interesting story on how coal mines don't try to minimize impurity. relevant for setting SLAs

Health professionals also reject the claim that organic food is safer to eat due to lower pesticide residues. Food and Drug Administration surveys have revealed that the highest dietary exposures to pesticide residues on foods in the United States are so trivial (less than one one-thousandth of a level that would cause toxicity) that the safety gains from buying organic are insignificant.

the more advanced our productivity enhancements become, the less we are able to find jobs for replaced workers.

Ross Gittins is pretty much my hero. "Stop crying poor and fix the mess" via @smh_news

funny, but good!

ross gittins laying the smackdown, again

Most of us are pounding away on this hedonic treadmill, as psychologists call it, and all our economists and politicians can think to do is help us run faster.

Mr. Miller endorses mass media and most of the fruits of marketing and globalization. He makes the extravagant claim that "American and French revolutions brought the marketing concept to politics long before it gained a toehold in business." He writes that "marketing zealots might even take the view that the marketing revolution renders most of Marx irrelevant: What meaning could 'alienation' and 'exploitation' have when businesses work so hard to fulfill our desires as consumers?"

The conclusions of "Spent" are mostly sensible, but they aren't radical. Mr. Miller occasionally says, Wait a minute. Let's think this through. He believes that because of evolutionary adaptations, we are a little too hard-wired to buy goods and services that advertise our sexual fitness, often needlessly: Bling really can be overdone. Children especially are vulnerable to the lures of marketing and their parents should do a better job of reining them in.