we have now is all we will ever have. Conservationist motto \u2026 Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"