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The Food Issue - An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief - Michael Pollan - NYTimes.com

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Shared by timlauer
Michael Pollan in today's NYTimes magazine on why the next President will need to make food policy a high priority...

Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain.

Why is this "Plan B?"

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Shared by timlauer
Tom Hoffman points to a Washington Post article about DC contract provisions for firing and transferring teachers... provision that have been part of their contract for years...

So Michelle Rhee is going to start enforcing the existing D.C. teacher's union contract's provisions on firing and transferring teachers, in part with administrative support from her foundation friends. Fair enough. What took so long? I mean, what's the point in making big noise about changing the contract if you don't take advantage of the power you've got in the current one?

Knol

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With up to 30% of Google/Yahoo searches returning links to Wikipedia, Google sees an enormous non-adsensed space. The traffic of Wikipedia makes ad providers salivate. To combat this untapped market, Google opted to create a service called Knol, where articles can be written by experts (sometimes). Anyone can create a knol and invite others to contribute. If several people decide to write a knol on elearning, both are allowed to exist. The community can vote and rate article quality. Authors of knols can also add Google's adsense service to the site and make money in the process.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Google is essentially stating that individual ownership of articles is important. How will knols be listed in Google searches? Will they receive better search returns than Wikipedia articles? A part of me would like to dislike this service (how much more of our soul must we give up to Google?). But the idea is well conceived. The service seems to function well, without the hideous editing text of mediawiki. Feedback loops are in place through comments and ratings. The opportunity for economic gain will likely also draw some participants. All those factors combine to suggest Knol has a real chance for success. Currently, the resources on the site are quite scarce, however.

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