I just picked up on the article by Deborah Sleeper on turning hog manure into asphalt, and I would say Ms. Sleeper is well-named.  Perhaps she could wake up long enough to notice the basic idiocy of her story and the people she is writing about.

     In the natural world animal feces are recycled as soil nutrients, and, until the advent of industrial farming a few decades ago, this is also what normally happened on every farm in the world.  The only reason we have a "problem" is that we now keep livestock like hogs bunched up by the thousands in a few acres, so it is too expensive to transport the manure to someplace where it might actually function as fertilizer.  Instead we have chemical engineers trying to turn the stuff into asphalt.

     Conversely, where do we now get soil nutrients?  We take petroleum, the usual ingredient in asphalt, and we spend billions every year turning it into artificial fertilizers.

     And who benefits from this system?  Not the average citizen, but only the big business types who have figured out how to "solve" a problem that did not exist until they came along and created it.

     My fearless prediction is that we will soon see gourmet hog manure lining the shelves of the "natural food" sections of the big grocery chains.  After all, if we are dumb enough to settle for what has been done so far to our food supply, why wouldn't we be dumb enough to spend top dollar in order to eat "all natural", "100% recycled" hog swill.

     And, no doubt, when that day comes, "journalists" like Ms. Sleeper will be lining up to shill in breathless fashion for those new products.  No need to do any real thinking about the story, much less any real reporting.  It's obviously much easier just to tart up a few corporate press releases, and then leave early for a long lunch.

     Indeed, the editorial content of this story is itself a candidate for conversion to asphalt, since it is just so much refined manure.

     And, finally, if Ms Sleeper is offended by the caustic tone of the foregoing, she might want to consider another line of work.  Presstitution may be legal, but standing on a street corner chatting up sailors on shore leave would be a good deal more honest.

Most sincerely,

David J. Johnson
Manchester, NH