Tomorrow's Table

Here is a link to a an interesting new book by Julia Gordon. She just graduated from Washington University in St Louis as a graphic design major, and for her senior thesis she designed an informational book, using the chapter "Green Genes" from Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline". For this project she used his text as the body for the book, and created additional images, graphics, maps, captions and footnotes to accompany the text. When given the assignment to design an informational book for her thesis, she was excited to base it on Green Genes because she found it "eye opening,…
On Monday afternoon, yours truly will appear with Dr. Oz, "America's doctor," (the tag bestowed on him by no less than Oprah Winfrey) before a live audience in New York City. Although I have never seen the show, a New York Times magazine article written by the brilliant Frank Bruni, suggests that the show, and Dr. Oz himself, are both pretty entertaining. As one of the most accomplished cardiothoracic surgeons of his generation, Mehmet Oz has transplanted lungs and repurposed hearts; implanted mechanical devices to provide the pump and pulse for patients that cannot manage that on their own;…
Ed Yong recently published a post called "On the origin of science writers" asking that science writers (anyone who regularly writes about science) tell the story of how they got started. The idea is to establish a resource for future writers. I joined the thread and have reprinted it here. As far back as I can remember I loved to read and I loved the wilderness. In fact my favorite times were reading in the wilderness, preferably in a tree near our mountain cabin, high enough where my brothers could not reach me with stones or snowballs. I did not think much about being a writer myself until…
Thank you Bill Gates for your work on behalf of farmers and.... for blogging on our book, Tomorrow's Table! If you don't have time to read the full reviews, here are a few excerpts: "This is an important book for anyone who wants to learn about the science of seeds and the challenges faced by farmers... I think anyone who reads this book will be convinced of the authors' sincerity and intelligence - even if, like me, you never try any of the cool-sounding recipes... I gained an understanding of the history of organic farming and learned about some of the very clever ways organic farmers…
Here is another interesting story about Monsanto, in Forbes magazine. The article manages to avoid calling Monsanto all good or all bad and instead looks at what Monsanto means for the future productivity of the global food supply.
The word is spreading- we can feed the world without damaging it, if we can entertain some new ideas. Check out Paul Voosen's article in the NYT and let me know what you think.