I spent a good while catching up on current affairs Monday during my flight back from Chicago. I was armed with The Economist and the Times, and later, a pen to notate and underline and circle, as I was so taken by some of the shocking statistics. I seemed to gravitate towards an inordinate number of weighty articles documenting the distress of those less well-off.

First up: The Economist’s cover story about the rising price of food worldwide, and its subsequent effect on poorer countries. There are too many far-reaching implications so I’ll just focus on its relevance to America. The main reason for price increases can be attributed to the growing demand for ethanol. Ethanol is an alternative to fuel – championed, particularly by the Bush admin, to reduce America’s dependency on oil from the Middle East.

Much of the corn that was formerly grown for our consumption is now being diverted to fuel the production of ethanol. As a result, we are producing less corn for both our nation, and our importers. Connection 1 leads to connection 2 leads to connection 3 (sorry, I’m too lazy to summarize), and eventually you have this:

“As Gary Becker, a Nobel economics laureate at the University of Chicago, points out, if food prices rise by one-third, they will reduce living standards in rich countries by about 3%, but in very poor ones by over 20%.”

The above is quite telling, and is one of the reasons why I believe ethanol is not the way to go. Our preoccupation with alleviating our own problems inadvertently (or not) harms poorer nations. In addition, environmentalists already say that its production causes more pollution than that of regular gasoline – one Cal study found that it takes up 29% more energy than it provides. All in all, no good.

Wow this is long. I guess I won’t be getting into the other ones I read. One thing though – I need to find a Republican news source. This isn’t saying that I’m a conservative, but I feel like everything I read is muckraking journalism, screaming LIBERAL. BLUE. DONKEY. HEE-HAW. Ha. It’s good to be balanced.

Something more lighthearted:

“Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.”

Mike Huckabee avoids discussing Jesus’s view of the death penalty at a presidential debate, Florida, November 28th

I want to like him because he’s funny…

This made me smile.

Girls Make History By Sweeping Top Honors At Science Contest

The winner of first prize in the team category had created “a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria”; the winner of first prize in the individual category studied “bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do.”

I can’t even paraphrase their accomplishments as described by the article, because I don’t know anything about either subject.

16 and 17-year olds? Awesome. Girls? Even sweeter.