In a world where food prices have doubled or tripled, sparking deadly riots and threatening the world’s poorest with starvation diets, biofuel is taking heat as the possible culprit in a global food shortage. Jean Ziegler, a UN “Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,” spoke out this week against U.S. and European Union energy policies that he says have taken biofuel production down a “criminal path.“

In utter disagreement with him is German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who blames agricultural policies and evolving eating habits), along with the prime minister of Thailand (who blames oil-producing nations), the world’s largest exporter of rice.

In the U.S., Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas politely criticized the energy bill of last December, which mandated an incremental increase in biofuel production over 14 years—raising a 7 billion gallon quota to 36 billion gallons between 2012 and 2022. Hutchison is introducing legislation to freeze the biofuel mandates at current rates. As the argument goes, croplands growing consumables like corn are being set aside instead for ethanol production, driving up grain prices in general and triggering a supply-and-demand cascade that eventually wallops the urban poor in undeveloped nations. Ziegler has called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production.

He’s not the only one. In a phone press conference Tuesday, three agriculture research experts agreed one of main causes of the world food crisis was the “biofuels frenzy;” but while they favored a biofuel moratorium on consumable crops, they stressed the current crisis was complex and shouldn’t be pinned on one issue. Other guilty parties: Bad weather, rising rates of consumption, poor investments in agricultural science, high oil prices, and recent export bans by countries skittish over their internal grain supply. Proposed solutions? Wealthy nations should increase humanitarian aid (the World Food Programme announced it needs $755 million to offset rising food costs), increase investments in agricultural research, and reform unwise trade and energy policies, which might include biofuel subsidization and export bans.

One of the researchers, International Rice Research Institute director Robert Zeigler (not to be confused with Jean Ziegler of the UN) said although his organization had expected an increase in rice prices, they hadn’t expected it so quickly. Rice selling for $300 a ton last December was $1000 this month. Ziegler thinks a lackadaisical attitude of past years is partly to blame.

We’re victims of our own success. The tremendous achievements in agricultural research that resulted in the green revolution in the developing world led to a sense of complacency. People felt that the world food crisis was solved. It really fell off the agenda of funding in developing countries and in developed countries.

With U.S. wheat bins at their lowest levels since World War II, American consumers—even our own Anthony Randazzo—are feeling the crunch of pricier bagels and pizzas. Two thoughts come to mind: First, let’s count our blessings and send a few dollars to someone who’s really hungry. Second, does anyone remember how to garden?

So there I was, perking along in writerly fashion when — wham! — mononucleosis cut me down at the knees. I spent most of April in bed, but it appears I am now on the mend. For the mercifully uninitiated, mono is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, which attacks the liver, spleen, and respiratory system. Mono commonly hits people between the ages of 15 and 25. Most people over 35 have been exposed and are therefore immune to the virus. I guess that makes me special.

The first signs of mono are a wicked sore throat, glands the size of golf balls, and utter exhaustion. And when I say exhaustion, I don’t mean tired. I mean feeling-like-roadkill-that’s-still-breathing. For the first week, I was able only to sleep or lie in bed, eyes open and panting, like one of those animals in a documentary that gets shot with a dart.

A person can learn a lot from having mono. I have learned:

• That my husband is a wonderful nurse. I am telling you, from the time my lab tests came back, I didn’t lift a finger. My husband and sons took over everything.
• That I have ace blogging colleagues. They have cheerfully picked up my slack without a single complaint.
• That I have wonderfully compassionate editors who have allowed me all the time and space I need for recovery. (The only pressure I feel is from my Type A self!)

I have also learned a new unit of measurement — the “frasier.” A frasier is equal to 22 minutes, which is the amount of time it takes to watch one DVR’d rerun of Frasier, my favorite TV show, if I fast-forward through all the commercials. You see, when you have mono, your body counts everything as “work.” Taking a shower, reading, getting dressed, even talking on the phone. After expending any energy at all, I had to rest. Often, I measured this rest in frasiers: “After I take a shower, I’ll rest for two frasiers.” (44 minutes.) “In three frasiers, I’ll go nuke a Lean Cuisine.”

