Hooves In Place Of Tractors July 14, 2010March 18, 2017 BUT MOTHER NATURE CAN FOOL YOU Just as hot water can freeze faster than cold (check it out), so it now seems that grazing can help grassland from becoming desert, and in what may be a crucial way. My point: nature is complicated. My secondary point: you may be fascinated to learn what we might best do to slow, and then reverse, the frightening “desertification” of our planet. (One “s” – this has nothing to do with whipped cream.) . . . after decades of rejecting the idea that increased livestock could reverse desertification, a growing number scientists now accept that the results claimed by Savory are supported by rigorous data, and that they therefore deserve to drive land use, agriculture, and development policy. . . . ☞ Read it here in Seed Magazine. Pass it on to your kids, too, for their ecology class. (If they don’t take one, they should start one. What other planet do they plan to live on?) Graze baby, graze. SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS The minute I heard they were the World Cup final two, my thought was: they both allow same-sex marriage. How macho is that! And they played in the World Cup host country, South Africa, which some years ago wrote equality into its constitution. And to think we used to be the model for freedom and the separation of church and state. Well, we’ll get there. If Portugal, 92% Catholic, can legalize marriage, sooner or later we will, too. HUBBLE TRUBBLE Skeptical Matt: “I appreciate the response from your readership and thus will continue subscribing at my current membership level. One quote kind of scares me, though . . . ‘expectation of literal accuracy.’ I do expect literal accuracy in my science and math. I understand that there are broad theoretical gray areas out there, and I do understand how small and insignificant I am [in the infinite universe], but I hope the rest of your subscription base understands these are not just photos but also artistic interpretations of what we think is out there based on what we know, and what we know in relation to the universe is imperceptibly tiny. The original slide show suggests that all of these are photos from Hubble. That was my original point.”