(i.e. i no longer have a 415 area code number).

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world’s
poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations‘ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men — distributors, processors, even governments — but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

[...]

“If you didn’t have ethanol, you would not have the prices we have today,” said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University.
“It doesn’t mean it’s the sole driver. Prices would be higher than we saw earlier in this decade because world grain supplies are tighter now than earlier in the decade. But we’ve introduced a new demand into the market.”

i am going to make an effort to post more often about life here in puerto. i got chided a few times while i was in the states to blog more frequently, so i apologize for dropping the ball.

“I think it will surprise people that their laptops are subject to search without any level of suspicion when they get to a border checkpoint,” added Jennifer Chacon, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.

“I think it may change the way people travel,” she said.

“When I was Secretary of the Treasury I was not supposed to say anything but `strong dollar, strong dollar,”’ O’Neill said today. “I argued then and would argue now that the idea of a strong dollar policy is a vacuous notion.”

The U.S. currency today fell to a record low against the euro, and has declined 15 percent against its European counterpart in the past year.

“The markets actually have control over those relationships. When people say strong dollar, if they don’t mean that `we believe intervention can work and we’re prepared to intervene,’ then `strong dollar’ is ridiculous.”

(via big picture)

warning: searching google trends can be a little addictive.

according to a nyt article today, philosophy is enjoying a resurgence of popularity on US campuses. i was a philosophy major in school, and i have been saying a lot of the things mentioned in the article in defense of what is often regarded as, in the charitable terms of the writer, “a luxury major”. some of my favorite bits below (i have bolded particularly relevant points):

But Ms. Onejeme, now a senior applying to law school, ended up changing her major to philosophy, which she thinks has armed her with the skills to be successful. “My mother was like, what are you going to do with that?” said Ms. Onejeme, 22. “She wanted me to be a pharmacy major, but I persuaded her with my argumentative skills.” [...]

Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts. [...] “If I were to start again as an undergraduate, I would major in philosophy,” said Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, who majored in mathematics and statistics. “I think that subject is really at the core of just about everything we do. If you study humanities or political systems or sciences in general, philosophy is really the mother ship from which all of these disciplines grow.” [...] David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. “It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,” he said. [...] “The discipline as we see it from the time of Socrates starts with people face to face, putting their positions on the table,” he said. [...] Barry Loewer, the department chairman, said that Rutgers started building its philosophy program in the late 1980s, when the field was branching into new research areas like cognitive science and becoming more interdisciplinary. He said that many students have double-majored in philosophy and, say, psychology or economics, in recent years, and go on to become doctors, lawyers, writers, investment bankers and even commodities traders. As the approach has changed, philosophy has attracted students with little interest in contemplating the classical texts, or what is known as armchair philosophy. Some, like Ms. Onejeme, the pre-med-student-turned-philosopher, who is double majoring in political science, see it as a pre-law track because it emphasizes the verbal and logic skills prized by law schools — something the Rutgers department encourages by pointing out that their majors score high on the LSAT. Other students said that studying philosophy, with its emphasis on the big questions and alternative points of view, provided good training for looking at larger societal questions, like globalization and technology. “All of these things make the world a smaller place and force us to look beyond the bubble we grow up in,” said Christine Bullman, 20, a junior, who said art majors and others routinely took philosophy classes. “I think philosophy is a good base to look at a lot of issues.” Frances Egan, a Rutgers philosophy professor who advises undergraduates, said that as it has become harder for students to predict what specialties might be in demand in an uncertain economy, some may be more apt to choose their major based simply on what they find interesting. “Philosophy is a lot of fun,” said Professor Egan, who graduated with a philosophy degree in the tough economic times of the 1970s. “A lot of students are in it because they find it intellectually rewarding.” Max Bialek, 22, was majoring in math until his senior year, when he discovered philosophy. He decided to stay an extra year to complete the major (his parents needed reassurance, he said, but were supportive). “I thought: Why weren’t all my other classes like that one?” he said, explaining that philosophy had taught him a way of studying that could be applied to any subject and enriched his life in unexpected ways. “You can talk about almost anything as long as you do it well.” Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive. “That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”

and robert reich:

