[mp3]http://podcast.bogosity.tv/mp3s/BogosityPodcast-2016-01-18.mp3[/mp3]
Co-Host: Chris Hangartner
News of the Bogus:
- 0:33 - In Silk Road Appeal, Ross Ulbricht's Defense Focuses on Corrupt Feds http://www.wired.com/2016/01/ross-ulbrichts-defense-focuses-on-corrupt-feds-in-silk-road-appeal/
- 13:18 - Banning GM Salmon Is a Terrible Idea http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/banning-gm-salmon-is-a-terrible-idea/
- 23:37 - Price Tag of Bernie Sanders's Proposals: $18 Trillion http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-proposals-18-trillion-1442271511
28:30 -
Biggest Bogon Emitter: Jeb Bush http://www.businessinsider.com/jeb-bush-cybersecurity-2016-1
37:12 -
Idiot Extraordinaire: The Department of Justice http://www.justice.gov/usao-mdtn/pr/former-drug-kingpin-serving-multiple-life-sentences-receives-additional-20-year
This Week's Quote: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." —Kenneth Boulding
Organic food is expensive because organic food production is much less efficient in its use of resources. So, if you want to minimize the amount of land under cultivation, don't buy organic. If you want to minimize the amount of water used for irrigation, don't buy organic. And if you give a damn about freshwater fish, don't buy organic potatoes. (Potato blight is a major problem, and there is an 'organic' [the reason for the quotes is fun] treatment for it: Copper sulfate. This inorganic copper salt was used by all farmers before organic chemistry turned out cheap fungicides suitable for protecting potato crops. They also hated it, since in those days most of the spraying equipment was made of steel, and copper sulfate is extremely corrosive to steel, requiring scrupulous cleaning of equipment after use or the equipment would be destroyed. The problem with freshwater fish is that dissolved copper, and copper sulfate is EXTREMELY soluble, is very toxic to aquatic life forms. This is the reason why it's hard to get rid of spent PCB etching solutions, since they're full of dissolved copper and any normal waste water treatment system isn't going to remove it.)
And there's nothing wrong with returning to large commercial farming ventures. As I've said before, the only reason the small-scale, family commercial farm ever happened was the technological anomaly that internal combustion engines hit a temporary power plateau which allowed small tractors suitable for smallish commercial farming, but it was a substantial time later that engines suitable for large tractors developed. In the 19th century, when the only form of mobile engines was the steam tractor, you were constrained for commercial farming to have big operations that could employ the teams of people needed to safely operate these large, complex, and potentially dangerous machines. With modern large tractors, the scale efficiencies are much greater, allowing one farmer to produce enough food for more than sixty people.
Also, forget about the claims of meat production being inefficient. Cattle and pigs are mostly fed stuff humans cannot digest. Grain is only used as primary feed at the end of the growth cycle to put fat on them because we like too much fat in our beef. Range fed cattle are literally taking the role of (the closely related) bison that used to roam the grasslands that aren't suitable for growing crops on without extensive irrigation, and most people like the flavor of the meat of grass-fed cattle better anyway. (If the land was suitable for growing anything but cattle, it would have been used for it since raising beef is one of the lowest profit per acre kinds of farming going.)