With two questions already asked, we might as well get to some answers. And both questions are good ones. But before we do, we’ll start with the unavoidable fact that gardening is always experimental. The variables from year-to-year and even yard-to-yard are great enough that there’s no such thing as a guarantee. That might turn some people off, but it’s the greatest attraction for me. What could be better than a field wherein a lifetime of learning only scratches the surface and there’s always more to know and try?

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First, the official response:

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The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford
Makers, by Cory Doctorow

Years ago, when we lived in the middle of New Jersey, I managed to get myself elected to the local school board, mostly by accident. This wasn’t exactly the plan—it was the incumbents, and me, and I just did it so that there would be a contested election. To my surprise, I got elected. And one of the first things I got to do, after dealing with the budget that got voted down that year for the first time in living memory, and the proposal to get rid of the German teacher (which passed), was deal with the proposal to get rid of the shop program and replace it with something that had “technology” in whatever the rubric was, presumably because everyone in the shop classes was now going to become a “knowledge worker.” I spoke against the plan, but I think I lost the argument, which was not unusual. I voted to keep the German teacher, and that didn’t work out either. Full Story »

Those of you living in the South may already be at full speed in putting your garden out, but with D.C. predicting 20 inches of snow (which apparently requires apocalypse level preparation) and the still non-robotic groundhog predicting six more weeks of winter, most of us are in the seed catalog browsing stage of gardening. Soon enough – we hope – the ground will be workable; the sun will start turning necks red; and photosynthetic life will spring forth to please and nourish gardeners.

We here at Scholars and Rogues would like to know what plans you have, and we are offering a new service. Send us gardening questions and we’ll answer them.

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Not long ago, a reader (not my therapist) asked me why I am the way I am.

“What do you mean?“ I asked back. “Because like everyone, there are two of me: the good me and the evil me. Which one are you interested in?”

“The evil you first,” he replied.

“That’s easy,“ I said. “The evil me is the way I am because I have an older brother.” Full Story »

“It’s unclear whether the Court was being naive or disingenuous.” – Paul S. Ryan, an attorney and expert in federal election law at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., on the Supreme Court’s touting of disclosure provisions during its decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

My latest article for Raw Story:

The Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

READ THE REST…

Update: I’ve added a few more examples of spin and accusations of bias against PSU as well as some good reporting examples that were not posted as of last night.

After the CRU emails were released in November, 2009, there was widespread accusations of misconduct against most of the scientists mentioned in the emails. Today, the Penn State University (PSU) inquiry committee investigating accusations made against Dr. Michael Mann publicly released its findings. The committee found that, with respect to the most serious three accusations out of four, “there exists no credible evidence” that Mann had committed research misconduct. The inquiry committee empaneled an investigation committee to look into the last accusation – that Mann had “seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community” – because they could make a determination about this and because

Only with such a review will the academic community and other interested parties likely feel that Penn State has discharged its responsibility on this matter.

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Hoo boy – if this is a sign of campaign ads to come, Californy is the place you oughta be…

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When you plant a garden, you need good dirt, seeds, water, and some kind of fertilizer, whether it be manure, compost, mulch, or granules you buy from your local nursery. Anyone who’s gardened for more than a few years knows that it’s good to fertilize your garden every so often because, eventually, the garden plants stop growing as well as they used to. This happens because the plants slowly consume nutrients in the soil that need to be replaced by some form of fertilizer. The same basic thing happens with cultivated crops regardless of whether they’re grown in fields or greenhouses – eventually, the soil nutrients are depleted and need to be replenished.

Unlike gardens and crops, wild plants lack human caretakers providing fertilizer. Wild plants have to scrounge for their soil nutrients wherever and however they can get them, and it is often the case that soil nutrients, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, limit how fast forests, grasslands, etc. can grow. A paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that the availability of soil nutrients will probably limit how much human-emitted carbon dioxide (CO₂) plants can absorb. This limit will prevent plants from absorbing as much CO₂ as climate scientists have modeled, and so global warming will likely be worse than current projections. Full Story »

Oh god, if this is what The Economist is going to pass off as informed debate then letting my subscription lapse was an incredibly wise financial and emotional decision. I have to wonder if people like Boaz and Kamarck get their jobs because of or in spite of inane, ideological drivel? Obama is a failure – and he’s a huge failure – because he’s working within the frame established by asshats like these two.
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“What they really want to see is, they want you to chop your fucking arm off, hold up your arm, wave it around spewing blood, and believe me, if you did that, the crowd would go fucking ballistic. You only get four good shows like that, though. Four good shows, and then you’re just a torso and a head, trying to get one of your band mates to give you one last hurrah and chop your head off. Which they probably wouldn’t do, which would really be hell.” Who said it? Full Story »

File under “T” for “thanks for clearing that up”:

Despite reports to the contrary, Scott McCarron would like to clear up his thoughts on Phil Mickelson: He never called his fellow player a “cheater.”

