Friday, August 21, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed

Up until the Industrial Revolution, humans burned wood and dung for their energy. In the poorest parts of the Third World, people still do to heat homes and cook food. But it is a high mark of our own society’s development today that we get our energy from more advanced sources, like coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, and even wind and solar.

This measure of progress helps explain how we have created the most affluent economy in world history. It also partly explains how the United States has been adding, not losing, forestland over the last century.

So if burning wood is a 19th century anachronism, why is Gov. Deval Patrick eager to make it a part of the state’s 21st century energy mix? That is the big question that must be raised in the wake of reports his administration is pushing the development of four industrial wood-burning power plants in western Massachusetts.

Study By Caroline Scott-Thomas, 05-May-2009

Better-educated people tend to spend more money on each calorie, but also choose more nutrient-rich foods, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Although a link between lack of nutrient uptake and disease has often been highlighted, the finding that education and cost have a role to play in choosing nutritious foods could have important implications for the demographic range of future studies.

According to the New York Times, “The battle among Republicans over what the party should stand for — and how much it should accommodate dissenting views on important issues — is probably going to move from the states to the Republican National Committee when it holds its winter meeting this January in Honolulu.”

This is the final piece of the puzzle from a playbook that has been identical to the one the Republicans used in 1993-94. This playbook was instrumental in convincing voters in 1994 to give the GOP a chance to pass some major pieces of legislation. The pattern leading up to this announcement was identical at that time to today, and includes the following steps:

United States citizens must sooner or later face the fact that the bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were brought about in part by the muddled actions of our own government. The story is worthy of a John Clancy novel. It is an open secret throughout the region that the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been supporting the fundamentalist Taleban in their war for control of Afghanistan for some time. The U.S. has never openly acknowledged this connection, although it has been confirmed by intelligence sources and charitable institutions in Pakistan.