The recent death of Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist credited with starting the “Green Revolution,” led to the reiteration of many of the tributes he amassed during his lifetime: that he saved the lives of millions of people, laid Malthus’ ghost to rest, and invented the production model which would enable us to continue “feeding [...]

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A fresh new perspective on the arts will soon be offered in downtown Des Moines. Though it won’t open its doors until the beginning of next year, the Market Street Media Foundry has already gathered the support of the Central Iowa art community. By giving a space and a smack in the face to working [...]

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Fighting in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has resulted in more deaths than any conflict since World War II. According to the International Rescue Committee, more than 5.4 million people have been killed in the DRC since 1998 by war and the ills that have accompanied it: massive displacement, [...]

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Francis Thicke is the first and, so far, only announced Democratic secretary of agriculture candidate for the 2010 election cycle. He presently operates an organic dairy farm with his wife near Fairfield, Iowa. In the past he has worked for the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., and was appointed by state governors [...]

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“Chickens get stressed,” Mary Jane explained as she opened the door to her homemade chicken coop and revealed a lovely oil painting on the wall, beside the shelf of droppings and above the woodchip floor. The painting helps create a stress-relieving, country-quaint atmosphere for this mixed urban/rural environment that Mary Jane Brotherson and her husband [...]

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That’s how it goes for Obama: on one day you pass a resolution against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and on the very next day you have to expose a nation for trying to proliferate those weapons. That’s how it was during Obama’s intense days at the UN and the G20 summits on September 24 [...]

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Waste white thighs spread against the plastic rim of the toilet seat. a relaxation, a release and yet – a lack of control. I couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to. under the crack in the door leak voices from the screen muted sounds telling of a child gone missing, another life snuffed in [...]

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Could Iowa become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana? In 1990, Carl Olsen tells me, he had an epiphany. It’s the year that he met George McMahon at a rally outside the state Capitol building, and McMahon was smoking pot. “I had never met a person that was legally smoking marijuana before,” Olsen recalls. [...]

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Jordan Mayland is one of the most active musicians and recording artists in Ames. In the past decade, he has played in a number of popular Ames bands, including Keepers of the Carpet, Nuclear Rodeo, Electronidoll, The Thermal Detonators, and Organ Donor, and this year Mayland has launched a new project called Volcano Boys. Both [...]

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Ames martial arts instructor Jack Shilkaitis has taken thousands of punches over the past decade, but he remembers none more fondly than the one he took from Vladimir Vasiliev. Vasiliev delivered the blow over four years ago, as part of a demonstration at a seminar in Chicago, but when Shilkaitis told me about it this [...]

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