this is premium writing, no?

I've been rebuked.

In my last entry, I mentioned I was frustrated by rude and ungrateful behavior of some lady friends.

I did not realize how much they bring to my life until I read this yesterday:

A teaspoonful of healthy soil contains over 5bn living organisms from some 10,000 different species. As well as the earthworms that eat many times their own weight in soil each day and the dung beetles that drag little balls of nutrient-rich animal droppings down shallow tunnels where plants' roots can tap them, there are thousands of species that are invisible to the naked eye. Biologists have known of their existence for over a century, although some have only been fully understood recently. Take the thread-like fungi or microrrhizae that form intricate links with plant roots: they feed on the sap of the plant but in return they increase a plant's ability to take up minerals from the soil, and thereby become good food for us. But it is reductionist chemistry rather than biology that has ruled our industrial agriculture for more than half a century.

In today's competitive environment, farmers take an industrial approach. They abandon traditional ways and use chemicals instead in growing their crops. According to research, this has resulted in vegetables losing "a quarter of their magnesium, more than a quarter of their iron and nearly half of their calcium". This means food is no longer as nutritious and also causes sick animals that eat these vegetables including humans.

Graham Harvey's We Want Real Food and Felicity Lawrence's Not on the Label should make for fascinating reading but I already learnt something important today.

If you want to grow, you must be prepared to take shit. Sure, you can make your life better by staying clear of lousy shitty behavior. But you're not going to develop as a person.

So bring on your crap, my friends.