The Declining High Tech Balance of Trade

As the global economy evolves, the U.S. continues to become a net importer, rather than exporter, of advanced technologies.  Which sectors are “winners”, and which are lagging?  And is there coherence between our performance in international trade, and our national R&D investments?

The omnivore’s stopgap: Self-fertilizing corn

This brainoid popped while reading Michael Pollan’s (compelling) diatribe against the evils of industrialized corn production in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.   Pollan points out that it takes approximately as much fossil fuel energy to grow corn (thanks to industrialized fertilizer production) as the corn yields in food calories, leading to the uncomfortable realization that we’ve fully switched from a solar-based food system to a fossil-fuel based food system.