While this Financial Times article points to the recession as the impetus, I suggest that mistrust of foods of unknown origin and desire for locally grown healthy food should be included in the mix. Ann and I planted a row of lettuce in our organic garden yesterday. Link: FT.com / Companies / Food &...

Trend: Leveraged and inverse ETFs do not perform as expected due to tax distributions and tracking error.  Jim Cramer on CNBC has been ranting about the problems effects of the double short financial ETF SKF. Simon Maierhofer at ETF Guide describes the illogical returns of leveraged and inverse ETF...

Chris Bolgiano shines a green light on windmills in A Plea to President Obama to Save the National Forests of Appalachia, excerpted at Via Negativa. Here's the PDF. Bottom line: Keep the windmills on the Great Plains. Link: Gone With The Windmills? A Plea to President Oba...

Link: Cowboy Humor Log On: Making a wood stove hot Log Off: Too much wood on fire Monitor: Keep'n an eye on the wood stove Down Load: Gitten the farwood off'n the truck Mega Hertz: What ya git when ya git thrown offn yur horse Floppy Disk: Whatcha git from tryin to tote too much farwood RAM:...

Interior Design finds that the top 100 Giants are making sustainability an important component in their projects. Link: Giants: Green - 6/1/2008 - Interior Design. The design community is on an eco-minded roll, as evidenced by the 2008 top 100 Interior Design Giants. Half the firms on the list have ...

Peter Darling writes about Jerry Garcia's guitar playing and practice. Like many other geniuses, Garcia's work ethic recevied very little media attention. Patience, practice, and persistence are boring (and difficult). Link: Business Development: Jerry Garcia Would Ap...

Astute observer of culture and history John Michael Greer articulates the broad implications of the end of cheap energy. Excerpts below. Follow the link to read the whole essay. Link: The Archdruid Report: The Age of Memory. ...The end of the age of cheap energy has many implications, but one ...

Rick Ridgeway, adventurer and author, has been called the real Indiana Jones by Rolling Stone magazine. His latest challenge is trying to get the western states to implement migratory corridors for iconic animals. Link: Best of Adventure: Adventure Hall of Fame - Rick Ridgeway - National Geogr...

Trend: Watch the price of copper to assess the health of the global economy. In an interview at Hard Assets Investor, David Fry says that copper is a consensus indicator for the global economy. We highlight the price of copper in the chart below....

Link: 10 key trends for investors in '09 - MSN Money - Jubak's Journal.   10 macro trends from Jim Jubak: Go where the growth is, and that means putting some money into the developing economies of China, India and Brazil. The rise of the global blue chips. These companies are emerging from the worl...