The Way Of The Future

High gas prices drive farmer to switch to mules
MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny [...]

Life Is Not All Marshmallow Fluff; There’s Spam Too

Spam: Sales rise as consumers trim food costs:
Love it, hate it or laugh at it — at least it’s inexpensive.
Sales of Spam — that much maligned meat — are rising as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets.
What was once cheeky, silly and the [...]

Entering The Age Of Marshmallow Fluff

You know the pantry is getting bare when you’re down to the jar of marshmallow fluff. That happens at food pantries too:
The Emergency Food Bank of Stockton, which operates out of a cavernous warehouse at the fringe of town, now finds customers lining up several hours before it opens at 10 a.m.
That’s because, clients say, [...]

Grease Becoming A Slick Investment

Interesting story the other day in the Chicago Tribune on grease:
In the era of alternative fuels, grease is turning into a pretty slick investment.
Restaurants increasingly are being paid for their used cooking oil, icky stuff that historically they’ve had to pay to have hauled away. And sales of kits that allow diesel-powered cars to run [...]

If We Had The Luxury Of Sarcasm…

If we had the luxury of sarcasm when it comes to peak oil, I might read the comments on posts like this and say something like:
Syzgus is right – the idea that oil is finite is absolutely ludicrous. And nice touch pointing to the federal government finding those massive reserves in North Dakota. Good thing [...]

Know When To Walk Away…

Someone asked an interesting question, “It would seem obvious that it wouldn’t be proper to profit from owning a morally reprobate stock, e.g. Playboy. What about profiting from the demise of a morally reprobate stock, e.g. Selling Short, Put Options, etc.?”
Here’s some brief thoughts on that question.
Put options would involve contracting with someone for [...]

Tick Tock

Those folks at Path To Freedom sure are inspiring… last year they produced over 6,000 pounds of produce on a tenth of an acre in urban Pasadena. How’d your garden do?

We’ve got a ways to go – but we’re working on it. While progress is slow, there is discernible progress.
Food is a big [...]

Sunday Is For Spreading Good News

What good news are we spreading to the world on Sundays?
So Larry Miller, the owner of the Utah Jazz and a Mormon, will not attend Jazz games on the Sabbath. He profits from these games considerably, but never mind. He will drive to some forsaken part of Utah, just to avoid the temptation of [...]

Joe Stockowner As Absentee Landlord

Absentee owners, often innocent shareholders who invest through ever-changing portfolios so they have no idea whether they own nuclear weapons or socks, kill thousands with coal dust, asbestos, or chemical clouds, while at home in their tidy suburb they wear “Save the Planet” buttons and separate their trash. — Ferenc Mate
Oh the curse of [...]

Fancy That

I’m not a fan of Churchill by any stretch of the imagination, but I saw this quote recently and thought it was good:
Fancy cutting down all those lovely trees to make pulp for bloody newspapers and calling it civilization. — Winston Churchill, 1929
But the Cult of Capitalism keeps heaping sacrilege upon sacrilege, as pointed out [...]