John Oliver on corn for National Food Day

Happy National Food Day! I'm celebrating today by sharing Corn: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).

John Oliver discusses the financial and environmental impact of corn in the U.S., and whether or not he really knows what Pearl Harbor is.

I chose this video in part because this episode is nominated for Variety Series at the Environmental Media Association (EMA) Awards. It's between Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Real Time with Bill Maher. I'm rooting for Oliver over Maher, but both are HBO series, so HBO wins no matter what.

I also picked this because corn has been a major topic of my National Food Day series, going back ten years to 2014's Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet and most recently in My students are watching 'King Corn' for extra credit on National Food Day 2020. Oliver used clips from King Corn in this segment.

Normally, I'd answer the corn questions from the Food, Inc. worksheet, but I did that ten years ago, so I'm not doing it again. Instead, I tell my students that corn, along with E. coli, can be used for examples of three of Commoner's Laws, everything is connected to everything else, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and everything must go somewhere. Excess fertilizer washing off of corn fields causing dead zones works for all three.

While I've been skeptical about corn for fuel since the first year of the blog, I'm even more doubtful about it now. Seeing that it is the number one use of dense corn, although not the majority, is something I suspected but now know for sure. That's a statistic I can tell my students. Also, I did not know that growing corn for fuel has a larger carbon footprint than the equivalent amount of gasoline. It's a good day when I learn something new, and that makes today a good day, even if it's about something bad for the environment.

That concludes today's holiday entry. Stay tuned as I return to spooky season all the way to Day of the Dead.

PBS Digital's 'Be Smart' explains 'The Surprising Origins of Thanksgiving Foods'

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers! Yesterday, I celebrated the day early with marching bands. Today, I'm observing the holiday with science and history from PBS Digital's "Be Smart" explaining The Surprising Origins of Thanksgiving Foods.

I’m thankful for science. And also pie.
...
When it comes to interesting science, I always go back for seconds!

Also, I am thankful for all of you this year.

I echo all of Joe's sentiments.


The capsule history of corn reminded me that tomorrow is National Maize Day. Watch National Maize Day is celebrated a day after Thanksgiving by On This Day.


That's great narration; only the pause after the U in U.S. made me think a computer synthesized it instead of a human speaking it.

Stay tuned for Buy Nothing Day, which should be another tale of the Retail Apocalypse.

"We eat a lot of oil"

I'm showing "The End of Suburbia" to my students this week, which means it's time to update the Guide to entries that contain answers to "The End of Suburbia."  For this semester, I'm following through on a promise I made in a comment on the latter entry last semester.

I need to write about fossil fuel use in agriculture, a topic covered by Questions 14-16 for "The End of Suburbia" and Question 28 for "Food, Inc." Stay tuned.

Follow over the jump for the four questions and the answers in the same style as Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet.

On 'Weimar America' with The Archdruid and his readers

I know I promised to post my observations on Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center at the end of The Archdruid on Fascism, part 1, that's going to take a while to put together.  Instead, I'm going to jump ahead to a thread from Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America, in which I riffed on the title.

"Weimar America" is a phrase that is becoming more and more popular, with more than 4000 hits for links that use that exact phrase and millions of hits for links that use both in the same text.  The first page of Google returns results from such reputable sources at Salon, The New Republic, and The American Conservative--oh, and you, too.  All of them seem to be from the current decade.  It's a meme that is in definitely in the air.

Greer isn't the only collapse/Peak Oil blogger to invoke the Weimar Republic.  Kunstler has done so twice, first in We're Weimar and again in Weimar meets Waterloo.  He also freaked out over Sarah Palin as Memorial Day: Enter Hitler, Release 2.0 in his own warning of Fascist takeover, but that's a topic for another day.  Besides, he was wrong.  Back to Greer, whose response struck me as surprisingly hopeful.

Pinku-sensei, that's one of the few reassuring things I can think of about all this. If a phrase like that has become part of the standard rap of the chattering classes, we probably don't have to worry about it as much.

Dwig followed up to both of us by listing the sources for the use of the phrase.

Out of curiosity, I did a search for it. Here's a few of the sites, with ideological labels attached, based on what I saw at the sties. (Yes, I know, don't put much weight on them, but it does give a pretty good indication that it's not just one group's obsession.)

    - alternet.org: liberal
    - libertyunyielding.com/: conservative
    - truthdig.com: liberal
    - prorevnews.blogspot.com: progressive
    - newrepublic.com: conservative
    - attackthesystem.com: pan-anarchism
    - hnn.us: history news network
    - swordattheready.wordpress.com: christian right
    - theamericanconservative.com: what it says

The New Republic is more liberal or centrist than conservative, but otherwise it's a good analysis of the sources.

Greer appreciated the list, writing "Dwig, fascinating. Thanks for the leads."  I hope all my readers found them useful, too.

I'll return in the future with more on The Archdruid on Fascism and the future, including comments on what constitutes Left and Right, observations on his scenario of a fascist takeover, and an aside on the LaRouche movement.  Given the way I operate, I'll probably get to that last one first.  LaRouche's disciples are in the news this election season, including a return engagement of the one I encountered in A-10s on parade.  Stay tuned.