A victory for anyone who likes healthy food, soil, and water! Monsanto’s sour plans for the sweet beet were spoiled as a federal judge banned genetically modified sugar beets.
This is great news and hopefully a large step forward to getting food production back on a less toxic track.
For a long time now, I’ve harbored the desire to develop my editorial cartoon inner self. This timely take on the court ruling against Monsanto’s genetically modified sugar beets is a perfect example of why.
This is great news because now renewable energy will seem ‘real’ to the public. I’ve been in the workforce long enough to remember IBM’s entry into the personal computer market, which suddenly bestowed credibility on the product category previously occupied by others without household brand names. Here’s hoping the same phenomena happens with clean renewable energy — quickly.
I believe language matters and this is a great example of a title/headline that will draw in people who might otherwise never consider watching a video on sociology and economics. Ridley’s thesis is well organized and delivered. My favorite lines:
“What we’ve done in human society, through exchange and specialization, we’ve created the ability to do things we don’t even understand. It’s not the same with language. With language we have to transfer ideas that we understand with each other.”
“What’s relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they’re cooperating with each other. Not how clever the individuals are.”
Despite the focus on the centrality of communication and cooperation, with which I could not agree more, I must confess to disappointment with Ridley’s optimism that our collective mind and technology will continue to fuel human progress. Then again, that may be because the two of us understand the meaning of “human progress” in different ways.
This surprises me. Twitter is number 1 with 65% of the world’s top 100 companies having accounts? (Note that in businessland, “top” always means biggest in money measured one way or the other.) While it’s clear that we’re only looking at the quantity of users, not the quality of their use, it just seems as if most large corporations outside the world of consumer goods and services are not active in social media. Perhaps a new social norm is emerging in corporate boardrooms where it’s embarrassing to admit you are not using social media….
Animation of a Hypotrochoid Out Three Fifths made by Sam Derbyshire with MuPAD [source]
Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve relied on the SMOG Readability Calculator (SMOG=Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) for years as a quick check on my writing and readability level for specific audiences. Now the SMOG calculator is combined with other useful resources and tools at the new WordsCount.info site. Check it out.
Word Bit Overflow 