Listen to this morning’s “Meet the Press” if you want an example. Tim Russert, one of the smartest guys on television, interviewed four political consultants – Carville and Matalin, Bob Schrum, and Michael Murphy. Political consultants are paid huge sums to help politicians spin words and avoid real talk. They’re part of the problem. And what do Russert and these four consultants talk about? The potential damage to Barack Obama from saying that lots of people in Pennsylvania are bitter that the economy has left them behind; about HRC’s spin on Obama’s words (he’s an “elitist,” she said); and John McCain’s similarly puerile attack.

Does Russert really believe he’s doing the nation a service for this parade of spin doctors talking about potential spins and the spin-offs from the words Obama used to state what everyone knows is true? Or is Russert merely in the business of selling TV airtime for a network that doesn’t give a hoot about its supposed commitment to the public interest but wants to up its ratings by pandering to the nation’s ongoing desire for gladiator entertainment instead of real talk about real problems.

We’re heading into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more. Many of the Americans who have been getting nowhere for decades are in even deeper trouble. Large numbers of people in Pennsylvania and across the nation are losing their homes and losing their jobs, and the situation is likely to grow worse. Consumers are at the end of their ropes, fuel and food costs are skyrocketing, they can’t go deeper into debt, they can’t pay their bills. They aren’t buying, which means every business from the auto industry to housing to even giant GE is hurting. Which means they’ll begin laying off more people, and as they do, we will experience an even more dangerous downward spiral.

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment – all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

 Costa Rica Fears Iran’s Interest in Region: Bookies Watch Closely

Iran’s interest in Latin America is getting a little too close to home, and we are not necessarily talking about the United States.  The peaceful military-free Central American nation of Costa Rica finds itself surrounded by leftist sympathizers of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Costa Rica has the largest concentration of online gambling operators than any other nation. 

in other news today, it seems like the good ol’ USA, not iran, is having the most success squeezing the online gambling business here, by paying the costa rican government to block their connections to america:

 According to The Tico Times, the United States and Costa Rica have agreed a compensation package after The White House breached of World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations involving online gambling.

The Costa Rican daily newspaper stated that the trade dispute began when the US enacted laws designed to target online gambling, forcing the Central American nation to take the giant from the north to arbitration before the WTO. Under a WTO agreement on services, any country blocking access to one of a range of markets must provide compensation to the affected countries.

As compensation for cutting off Costa Rican access to online gambling customers in America, the US has agreed to offer greater access to other service markets including research and development, storage, technical testing and analysis. This is almost identical to the deal previously worked out between the US and Canada, Japan and the European Union over the same issue.

UPDATE: sorry, the WSJ is apparently a walled garden still. that link turned into a preview (i.e. useless to both you and the WSJ) after i posted it.

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: looks like crossing wall street has most of the article up as quotes.

yeah, i guess that is about it. i have mostly been posting to twitter and the link blog, although i have been thinking about that lately, that i am posting all my updates to outside services now, which seems like something i should evaluate. and by that, i mean start posting things to here more often and to other places less often.

“People here now go beachcombing for miles, they walk until the find packets. Even the lobster fisherman now go out with the pretence of fishing but really they are looking for la langosta blanca - the white lobster.”

It may help you to hear from an outside source — like a couple of psychics, perhaps — that you’re OK. You’re OK! But you’re not in control. You’re not in the driver’s seat. In fact, you don’t even have a driver’s license. Find the strength to find your strength without being in charge

my driver’s license expired today.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

[....]Perhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production. “When you look at environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel, “nearly all of them have their source in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of food production will change dramatically.”

The problem is, people have different views about what’s going wrong. Wall Street sees it as a credit crisis — a mess that seems never to reach bottom because nobody on Wall Street has any idea how many bad loans are out there. Therefore, nobody knows how big the losses are likely to be when the bottom is finally reached. And precisely because nobody knows, nobody wants to lend any more money. A rate cut won’t change this. It’s like offering a 10-pound lobster to someone so constipated he can’t take in another mouthful.