PMCIN for Real?

Apparently, there's a field known as "Human Security", which sounds suspiciously like PMCIN, but not as tasty. With that in mind, here's the biweekly qualitative version:

Grain Production: There's an attraction to tangible productivity that a monetary economy can't, and shouldn't be expected, to match.

Fruit Production: Food provides an excellent opportunity for communities to explore the relationship between utility and value.

Dairy Production: What's interesting about this story is the Food Democracy Now calls it "Obama's Tax on Small Farms," while they used to use the Secretary of Agriculture as their boogie man. 2012 is going to be fun.

Housing: Immigration restrictions, rising sea levels and lack of affordable housing in coastal cities got you down? Blueseed is here to help.

Health: Your pie maker may take this example and start labeling his pies with their approximate bike mileage. This story isn't exactly health related, but it makes one feel good.

Transportation: Vindication. Also, a small step in technology, giant leap in private space infrastructure.

Energy: The Durban talks ended with a mild deal, but the best energy plans will probably be local, since it's hard to say sometimes if changing administrations has any impact on environmental or energy policy.

Security: From now on, I may just link to Robert Hadick's column, although this article on manipulating the mechanics of legitimacy is interesting, too. In other news, the Air Cavalry model has a new thoroughbred.

Pie-in-the-sky: Sustained exploration would actually be cheaper than the current half-measures, at least according to this guy, and toys like the Kinect will make it even cheaper.

Weekly news outline

Your pie maker has taken to using this type of post as a convenient frame for his thoughts when they start to wander at a computer.

Grain Production: NOAA's studying a lot of the factors that play into growing foods.

Fruit Production: Organic fruits are a desired luxury. A much better status symbol than shark fin soup, and suggests that we can make labor more lucrative without environmental harm.

Dairy Production: Even in modern, wealthy economies shortages will follow changes in weather and diet patterns.

Housing: Is David Cameron trying to help bring down the marginal product of capital, and thus mean house prices, Europe and world-wide?

Health: Free market economic theory assumes both buyer and seller understand their own interests, end of life health care often fails that check.

Transportation: The FAA's long term funding bill is alive and kicking.

Energy: The amounts are small, but this fuel program suggests there's progress to leverage.

Security: Lacing Europe with tripwires right after talking about this being the Asian century? This is either a very deep and interesting story or bureaucratic inertia at its finest.

Pie-in-the-sky: Projects like this offer an opportunity to motivate the next bunch of kids to reach for the stars. Hopefully, this will turn out to be the most important discovery of the 21st century.

In a previous PCMIN-Pie, I suggested the "Romans" had a steam engine. A better way of putting that would have been to say: The Hellenistic world had examples of a steam engine, intricate clockwork and jars with interchangeable lids, all of the power, mechanical and craftsmanship required for an industrial revolution. Hopefully our descendants won't tell the same story of our space program.

Energy: I wonder if this is making Oracle's CEO think.

Transportation: Okay, most "green" gains are building and fixed plant efficiency, but transport is the second biggest.

Security: Overstressed is how you describe an army that represents a people who believe they can both project force and enjoy a very high standard of living without engaging in looting. Illiberal is how you describe an economy in which the penalty for outright fraud is limited to less than half the damages you cause, if you have the right connections.

Grain Production: Better uses of grains? Honestly, I should not be looking at farm and ag. specific sources instead of mainstream sources for this.

Fruit Production: The growing season is over, but we can get a start on next year.

Dairy Production: English farmers mproving efficiency with IT. Interesting how we're replacing, or at least supplementing, tribal knowledge with the global hive-mind. Also, this is a cute story, which means it's probably more fluff than news.

Housing: Still too cheap for a portfolio, but not quite affordable.

Health: This is an almost elegant duck of fundamentally difficult questions.

Pie-In-The-Sky: The latest Mars rover weighs more than a pop-up camper.