I love stories like this from Cracked about unsung heroes who saved the world.

It’s interesting, of course, to see the usual anti-Green-Revolution trolls slamming Norman Borlaug. Apparently, we’d be better off with a billion or two dead people and a lot more wars. It’s amazing how much green bullshit has infiltrated certain minds. The Green Revolution produces more food with less resources that traditional farming. And as a side effect, a more certain food supply has produced declining birth rates.

I’m also glad to see more attention going to Henrietta lacks. Her story is both inspiring and disgraceful. Inspiring in that this woman accidently saved so many lives. Disgraceful in that no credit was ever given to her until recently.

Update: It’s worth linking up two recent articles on farming. Foreign policy points out that Africa is realizing a fraction of their food potential thanks to their reticence to use modern farming and Reason points out a recent study claiming that biotech crops improve the environment.

Megan McArdle has the idea of going to your Amazon history and seeing what the first thing you ordered was.

Apparently, I did not mess around. I ordered:

Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? : Baseball, Cooperstown, and the Politics of Glory by Bill James. This is still the gold standard for HOF discussions and I re-read bits of it frequently.

The Law by Frederic Bastiat. This is one of the books that has guided my political philosophy.

The Tenth Insight : Holding the Vision : Further Adventures of the Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. This was a gift for my sister, who is into new-age crap.

The Death of Common Sense : How Law Is Suffocating America by Philip K. Howard. Howard is someone conservatives should pay more attention to. He’s a progressive who believes in government and is incredibly frustrated with the way it is hamstrung by too many rules, too little authority and no accountability. It isn’t often I site a progressive as a big influence, but Howard is.

The Crying of Lot 49 : A Novel (Perennial Fiction Library) by Thomas Pynchon. Read on the advice of my English major girlfriend of the time. Not a bad read.

Lost Rights : The Destruction of American Liberty by James Bovard. Bovard is a radical libertarian even by my standard. But he has credibility on the subject since he has gone after both Democrats and Republicans. A compilation of constitutional abuses that is enraging. This is a big part of the reason I am against the War on Drugs and was instantly suspicious of the excesses in the War on Terror.

Slow Learner : Early Stories by Thomas Pynchon. A gift for said English major girlfriend.

Fear and Loathing : On the Campaign Trail 72 by Hunter S. Thompson. Kind of long but an interesting insight into the ’72 election from a radical liberal.

Looking over that list, I must say that I hit the jackpot on my first Amazon order. Of the five books I ordered for myself, all were good and at least three have been critical to my thinking.