This might be the morning to go easy on your friends who are fans of the Red Sox or Braves (unless you think it's pay-back time for abuse they've given you in the past). Until Wednesday night, no Major League Baseball team that had an 8-game lead for a playoff spot in early September had failed to qualify for post-season play, . Last night, for doing just that. The American League's Boston Red Sox, a team that had a 9-game lead for a wild-card spot early this month, lost to the Baltimore Orioles 4-3. And because the Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 8-7 in 12 innings, it's the Rays who go to the post-season, not the Sox. Meanwhile, in the National League the Atlanta Braves completed their own melt-down. The Braves lost 4-3 to the Philadelphia Phillies. And because the St. Louis Cardinals beat Houston 8-0, it's the Cardinals — not the Braves — who will be the wild-card team. Earlier this month, the Braves had an 8 1/2 game lead for the wild-card spot.
The Sox and Braves both collapsed "in LED High Bay Light Housing, historic way," Tom told NPR's David Greene today on Morning Edition. This morning's newspapers reflect the pain and triumph being felt in the teams' cities: "Dream Year Ends In Tatters." "Braves' Epic Failure Is Complete." Cardinals' "Improbable Comeback [Is] Complete." "Stunning Finish In 12th Inning." As we say, it might be the day to go easy on those who love the Sox and Braves. And to fans of the Cardinals and Rays: good luck.

From a glance, Barcomi's poses as the success story of an expat whose cheesecake may be above the norm. But if you look closely and delve further into her mixed background of Polish and Jewish New Yorker roots, her cafe and the food it serves could not be more in sync with Berlin and greater Germany's own culinary past.
After all, it was the Jews from Eastern Europe that shaped much of Germany's food culture in the late 13th century, introducing a variety of baking techniques - a majority of which are still used today. And it was Jewish German immigrants who later established New York's famous deli culture and penchant for pastrami reubens, dill pickles, challah bread, and sauerkraut.
Barcomi comes from both food cultures and her shop that doubles as a cafe and deli embodies both pasts. So the next time you saunter by Barcomi's in Mitte or Kreuzberg, treat yourself to a slice of kuchen or a hearty reuben, and think fondly of how food more and gentwin who and where we are. Gianna Banducci, a baker and food writer in the Bay area, co-wrote this blog.

To what extent are biofuels, like corn ethanol, a part of the problem here? BOURNE: Sure. Well, this has been a hugely controversial issue because we had these huge subsidy programs from the government that came in to kickstart the biofuel industry. And these are - this is basically - in the United States it's ethanol made from corn and it now takes up 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop every year. So it's an enormous amount of land devoted to basically feeding our cars. We also make biodiesel out of things like soybean, canola, rapeseed, which is more popular in the United States - I mean, sorry, in Europe where about half the cars run on diesel. So over there they've had a huge, like, 8 to 12 percent of their arable land devoted to biofuel crops, canola and sunflower seeds, things like that. And even though the biofuel industry disputes this hotly, most of the economists in the world, between the World Bank and the IMF and the OECD, point their fingers squarely at biofuels as having a major impact on driving up food prices around the word. DAVIES: And the reasons that's happening is that as gasoline prices go up, as crude oil prices go up, that provides an incentive for farmers to make money by growing. So you essentially now have food prices linked directly to energy prices. BOURNE: Exactly. So now grain prices, especially those that are related to biofuels, are directly related to the price of - of the extremely volatile price of oil. So now we've endured some nice low oil prices over the last few years, but anyone who thinks they're going to continue is probably going to be in a rude awakening. So as soon as energy prices start to go back up, you're going to see rises in grain prices because of this direct connection between fuel and biofuel. DAVIES: The other side of the equation in this problem is how many mouths there will be to feed in coming decades.