Cogitamus continues to do great work on the connection between human-animal diseases like the swine flu and unsanitary conditions in the meat industry.

Followups on recent posts:

* My once and future TA Heather saw the post on Lyle Estill and Piedmont Biofuels and recognized the chess set as part of a series of Estill's. Pretty cool.

* In response to my recent self-diagnosis of Truman Show Delusion, Steve sends in a list of ten other disorders I may or may not have, including Vagabound's disease, Jumping Frenchmen of Maine disease, and cheese washer's lung.

Rumors are heard of distant illness, fear gathers as what is clearly a terrible disaster edges ever closer, neighbors appear with lurid tales, and then suddenly local people become afflicted. Skins turn black, huge swellings appear in groins and armpits, blood is spat, and horrible, hacking death sweeps in like a rainsquall and at incredible speed, leaving thousands to be limed and buried, while stunned communities try desperately to recover sanity and order.

Simon Winchester reviews John Hatcher's The Black Death in the New York Sun.

Michael Pollan has an article in The New York Times today about sustainability, especially when it comes to agriculture and food production:

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.

The article goes on to focus on two stories in the news this year that suggest a sustainability tipping point could be upon us, antibiotic-resistant staph infection and Colony Collapse Disorder. Via Pandagon, which gets this right, I think:

Pollan argues that the word “sustainability” is losing its meaning, and it’s clear why—it’s incompatible with capitalism, and openly arguing for economic systems to replace capitalism is simply verboten in our society. Taboo, unacceptable, off the table. And it will be until it’s too late to reverse the damage done by the need for unchecked growth for profit.