See? Marking time without watching the clock. Very convenient.

Though I’m definitely improving, I’m not yet back up to full speed and so I still won’t be blogging for awhile. But I know many of you have been wondering what was ailing me, so I wanted to check in and tell you it’s not terminal, and also to say “thank you!” for your prayers.

Hillary Clinton may have received the endorsement of North Carolina’s governor for next week’s primary, but her rival Barack Obama may have done her one better by getting the implied support of University of North Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and his Final Four Tar Heel team. Yesterday, while Clinton was hobnobbing with Gov. Mike Easley, Obama scrimmaged with the Heels, at one point missing a layup after driving by consensus National Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough. When Obama wasn’t getting enough passes his way, Williams yelled out from the sidelines : “You’ve got the future president of the United States wide open.”

In being present at such a pick-up game involving his players during the off-season, Williams was technically in violation of NCAA rules. The NCAA, however, made an exception in this case. “This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue,” NCAA Media Relations Director Erik Christianson told The News & Observer. “It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate.”

It may not have concerned the NCAA, but rumors are now circulating that many of the Tar Heel faithful who are either Clinton or McCain supporters have gone over to the dark side and have become Duke fans.

Over at WORLDMag.com, Alisa Harris reports on the “cynical response” to last Friday’s acquittal of three New York police detectives in the death of Sean Bell:

The Associated Press noted that the detectives’ race—two of the three shooters were black—may have made the reaction less visceral. On NPR’s News and Notes, Huffington Post’s Trey Ellis hit on another problem—cynicism: “The disposability of black male life, unfortunately, has become common.”

Read her entire article here.

After media coverage of “pregnant man” Thomas Beatie, transsexualism seems to have suddenly emerged, deus ex machina-style, to point out a variety of flaws in conservatives’ arguments against same-sex marriage, even to offer transgender same-sex couples a potential egress into marriage like a wormhole in space.

Beatie, whose story first appeared in The Advocate, the gay national magazine, got media and bloggers talking about marriage and sex changes in early April, culminating with an ultrasound prerecorded for “Oprah.” It served as kindling for endlessly rehashing how transsexuals fit into the legal picture—specifically how the conservative argument against same-sex rights can advocate normalcy by opposing rights for societal outliers like transsexuals, but not by showing support for gay men who’ve been with the same partner for decades.

The latest addition to the growing dossier came in Sunday’s New York Times, which reported on another legal quandary wherein a New Jersey same-sex couple—a man-to-woman transsexual married (now) to another woman—is more or less de facto legal, even in a state that doesn’t recognize homosexual marriages. Denise Brunner, formerly Donald, had surgery and began taking female hormones. Denise says her legal wife, Fran, “helped me literally buy my first bra and first wig.” They say they’re more concerned now with tax returns, which they still file jointly in violation of federal law, than whether New Jersey thinks they’re married.

But the Brunners’ situation falls into a sort of a wrinkle. As the Times story noted, marriages like theirs “are rarely challenged by government agencies because more conservative states do not recognize sex changes, and more liberal ones (like New Jersey) are loath to seem hostile to transsexuals.”

For liberals, it’s the exception that proves the rule. That is, the “world hasn’t fallen apart because New Jersey has a same-sex marriage,” as Denise Brunner told the Times. Or, to quote the impartial Times itself: The Brunners “offer themselves as Exhibit A on how the nation’s dizzying patchwork of marriage laws, which include the domestic partnerships of California and other states, may be out of step with people’s lives.”

Advocates of the rights of the growing number of couples like the Brunners (many of whom disputed the claim that the Brunners are even New Jersey’s first same-sex married couple, assuming others have likely also circumvented the law via this transgender loophole), argue that transsexuals are just a few snips and cuts south (to simplify and euphemize) from others on the plastic surgery spectrum, like biannual Botox injectees.

