Odds ‘n Sods:

Huricane Irene appears to headed toward North Carolina. Please keep the folks living in the storm’s path in your prayers.

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Reader Paula S. sent this: The Cause of Riots and the Price of Food — If we don’t reverse the current trend in food prices, we’ve got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists.

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Dave B. flagged this: A Wireless Communications System That Works When Cell Phones, Internet are Down

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What we have here is a failure to understand the 1st Amendment: Long Beach Police Chief: we detain photographers, and I don’t have any guidelines for that policy, photography is classed with attempts to acquire weaponized smallpox. After all the many recent police-versus-photographers and videographers incidents, and some bad precedents on access to the government’s own footage, I think that it is time that blogs start issuing press credentials to our readers. Presumably, I’ll just make you part of the SurvivalBlog staff, so that you can film whatever is happening in your neighborhood without fear of getting assaulted or arrested. (Oh, but then there are the rare cases when credentials don’t help, even if you are from a television news station.)

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Signs of the times: Detroit police to stop responding to unverified burglar alarms. (Thanks to Yishai for the link.)

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Chad S. spotted this: Home canning makes a comeback Recession, food recalls among reasons