In a statement released Monday, McCarron discussed his original comments to the San Francisco Chronicle regarding Mickelson and other players using Ping-Eye 2 clubs that have grooves which no longer conform to USGA and PGA Tour standards, but are still considered legal because they were grandfathered in two decades ago.

“I responded, ‘It’s cheating and I am appalled Phil has put it in play,’” McCarron stated. “I never called Phil Mickelson a cheater. That being said, I want my fans, sponsors, and most importantly, my fellow players, to know that I will not be silenced and I will continue my efforts to get the groove issue resolved.” Full Story »

by Bob Wheeler

It’s been a few days, but I still wanted to take some time to put my spin on the State of Union Address. Not point by point, but in a broader view. The one thing I think Washington needs to change most is their tone with each other. As such, I think President Obama took many steps to affect the organizational culture of today’s politics. Some steps were positive, some were negative and some were more like marching in place.

Chronologically speaking he started out good. He addressed the issue head on to Congress. He chastised them for not being able to work together, but in this regard he never went far enough. I have no problem with the President giving Congress a lecture. I have no problem with the President calling out the Supreme Court. I think we need to have three distinct branches of government that keep tabs on each other. Full Story »

 He is nearly finished, bella. They want it
erected in the Piazza della Signoria. Already
some are calling him a masterwork.

	That’s nice, dear.
	Can you move your things?
	Lucia is stopping by. Full Story »

We went to see Momix at the University of Colorado’s Mackey Auditorium last night. They’re currently doing a “Best of Momix” tour, and the show was wonderful. I’d never seen them before, and the inventive mix of dance, visual illusion and humor left me looking forward to their return.

Here’s one they didn’t do last night.

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Well, sadly, I couldn’t take my laptop into the auditorium, so it’s all written notes. You might as well head over to the Guardian Iraq Inquiry website for the live blog there. It’s the best one out there. So before I start watching the talking heads give their analysis, or, even worse, that of other Labour Party hacks (Margaret Beckett is droning on right now on Sky–anyone who lives in the UK will know what a dreaded prospect that is) here are some observations.

It was a bit surreal, in fact–the Alternative Viewing Facility turns out to be the large auditorium in the Queen Elizabeth II Center where the inquiry is being held. There must have been 800 people in there, not many of them likely to have been on Blair’s side. All very well behaved, I must say–and a really broad age range, Clearly a lot of people had taken time off from work, as I had. This was important. It’s like being in the Iraq marches in 2002 and 2003–there was a need to bear witness, and this was one of those occasions that required it. Chilcot, to his credit, understands this, I think. It goes without saying that neither Tony Blair nor the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown (who testifies next month) wanted this inquiry. There were lots of demonstrators outside, of course, but there seemed to be even more police. Full Story »

Many an activist and other members of the liberal left (sorry, conservatives, there’s nothing derogatory about that term you use for us) has torn out his or her hair over apathy on the part of the general public. Why do so few Americans care about inhumanity and injustice? Worse, why do they often vote against their own interests?

What compounds our frustration and bewilderment over our fellow Americans’ negligible participation in the political process is the overarching irony. We’re citizens of the nation that put participatory democracy on the map for God’s sake. How did we arrive at this sad state of affairs, which I call the enduring enigma of the American public? Full Story »

OK, today is the big day. We’ve already had three hours of Tony Blair this morning, but they’re only letting the public in to either a morning or an afternoon session for Blair’s testimony, and I got the afternoon. I can’t believe I got one of these tickets—I never win anything. But here we are.

And I haven’t heard back on whether they have Wi-Fi in the room that I’ll be sitting in, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to post. If not, it will all come out in one large post later.

So what happened this morning? Blair was asked about what happened at Crawford (nothing special, no secret deal), the relation of Iraq to the mid-east peace process (none, apparently, although he said he was “frustrated” at the lack of progress), his relationship with Bush (fine, and did not set conditions). So far, Blair’s main point is that 9/11 changed everything—specifically, the perception of risk. So even though he more or less conceded that the actual risk posed by Saddam Hussein did not change, the perceived risk did. And he was very fudgy on one point—he saw no real difference between regime change and disarming Iraq, an interesting non-distinction for someone who trained as a lawyer to make. Blair also said that his comments in his now-notorious interview with Fern Britton of the BBC last year was a mistake. We’ve also learned that Blair seems to worry a lot about threats—he’s mentioned Iran several times today. Is he secretly lamenting that he didn’t get an attack on Iran in while he still could? Full Story »

Scholars & Rogues honors JD Salinger as our 32^nd masthead scrogue.

J.D. Salinger is dead.

If you want to know about his lousy life or how he treated his kids or his ex-wives and girlfriends, or any of that other People Magazine crap, look somewhere else. I just don’t feel like going into it. Too many jerks spend all their time reading that shit anyway, and it’s just not worth recounting it when you could read it all at TMZ or some place like that and besides Salinger himself was pretty touchy about people talking about him and he’d probably sue from the grave. I mean, the guy sued every goddamn body who ever said boo to him for the last 50 years or so.

Some stuff just isn’t worth the trouble.

So I’ll just talk about driving to town last night…. Full Story »