“Don’t listen to your children,” advises Catherine Wallace of Skokie in U.S. Catholic (January). “Let them be in their own worlds, undisturbed. It is not healthy for persons the age of parents to get involved in arguments about what kind of birthday cake the Care Bears should make for He-Man.”
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News you won’t hear from environmentalists. Are we wearing out the earth? According to a recent press release from MIT Press, economist and agricultural historian Peter Lindert of the University of California at Davis has measured changes in soil productivity over long periods in China and Indonesia, two countries that have been widely criticized for their agricultural practices. He found that “human mismanagement is not on average worsening the soil quality in China and Indonesia. Human cultivation lowers soil nitrogen and organic matter, but has offsetting positive effects,” including increasing other nutrients. The use of soil-preserving crops and better practices may also help.
No, you eat the dried gherkins. According to a recent press release from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, business professor Brian Wansink has found that as much as 12 percent of all groceries that people buy end up as “cabinet castaways” and are never used.
