LifeItself

My dear friend, poet, writer, farmer, and a sterling human being, Wendell Berry, was just recognized with the 2010 National Humanities Medal.  This medal could not have gone to a better person. But do not take my word for it, please read Wendell's books, including the latest one on economics. Here is the forward to this book, "What Matters?" by Herman Daly, one of a handful of economists, who actually know what they are talking about without hiding behind gobbledygook, senseless non-physical equations, and meaningless quasi-religious ideology.

Our society, like a novel lunatic, needs bad ideas, so that our collective craziness can have shape and direction.  Biofuels are one of such brazenly bad ideas that have crystallized a bunch of lunatic government policies and attracted other, completely unrelated lunatics. All these lunatics became friends of biofuels. "Ideas on Earth," observed Kilgore Trout, "were badges of friendship or enmity.  Their content did not matter.  Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness.  Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity."  And so it goes. Unfortunately, there were more bad news for the imaginary "advanced biofuels."  These no doubt miraculous, but yet undiscovered substances seem to fall into the domain of dot-con ventures sponsored by the fabulously well-to-do ventriloquists.  [Ventriloquy, is an act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is...