Also, transsexualism is a final frontier of sorts for same-sex rights. It’s uncharted territory. Even legal pros have a hard time teasing sense out of the convoluted web of states’ transgender law intersections. In its story on the Brunners, the Times mentions a 2000 wrongful death case appealed to the Supreme Court by lawyers for a Texas male-to-female transsexual named Christie Lee Littleton (the wrongful death was her husband’s, though the state annulled their marriage).

Attorneys painted this picture if she were to travel from Texas to New Jersey: “Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Texas, is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Texas, and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male”—in all, what both sides of the debate probably consider a lose-lose situation.

The Supreme Court refused to take her case, as it has all other cases involving transgender appellants, but the court of Oprah has not. In addition to Beatie’s appearance, the Brunners were also on her show in October.

Faculty at the University of Georgia don’t want Justice Clarence Thomas speaking at commencement.  He’s just too controversial, even though he’s, like, kind of an important person: “Thomas’s critics, in turn, say they support his campus visits but believe that commencement speakers in general shouldn’t be controversial.”  Controversial, of course, means: Somebody we don’t agree with.  However, the University of Georgia has had a contentious year when it comes to sexual harrassment cases, and Janet Frick - associate professor of psychology - says this is why Thomas is the wrong speaker this year.

The selection of a commencement speaker who was embroiled in arguably the most public sexual harassment case in history - for this year’s commencement - demonstrates neither leadership nor sensitivity.

So, I can see her point.  But wasn’t his confirmation an exoneration of sorts from the whole Anita Hill thing?   

George Will provides what should be the next twelve questions that are asked of Barack Obama at the next debate, whenever that happens.  They are smart.  Here are my favorites. 

• “Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said: Deciding ‘truly difficult cases’ should involve ‘one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.’ Is that not essentially how Chief Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors-say, the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue-matter?”
• “You say John McCain is content to ‘watch [Americans’] home prices decline.’ So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How? Why? Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first house that declining prices are a misfortune?”
• “Telling young people ‘don’t go into corporate America,’ your wife, Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in ‘the helping industry,’ not ‘the moneymaking industry.’ Given that the moneymakers pay for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is it not helpful?”

Read the rest here.

Obama finally broke decisively with his pastor yesterday, after the Reverend Wright has been barnstorming across America with his dog and pony show.  Obama said:

“His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Mr. Obama said, his voice welling with anger. “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.”

I don’t guess they’ll be hanging out together at dinner on the grounds.  And, to spare you any more Jeremiah Wright posts today, at least from me, you might enjoy this video of some of his recent comments, as rated by Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.  And you might appreciate this unhealthy rant by Jimi Izrael, who is confused about why people should be accountable for their rhetoric:

All indications are that The Rev. Wright is unapologetic.  And Thank God for that.  Because The Wright Question is, if you can’t speak freely and plainly in church without consequence, where are you free? What is your freedom worth if you are not entitled to an opinion you can share-in any matter you like-among friends?

I don’t think anyone was suggesting that Wright wasn’t free to say those things, which constitute hate speech, frankly.  He was simply saying stupid and unfortunate things, and things that we didn’t want a potential U.S. president to be nodding in agreement to while sitting in the pews.

Brandon O’Brien’s Christianity Today column, “A Jesus for Real Men,” is an unfortunate example of opinion offered from cursory knowledge. A little bit of religious history is a dangerous thing. In fact, the overall consensus of O’Brien’s disserts is that he misses the point and innacurately caricatures and revises John Eldredge, Mark Driscoll, David Murrow.

I completely agree. O’Brien’s named “masculinity movement” has been the subject of much conversation over the past 25 years or so because a dying church in America is witnessing the fruit of radical feminism and the warehousing of generations of passive or abusive men.

