Occassional Dimes

In Defense of Food: Michael Pollan talks about his new book on Science Friday.

Monsanto and the Future Seed: Very quietly GMO seeds are being adopted across the world. From the U.S., where they originated, through Asia, Africa, and even Western Europe. Monsanto and other agriculture conglomerates are targeting the large food producers rather than consumers. So while your chips and snacks probably contains GMO's, you may not find GMO's in the produce section of your grocery. I have yet to come across any large-scale study showing that GMO's pose health risks to humans. My objection to GMO's is that they make farmers even more dependent on the large agricultural conglomerates. Even farmers who refuse to use GMO seeds could be sued, if their own seeds and fields inadvertently start getting invaded by the GMO seeds.

Sick (The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis): Anyone interested in the U.S, Health Care system needs to read this book. Each chapter covers an aspect of the health care system through the story of an individual family, with families spanning several states across the country. The author also does a great job of providing the history of health care in the U.S. Exceptionally well-written book on an ever important subject. I recommend it highly!

The Auto Loans Crisis: While the crisis in housing loans has been covered extensively in the media, there is a serious disaster looming in the car loans industry.

Researching Charities: GiveWell provides research on charities similar to what equity analysts do for stocks. If you are trying to decide which charities to support, check out their useful site.

Malaysia and the Philippines: Interesting article on the prospects of these Southeast Asian neighbors in the battle to capture market share in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market. According to this ZDNet article the top four markets in 2007 (with their market share) were: India (11.5%), China (4.4%), the Philippines (1.4%), and Malaysia (1.2%).

Previous Dimes can be found here.

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