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Farming Games and UFOs

Posted: February 1, 2010 at 01:00 PM CST

Just a couple of light topics today: one a game and the other a UFO sighting.

If you have kids or a school connection, check out www.MyAmericanFarm.org. It’s an online game to paint agriculture in a positive light and teach a few factoids about farming. In the spot where you get to pick your farmer, an attractive young woman says “I look for ways to produce renewable energy,” along with others touting their food-producing prowess and interest in the environment. Two games I tried out were pretty basic, grade-school level math and word-find games. The “corn facts game” consisted of a few simple math problems plus some basic corn facts. The “American agriculture game” link gave some basic facts the primary agriculture sectors in each state. It is a kernel of a promising idea, but needs work. The folks at Pioneer gave $500,000 over three years to the American Farm Bureau Foundation to develop the game further.

As far as the UFO sighting: the ethanol news feed over the weekend had this screaming headline: “Hovering Objects Photographed over Ethanol Plant”. The ethanol plant wasn’t identified, and the “hovering object” was dismissed as a lens flare by several commentators to the blog that “broke” the story. Just as humorous was the gauge underneath the photo that gave a very high reading on the “[BS] Amplifier/Detector (Input Frequency 950-2050 FECAL Hz)”.

We had a good laugh in the office.

-Susanne Retka Schill