Food, inflation & social stbility

Just avoid putting the attribution and disclaimers in the quoted material in the first place. There is an attribution field included in the quote tag for exactly this reason.

What you want to do is this:

 

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Bottom line is that mixing commentary with quotes is bad style. The whole point of quoting style is to keep a strong, consistent delineation between the two. That a given quoting style makes it a pain to mix commentary with quotations is a feature, not a bug.

 

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Agreed but not if comment is short, relates to a specific sentence in the quote and is clearly distinguished from the quote, for example a different color.

If you place that short comment after the entire quote, the reader may not know to which specific sentence it applies to. "Good style" is not some rigid set of rules but whatever makes it more easy to the reader to follow. In the cases I described (Short comment tied to a specific sentence of quote) is the better style.

 

As Trippy already mentioned, the appropriate style in that case is to break the quote apart (possibly with ellipses). The ideal thing there would be a two-column format, with the quote on one side and comments alongside, but that is probably difficult or impossible to format with the tools available here. Breaking quotes apart is the next best option. Another alternative is to emphasize portions of a quote that one wishes to highlight or refer to specifically with bold and/or italics (and an indicator that the emphasis is due to the quoter, not the quotee) - that is very much standard in both newspapers and blogs. A third option is to add an asterisk or endnote number to any sentences one wishes to refer to explicitly (or, specifically, to indicate an aside one would like to draw the reader to as they read the quote).

Examples:

1)

This comment says something about the second sentence specifically, and breaks the quote apart to make that clear.

2)

This comment says something about the second sentence specifically, and relies on the emphasis of such in the quote to make that clear.

3)

*This comment says something about the second sentence specifically, and relies on the asterisk to make that link clear.

Generally speaking, I'd recommend the first style when dealing with long quotes that one wishes to address one piece at a time. I favor the second style when the quote is shorter and I don't want to break it apart, but wish to highlight something specific in it that I wish to comment upon. The third style is most appropriate when the meat of the comment is going to be on a different subject, but I wish to also include an aside about a specific point in parallel with that.

One thing that should be studiously avoided is to mix quotes and commentary inside quote tags or indents. Quotation blocks and indentation are the primary markers that readers expect to rely upon to delineate quotations from commentary, and so violating that expectation is very bad style. In cases wherein one must alter the contents of a quote (for grammar, brevity, or a short editorial aside), the standard style is to enclose those changes in square brackets so that the reader knows exactly what is and is not actually genuine quotation. An example:

 

Billy T notes: Cargill buys corn, but grows very little. I don´t think they make any significant volume of ETOH so Page´s comments are self-serving.

 

The US Dept. of Argiculture, USDA, agrees:

Middle class Americans, with real incomes falling more than 1% per year for last 5 years (7.2% total drop) will need to get more of their protein from:
"Franks and Beans."

 

My post with text, data on price rises, and photo got dumped with crash. Here is photo similar to one lost:

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As I recall, corn & wheat were up about 25% YoY and soy beans less (~15%) in the global markets.

 

I wonder, when you factor in the oil needed to make the fertilizer, run the machines, produce the ethanol, ship it, store it, pump it (substandard energy relative to octane) is it a net energy gain?

 

Studies done by University in corn or corn processing state usually show slight net gain, but no others do AFAIK. Cornell was one of the first to do a careful study. I forget the exact numerical gain but am nearly sure net gain factor was less than 0.8 and that did not take into consideration the quality of the energy factor you mentioned.

Most studies of sugar cane energy yield gave a 6 to 8 fold gain (more out than in). They were done when most cane cutting was manual and neglected the energy in food the cutters ate. Now that (in Brazil at least) the harvest (except tiny part on very steep ground) is mechanical, that fact ALONE may have dropped the gain to between 5 & 7 fold; However, more than offsetting this is that now most of the crushed cane not only providing heat for distillation (fossil fuel is used in US for this) but also generates nearly 10% of Brazil´s electric power. (more than fossil does as Brazil get ~85% from hydro-electric dams with wind,etc. adding about 5%) Net gain, both fuel and power, I think is about 10 fold. One does not normally think this way but quite likely electric power from crushed cane is world´s largest solar energy system!

Also in the tropics, there is little need to accelerate the corn growth with great use of nitrogen fertilizer as there is in Iowa´s short growing season. This is a very important difference as soil bacteria converts much of that fertilizer into NOx, which atom for atom is a worse GHG than CO2 plus NOx absorbs in IR bands where CO2 does not. Few realize that 5 fold increase in atmospheric CO2 would not make much more global heating as you can only absorb 100% of the outgoing radiation in its absorption bands and we´re already doing that near the band cnters. Filling the gaps between CO2´s absorptions bands even with a much smaller concentrations of NOx absorption can make more global heating than a 10 fold increase in CO2 concentration can. (Numbers from memory - not exact just to drive home the point.)

At least the drought is making many realize the stupidity of converting Iowa corn to fuel instead of using it for feeding both people and animals they eat. I statred a thread on this many years ago, (How DUMB can US voters be?) but it did not have even 0.01% of the impact the drought has had. BTW, corn by far gets most of the Agriculture subsidies - Not too surprising as Iowa´s Senator Glassy is head of the Ways and Means Committee plus Iowa holds the first primary - not doing well there is very damaging so all candidates usually promise not to reduce that aid. Again: How DUMB can US voters be?

 

Source was telling this is good news for fertilizer companies, but not for eaters, (or the cost to government of the growing food stamp program, I add.)

 

Why prices are up at Taco Bell:

 

I had forgotten that ethanol may be why the carburetor on my car got ruined when its rubber components deteriorated. I recall it being mandatory that pumps be marked if they dispensed gasoline that contained alcohol, or was that only a requirement if it exceeded a certain percentage?

 

Look on the bright side: Many Americans are too fat anyway.

 

The abstract:

See full report of the Oxfam study at: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/files/Extreme-Weather-Extreme-Prices.pdf

 

Why many African farmers grow food only for themselves - Except for some traditional items not found in US, they can´t compete in local markets with food shipped from USA.

 

Does this mean that American's poor will not even be able to have franks with their beans?