Great article.

I fly between New York and Shanghai on a regular basis, and since these two show up on most people's list of top ten world cities, I'm baffled as well as inconvenienced as to why there is no non-stop flight between them. Surely this has to be a result of Sino-U.S. negotiations of how many flights each gets to the other's territory or something? Any idea what's going on here?

Also, you said "the customs and immigration facilities in the lower level of Terminal 3, and the narrow escalators that lead to and from them, are possibly the dingiest in America." Having just come back from Shanghai a couple of weeks ago, the contrast between brand-spankin' future coolistic new Pudong International (you get there on a magnetic levitation train at 450 kph, for pete's sake) and AA's terminal 7 - complete with stained acoustical tile, signage dating from whenever it was that chocolate brown was considered a fresh color, and 20 minute wait for luggage - could not be more stark or depressing. Oh yeah, and can I ask why this is the only country in the world where you have to pay for a luggage cart? What's next, pay restrooms? I was embarrassed to see several people on my JAL flight go over to a cart, tug on one, realize with amazement that they were expected to rent one for $3, and give up. Welcome to America.

Lots of good letters, but nobody has hit the simple guideline for why it's not only not hypocritical, but highly sensible, to embrace a scientific consensus on global warming but be suspicious of it on GM crops. You don't even have to be an environmentalist. Here it is: prudence.

It's just good sense to err on the side of caution with potentially world-altering issues, no matter where scientific, political, moral, fashionable etc. consensus lies. And caution says treat global warming like it's real, and treat GM crops like they could be dangerous. You don't want to be on the wrong side of reckless on either of those - though of course it looks like we will be...

Love the Steven Wright column! It can't be aerilons and, uh, inertial field dampers every week, interesting and informative as those are.

Well. I thought I was a Tolkien geek, but I see now I was wrong.

Um, I have read the whole Silmarillion, parts a few times, but I think that anyone who considers this the adult work of literature and LOTR the action figure kids stuff is, shall we say, well outside the mainstream. I think the warnings to the general reader are well taken - the people who it's right for will find it.

I'll put Turin on my reading list.

I don't know if this is a worse idea from the theoretical or practical perspective. Let's see:

Theoretical: I am an environmentalist, but it drives me crazy to see ostensibly smart and credentialed environmentalists focus so hard on one variable - in this case, land - while ignoring all the others. Sky farming would save on land and transport - at the cost of vastly increased energy and infrastructure costs. Are we really going to save the earth by replacing the sun with millions of grow lamps? No way does a tiny steam plant powered by plant waste, supplemented by whatever solar and wind power you can squeeze from a skyscraper-sized plot of land, provide enough energy for an industrial skyscraper, even if you factor in all the shipping costs you can imagine.

Practical: This proposal bends over backwards to optimize cheap inputs in favor of expensive inputs. Replace farm land with high rise construction, the sun with electrical energy, and throw in exceptionally complicated technological control and management. "Green" skyscrapers with integrated solar panels, cogeneration systems, black water reclaiming etc. are REALLY expensive. The "abandoned urban properties" mentioned are for the most part fictional and a relic of thinking from 30 years ago - except for those severely contaminated, which would have to be cleaned up for this use as for any other. The idea of building an advanced green skyscraper in the middle of a city for the purpose of growing food is economically absurd. Not financially difficult as a result of weird pricing forces, like solar and wind power, green building, or other sensible things, but fundamentally economically absurd.

To solve the population/land production mismatch, why not just apply some of the professor's strategies to farmland already in use to make it more productive and sustainable? Build more greenhouses, collect and recycle agricultural waste and runoff, reduce pesticides and non-organic fertilizers when you can? You can do all these things without building a skyscraper on the most expensive land you can find, for pete's sake. But I guess it won't sell as many magazines, and *that's* how the world works.

Someone said:

"I think Amazon and other rating sites would be more useful if the system could create a list of users who similiar tastes to you, rather than having to sort though random people whose criteria for liking or disliking something quite probably has little to do with you own."

A recommendation wiki site using this philosophy exists: www.wikilens.org. Because it's a wiki, anyone (with an account, to foil spammers) can rate, create a page on something to rate, or a category of things to rate. You can see the average ratings for something, but the rating to you weights the review of people you've selected as buddies. The system does not select people who have similar tastes as you, however, you have to do this yourself (and you can see how others rate things to help you do this.)

My results have been quite good, especially in areas like books, food etc. in which individual taste counts. And it's fun to see what people think is worth rating; "apple" is one of my favorite categories, with different varieties being rated.

And no, I'm not a shill and it's not my site!