Of interest (Tue, May 17th, 12pm)

Hemp for Victory | Marginal Revolution • by Alex Tabarrok
During World War II hemp made a brief comeback as an American crop due to shortages of rope-making stock from other countries. Hemp for Victory is a 1942 US Department of Agriculture film that encourages farmers to grow hemp. It opens with a discussion of the ancient history of hemp (canvas derives from cannabis) and then moves into how it is being farmed in Kentucky and other US states to help in the war effort.

The film has an interesting history. For decades the USDA and the Library of Congress denied that such a thing had ever been made …

>history

Freedom Riders Anniversary: 50 Years Later Participants Share Memories | The Root
Trained in the nonviolent techniques of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the group was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality and included Stokely Carmichael and current U.S. Rep. John Lewis. They set out to test whether a Supreme Court decision mandating integrated facilities in interstate bus travel was actually being implemented south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

>history segregation racism

No Snitching: The Rules That Allow It | The Root
…but there are exceptions, say researchers who spent three years talking with kids in Philadelphia's toughest neighborhoods.

…[They] told us that witnesses are different from snitches: A witness comes forward to help, while a snitch goes to the cops to do the dirty work of hurting somebody else. The problem is that even DAs and cops know that finding a citizen in a position to truly help is no simple feat.

>none

Water Shortages Threaten the American West Lifestyle | Miller-McCune
“It all adds up to the fact that we have to do some very, very serious long-range water resource planning,” …

>water environment

Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth | Miller-McCune
…A speeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, the theory goes, spraying ice and rocks across [North America], killing the Clovis people and the mammoths they fed on…

…Based on analyses of the layers, both Kennett and Holliday sent to Alvarez their predictions on which layer reflected the geochemical characteristics for the beginning of the Younger Dryas. But neither Kennett nor Alvarez knew the order of the sediment layers

>science skience

[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]

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The Of interest (Tue, May 17th, 12pm) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.