Here in Vermont we are lucky in many, many ways. One of those is our easy access to both land and knowledge that allows us to grow some or all of our food. The big city of Burlington has it's Intervale which supports “financially viable and environmentally sustainable agriculture” on over 350 acres. In central Vermont there is the Food Works at Two Rivers Center where they host a wide range of food related activities including donating to the local food bank and summer camps and other educational opportunities. If you're out driving around the ubiquitous countryside the plethora of personal gardens is going to be obvious this time of year.

Many of us in this state are personally connected to our food: where it comes from, how it's handled and what the nutritional value is. We expect that … we're rural! But what about the really big population centers in the U.S. and around the world?

A week ago in the Sunday Rutland Herald/Times Argus' “News Digest” section I found this little gem: More city dwellers turn to chickens as pets:

This whole idea of urban agriculture has interested me for years now, so this little story piqued me into looking around again. It's easy to find information about this subject … just go to your favorite search engine and type in “urban agriculture”.

One fun place to start is SPIN (Small Plot INtensive farming) where they advertise:

SPIN will refer you to Somerton Tanks Farm who lays claim to “$68,000 in gross sales from a half-acre”. Not earth shattering, but impressive nonetheless.

According to a 2000 U.S. Department of Agriculture article:

You can get a quick look at some more of the pros as well as some cons regarding urban agriculture at the New Agriculturist. This Science Friday story has some very interesting information too, but there is a lot out there on this topic … so go wandering the 'net.

In closing I'd like to present an audio piece the wife and I did in 2005 on local agriculture as it does have bearing on what I discussed above … click here to listen or download.

If you read more than just the Vermont blogs, you've undoubtedly heard about Bill O'Reilly's jihad against DailyKos, attempting to label it a “hate site.” If you missed it, there isn't much to the narrative; O'Reilly thinks he can bully Kos out of existence by using troll rated comments to rationalize the harassment of a “Yearly Kos” convention sponsor (Jet Blue) out of the program. In that he has been partially successful, but of course this has done nothing but fire up the netroots crowd who are not only (of course) finding more objectionable user comments on O'Reilly's own site (as well as targeting his sponsors), but have also begun to get organized and coalesce into a netroots driven, rapid response, anti-Fox truth squad. O'Reilly's return volley has been simply to become obsessive in his attacks on dKos by trying to brings his TV guests into the fight, demanding they join him in comparing bloggers like us to nazis, the Klan, Mussolini, Al Capone, etc.

But thereisnospoon is now reporting that the battle has been joined by Sean Hannity (Hannity, for those who don't listen to talk radio or watch Fox, is the slightly dumber version of Rush Limbaugh who doesn't talk about himself as incessantly). Hannity is now attacking The Huffington Post on air, again based on comments users have posted on her site (and again, there are even nastier comments on Hannity's own site).

This begs the question as to whether or not we're seeing the beginnings of an all-out proxy war between the two major political parties being waged by their media manifestations.

If we are, you couldn't pick better avatars. The blogs are a decentralized phenomenon frequented by an astonishing number of people across the country that mushroom independently, but function in loose, almost communitarian concert. There is no head to cut off that would cause the body to fail. Fox, on the other hand, is not just a corporate entity, but an old-school corporate behemoth still run as an institutional totalitarianism by the legendary media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. In the short term, you have to give the advantage to Fox in terms of sheer media power, but in the long run it's hard to imagine any force outside of a complete governmental crackdown that could ever do more than annoy the blogosphere. Fox, on the other hand, is comparatively vulnerable – especially when you consider that they are a media force in ratings decline, while the blogosphere continues to grow. Fox's widening of the war is clearly an act of unmitigated hubris that – in an example of an exceptionally unbusiness-savvy strategic decision – places only itself at risk.

Still, it's interesting to wax futuristic when you look at this. Could we be looking ahead into the partisan wars of the future, here? As the major parties come to have more in common with media organizations, could this be a glimpse into the next evolution of the parties themselves, rather than simply their proxies? It would be an interesting sort of instiutional sci-fi indeed to glance decades ahead to see the Democratic party essentially merging with the netroots, and the GOP becoming a right-wing traditional media machine like Fox (even more interesting when you consider that the head of Fox is not an American citizen)? Would such an evolution lock in the current power structure, or break it open? Would the lines between a netroots-Democratic Party and the greater inhabitants of the American left blur enough to recreate the party as home for disenfranchised lefties (and even Greens)?

Yeah, yeah. All sci-fi, I know, but fun to ponder all the same. I sense a novel here (Philip, let's talk…)