Can Open-Source Models Decode Urban Agriculture?

I was planning on doing a little gardening this year. Probably nothing massive but this info and the blog associated with it are interesting reading.

Also cool is the open source ecology project, which plans to create blueprints for machines that can sustain civilization. Frankly, that’s just genius and if we weren’t such a market-driven pack of vultures, this would have been around a long time ago.

To young voters, socialism isn’t a bad word – The Boston Globe

Here’s the problem with conservatives. Well, there are many, many problems, but here’s a bad marketing decision.

In their hatred of having a black President, they’ve taken to calling him a socialist (or whatever) because they can’t openly call him the N word.

It sells well with the “we hate education” crowd. However, it is falling flat dead with young voters.

Why?

Well, one, a lot of them are in college and can actually learn what words like socialism, communism, and fascism mean. They can see communist China using capitalism to kick our ass economically. They see semi-socialist parts of Europe recovering from the Great Recession and having 32 hour work weeks, a paid year off or two for maternity leave, five weeks of vacation, and health care and great infrastructure.

Then they see the US with crumbling this or not and a bank/government/corporate scandal or theft every few days. And aside from the President and his party all they see are Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and company making common cause with racist anti-government militias a la McVeigh.

What the hell kind of conclusion do you expect them to make other than conservatives are lunatics more in line with the Taliban than with them?