Here’s recent data from David Murrow:

The typical U.S. Congregation draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female, 39% male. As many as 90 percent of the boys raised in the church will abandon it by their 20th birthday. On any given Sunday there are 13 million more adult women than men in America’s churches. This Sunday almost 25 percent of married, churchgoing women will worship without their husbands. Midweek activities often draw 70 to 80 percent female participants. The majority of church employees are women (except for ordained clergy, who are overwhelmingly male). [Many only return when their girlfriends or wives bring them back.] More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and 5 out of 6 call themselves Christians. But only 2 out of 6 attend church on a given Sunday. The average man accepts the reality of Jesus Christ, but fails to see any value in going to church.

We must wrestle with the fact that men have checked out of church-life in America.

Leon Podles provides a historical narrative of the masculinity crisis in The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Historian Anne Braude’s essay “Women’s History Is Religious History,” in the book Retelling U.S. Religious History readily admits that for quite some time Christianity has been, and continues to be, primarily oriented around meeting the needs of women and their children. Men are not around because American church does not connect.

However, O’Brien, doesn’t get it. The men he critiques are not trying to “re-masculate Jesus,” introduce “greater testosterone” into the church, or use natural instincts to define masculinity. Those are ridiculous assertions. They are addressing the fact that the average man in America simply does not connect with narrow image of Jesus presented in most churches today. The average man doesn’t feel like he fits into the overall ethos of church life since it has been, for far too long, almost exclusively oriented away from bringing men into a broader view of kingdom mission in ways that are unique to callings God has placed on men as they bear the image of God. Moreover, many of the men that do fit into churches organized primarily to meet the needs of women and their children are not the types of men that others look to follow.

O’Brien’s biblical theology is so bad that I’ll have to deal with it elsewhere but his claim that the only time Jesus appears as warrior are his “pre-incarnate” and “post-resurrection” debuts has no biblical warrant and largely misses the reality of spiritual warfare during Jesus life and ministry. Casting out demons is not spiritual warfare? The Kingdom needs warriors who are allied with God to fight against “principalities and powers.” Was Jesus not fighting the devil during his ministry?

Overall, O’Brien wrongly prejudices men against being challenged in good ways because of his own misunderstanding of church history, the reality of the church in America, and a biblical theology that may suffer from a lack of exegetical depth. If O’Brien “got it” a more accurate title to his unuanced opinion would be “The Bible’s Jesus for the Regular Guy.”

If O’Brien knows very little about the writings and teachings of the men he critiques, argues against a straw man, and mishandles biblical theology why should we take him seriously? This would be equivalent an accountant critiquing the Navy’s assessment of what makes a man a good Navy seal.

Three weeks ago, Christopher Ratte and his 7-year-old son, Leo, were enjoying a Tigers game at Comerica Park in Detroit. When Ratte, a 47-year-old tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, ordered his son a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, he didn’t realize that it was alcoholic. But a security guard did and quickly took action, setting off a chain of events that ultimately resulted in the Rattes losing custody of their son.

Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded the state was probably overreacting.

The sympathetic cop who interviewed Ratte and his son at the hospital said she was convinced what happened had been an accident, but that her supervisor was insisting the matter be referred to Child Protective Services.

And Ratte thought the two child protection workers who came to take Leo away seemed more annoyed with the police than with him. “This is so unnecessary,” one told Ratte before driving away with his son.

But there was really nothing any of them could do, they all said. They were just adhering to protocol, following orders.

And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they’d see their little boy again.

Although there is more to this story that further illustrates the idiocy with which the case was handled, suffice it to say, the family has since been reunited and Ratte and his wife have filed a complaint with CPS: “I have apologized to Leo from the bottom of my heart for the silly mistake that got him into this mess. But I have also told him that what happened afterward was an even bigger error, and I would like to be able to say to him that institutions, like people, can learn from their mistakes.” Thoughts?

HT: Frank in Phoenix