Prime Day!
It’s “Prime Day” (well, the second). I know it has nothing to do with Prime Day as such, but I really do recommend all of you read Who We Are […]
Domestication of Rice in the Amazon
A new paper, Evidence for mid-Holocene rice domestication in the Americas, suggests that the Amazon basin was very culturally productive in the pre-Columbian period. What happened? From the conclusion: The arrival of Europeans to the American continent in AD 1492, with the consequent population decimation and impact on cultural practices, caused the domesticated traits to […]
Amazon will go to Denver
Lots of discussions last week in the office about where Amazon will locate its second headquarters. After looking at the criteria the consensus converged on Denver. The Upshot did a similar analysis…and settled on Denver as well. The huge downside of Austin is its deficits in transportation. Its airport is relatively modest. The mass transit […]
Amazon purchases whole foods and the distribution channel comes to you
The purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon has sent grocery store stocks into tailspin. Could Amazon do to Safeway and Korger what it did to Borders and Barnes & Noble? Some people have observed that the purchase impacts the nascent grocery delivery sector more than the established supermarkets. That was my first thought. For me […]
The old Amazon
Once Hidden by Forest, Carvings in Land Attest to Amazon’s Lost World: For some scholars of human history in Amazonia, the geoglyphs in the Brazilian state of Acre and other archaeological sites suggest that the forests of the western Amazon, previously considered uninhabitable for sophisticated societies partly because of the quality of their soils, may […]
The pristine Amazon – a zone of contention
Last week there was an article in The Washington Post that caught my eye, Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable. The headline flattens a complex and roiling debate within academia. A generation ago the forests of the Amazon basin were seen as a pristine climax ecosystem. In the 1990s and 2000s […]