Archive for February, 2010

Through the Looking Glass: Adventures in Landgrant Land

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Through the Looking Glass: Adventures
in Landgrant Land
-         Karl North, 5-09
“If Alice were reborn in these times, she would not need to step through the mirror; it would suffice that she lean out the window.” – Eduardo Galeano

Once upon a time in a faraway empire, a land so prosperous it overflowed with gmo milk, [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part Two

Monday, February 15th, 2010

General Problem Areas in Sustainable Agricultural Design
In Part One of this series, I noted that providing for the local food needs of urban populations requires a design that integrates three overlapping categories of production systems: urban agriculture systems (many small islands of gardening in the city center), peri-urban agriculture (larger production areas on the immediate [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part One

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Visioning County Food Production
by Karl North
“Because energies and monies for research, development, and thinking are abundant only during growth and not during energy leveling or decline, there is a great danger that means for developing the steady state will not be ready when they are needed, which may be no more than 5 years away [...]

Economics as brain damage

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Economics as Brain Damage*
Karl North 2004
On the first day of my first formal introduction to economics as an undergraduate, the professor defined the discipline as the scientific study of the distribution of scarce resources. But the course from then on was concerned only with such matters as market variables like supply and demand, and market [...]