The Cleaver and the Butterfly

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March 2024

"Only You Can Prevent A Forest"
From the jungles of Vietnam to the Cultural Revolution: the continuing adventures of Agent Soybean
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Andrew Leonard
1
The Headwaters of Dragon Ball Z
While eating breakfast this morning, I read an obituary of the Japanese manga writer Akira Toriyama, most famous around the world for the anime TV shows…
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Andrew Leonard
2
Cool Footnote: The Robert Heinlein Soybean Time Travel Machine
The article in the New York Times reporting Nixon’s ban on soybean exports on June 28, 1973, was, as we used to say when we still read printed…
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Andrew Leonard
7
Richard Nixon's Anchovy Problem
A story of price signals, seed collectors, extreme climate events, and war.
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Andrew Leonard
9

February 2024

Go With The Low Flow
The Principle of Non-Action as Applied to Chili Sauce
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Andrew Leonard
Cool Footnote: Sandbar Fixation
This morning while reading Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, by Robert Marks, I stumbled on a…
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Andrew Leonard

January 2024

December 2023

C. F. # 3: Hey Jude, Daoism, Cross-Pollination
(The cool footnotes are coming fast and furious as 2023 draws to an end. This is impeding my progress on my next major newsletter installment, a deep…
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Andrew Leonard
Cool Footnote # 2: Pertaining to the promiscuity of rice
In the year 1012, the third emperor of the Song dynasty, Zhenzong, having grown increasingly concerned about the intersection of famine and population…
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Andrew Leonard
A cool footnote
Let’s go behind the scenes. Here’s how the sausage gets made. A month ago, after encountering the earth-shattering accusation that the 19th century…
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Andrew Leonard
8
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