The Dalai Lama is in Vancouver this weekend for various reasons. I was reading in one of the bullshit papers out here about how he believes homosexuality qualifies as sexual misconduct. I was quite surprised about this and went to the web to investigate. True enough, the Dalai Lama teaches that any sex involving the anus of mouth is inappropriate as it is not for the purposes of reproduction. Poor guy is a prisoner of some ancient weird shit. Fortunately, the man is very peaceful and urges tolerance and fully recognizes human rights for homosexuals. Read more here.

This week I found a news release on NASA’s Earth Observatory website titled No-till Farming Offers a Quick Fix to Help Ward Off Host of Global Problems about how we have to “Increase no-till farming practices across the planet or face serious climate, soil quality and food production problems in the next 20 to 50 years.” Basically, traditional plowing, in turning over the topsoil, releases carbon while no-till farming helps to retain carbon (which consequently leads to healthier crop production). “Since the mechanization of agriculture began a few hundred years ago, scientists estimate that some 78 billion metric tons – more than 171 trillion pounds – of carbon once trapped in the soil have been lost to the atmosphere in the form of [CO2].”