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Tuesday, April 01, 2003
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Kirby Fry writes: Natural farming is a simple notion really, it embraces the philosophy of, "do as little as possible." It is a realm where Nature is the master gardener and human decision making plays a minor role. It acknowledges Nature to be the whole from which we were created and the whole which has sustained us since that creation. Instead of asking what extra activities we can do to "improve" upon Nature, to grow better food, we should be asking what don't we need to do. It is as simple as that and as profound as a new understanding of self and Nature. If someone proved to us that digging, weeding, fertilizing, pest control and pruning were not necessary to grow food would we continue to do so? A Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, has indeed demonstrated to agronomists around the world that these activities are not necessary. For over fifty years he has achieved surplus yields of rice, barley, plums, citrus fruits and vegetables by means of natural farming. Fukuoka is the author of, The One Straw Revolution, The Natural Way of Farming, and The Road Back to Nature. During the 1970's and 1980's he taught his methods of natural farming across the United States, Europe and Africa and is living today on his farm in Japan. Throughout his travels and in his writings he cautions that the true and persisting cause of desertification and blights is man's perceived separation from Nature. This perception has most strongly manifested itself in the form of agriculture resulting in the steady erosion of biological diversity and soils. The remedy to what ails us will not be found through scientific discovery nor a return to traditional agriculture, but lies waiting to be discovered within ourselves and in our relationship with Nature. (04/01/03) | |
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Heather Pringle writes: When did humans first arrive at the concept of money? What conditions spawned it? And how did it affect the ancient societies that created it? Until recently, researchers thought they had the answers. They believed money was born, as coins, along the coasts of the Mediterranean in the seventh or sixth century B.C., a product of the civilization that later gave the world the Parthenon, Plato, and Aristotle. But few see the matter so simply now. With evidence gleaned from such disparate sources as ancient temple paintings, clay tablets, and buried hoards of uncoined metals, researchers have revealed far more ancient money: silver scraps and bits of gold, massive rings and gleaming ingots. In the process, they have pushed the origins of cash far beyond the sunny coasts of the Mediterranean, back to the world's oldest cities in Mesopotamia, the fertile plain created by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. There, they suggest, wealthy citizens were flaunting money at least as early as 2500 B.C. and perhaps a few hundred years before that. "There's just no way to get around it," says Marvin Powell, a historian at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb. "Silver in Mesopotamia functions like our money today. It's a means of exchange. People use it for a storage of wealth, and they use it for defining value." (04/01/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- Not many people regard the Clark Fork, which combines with the Blackfoot just out of town, the same way. In a state known for pristine rivers, the Clark Fork has been poisoned by years of mining the copper deposits that gave the area around Butte the nickname the Richest Hill on Earth. The state, however, may recover the clean free-flowing river that it lost more than 100 years ago, though just how clean is a matter of dispute. After years of study, the Environmental Protection Agency will soon release a $90 million to $100 million plan to reclaim the waterway over the next 10 years or so. The E.P.A. has also said it favors an additional $90 million plan that will remove a dam on the waterway that has more than six million cubic yards of toxic sediment lodged behind it. The expensive cleanup "makes amends for the Richest Hill on Earth," said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition, a group that has pressed state and federal agencies since 1985 to require an aggressive cleanup. "People wrote this river off, but the Clark Fork has the potential to be a world class trout stream." (04/01/03) | |
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BBC NEWS: Science -- Eating certain foods together, such as chicken and broccoli or salmon and watercress could help to fight cancer, say researchers. Combining two food components called sulforaphane and selenium make them up to 13 times more powerful in attacking cancer together than they are alone, they suggested. The discovery could mean it could be possible to design special cancer-fighting foods or diets. (4/01/03) | |
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New York Times -- Since the start of the war in Iraq, many veterans of the Persian Gulf war say, they have begun a mission of their own. Fretfully, obsessively and suspiciously, they watch this new war unfold and recall what they went through a decade ago: recurrent medical problems, bureaucratic headaches and a tough transition back to their former lives. This time, they say, they are determined to find ways to ease the transition for veterans returning from the war in Iraq. "The biggest problem I've been having is watching history repeat itself," said Jim Brown, 39, a mechanic in the Army's 10th Mountain Division in 1991. Despite flashbacks and anxiety attacks since the start of the new war, Mr. Brown says, he keeps his television tuned to coverage and listens to radio news when he drives. "I'm interested in watching to make sure no mistakes are made," said Mr. Brown, who lives in Gastonia, N.C., about 20 miles west of here. "That is the highest calling of any veteran." For many 1991 veterans watching from the sidelines, the new war has brought painful memories and conflicting feelings. The veterans say they fret not only about this country's mission in Iraq but also about their own responsibilities to a younger generation of soldiers facing battle for the first time. (04/01/03) | |
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New York Times: Local -- New Yorkers could use a little good news right now. Well, here's some. The reservoirs that supply New York City with drinking water are full. This is the first time the reservoirs have reached capacity since April 2001. The city lifted its drought restrictions in early January, but somehow the brimming of the reservoirs, which was announced last week by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, feels even more momentous. Not only are the reservoirs fuller than they usually are this time of year, but there is still more runoff to come. Weather is weather, and it should carry no symbolic importance, wet or dry. But that's not how the human imagination works. We live our lives in the temperate valley between too much and not enough, and so we tend to take either extreme — flood or drought — as a form of punishment. And it has been remarkably dry. This time a year ago, New York City was nearing the end of the driest six months on record in Central Park, and last summer did us no favors either. It is some kind of balm that the news of full reservoirs seems to come to us as a reminder of a time, not all that long ago, when the world felt like a different place. (04/01/03) | |
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BBC News -- Hong Kong sealed off an apartment block on Monday after residents were reported to have been infected with the SARS virus. (03/31/03) | |
5:11:42 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
5/1/2003; 8:14:09 AM.
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