Credit: aharoni. Via BK.

Yes, actions speak louder than words. Although I’m fond of the written word, little comes from words alone. Interpreting the world isn’t the same as changing it. But words can help. Particularly when they channel a passion for change. And particularly when they make you laugh. Two pieces have come my way that check all the boxes. The first is from Sean Boudoin, the wordsmith whose jokes out-Colberted Colbert (or would have, had I the chance to deliver them). He has a new column at The Nervous Breakdown that looks like it’ll be required reading. Check it out here. The second is a terrific piece from William Greider, whose book Come Home America is on my bookstand, and about whom I’ll be praising in more detail soon. For now, though, here’s his piece about Larry Summers entitled, accurately I think, Professor Pants On Fire.

Following up on previous posts, here’s an editorial from the good people at Scientific American, who see a strong similarity between contemporary marketing of fatty foods and the misdeeds of the tobacco industry. More below the fold. Keep Reading »

Just in case you were wondering, the volcano in Iceland is an anarchist. A fine article from the Reykjavík Grapevine.

A fascinating academic article has been circulating recently, comparing the energy it takes to run a conventional farm with that required on an organic one. If you’re interested in the ‘real’ costs that go into your food, then the cost and benefits of energy use should certainly be high up there. And this study delivers. What makes it particularly good is the resolution of the information – over 1.25 million data points over six years, from the Land Institute’s Sunshine Farm. What they find is that organic farming is more energy efficient than conventional farming, when all variables are taken into account.

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On 7th April, Alan Greenspan appeared before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to explain what happened. He testified that he “was right 70% of the time and wrong 30% of the time.” That’s great. He spends 70% of his day asleep, eating, pooping, and commuting. It’s hard to screw these things up. Which suggests that the screw-uppy 30% was limited to those parts of the day when he was sitting in front of a desk making monetary policy.

I’ve written about the Casey-Lugar Act – a Trojan horse for Big Ag interests – before, here and here. The latest push to bring sanity to the bill is a call from over one hundred scientists and development experts from around the world, whose dissection of the bill’s inadequacies is sharp, concise, and below the fold. Keep Reading »

Two of the US’s finest heterodox economists have done us all a favour. Radhika Balakrishnan and James Heintz have knitted together the seemingly disparate topics of the financial crisis and human rights, showing how the two are linked and why rights have for too long been scandalously absent from discussions about the economy. It’s readable, rigorous and, above all, right. More below the fold. Keep Reading »

It was a seminal moment. For the first time, breaking all convention, Ronald turned to the TV cameras and addressed himself to his viewers directly. It had never been done before, and it set off a revolution the consequences of which we still struggle to fight. When Ronald Reagan ended his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1979 with “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”, his media savvy changed mass politics forever.

But long before that, another Ronald messed with mass communications no less indelibly, paving the way for today’s politicians and pundits. Appropriately, the first Ronald was a clown. In 1963, sixteen years before Reagan’s fateful piece to camera, Ronald McDonald broke every rule in advertising when he turned to the lens and stunned children by speaking to them directly, saying:

“Here I am kids. Hey, isn’t watching TV fun? Especially when you got delicious McDonald’s hamburgers. I know we’re going to be friends too cause I like to do everything boys and girls like to do. Especially when it comes to eating those delicious McDonald’s hamburgers.”

It’s easy both to wince at how crass this sounds, and to overlook its audacity. With entire TV channels premised on direct marketing to children, it seems impossible that there might have been a time where kids were considered anything other than shorter, louder, more pestering versions of adult consumers. But it wasn’t always thus. It took a canny cabal of admen to tap the pockets of a newly affluent generation of youngsters. They wanted to redefine the frontiers of what advertising in television age could be. And they succeeded. Keep Reading »