Category Archives: Down To Earth

WTF Happened to Golden Rice?

by MikaylaU07 Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like the hover boards of the Back to the Future franchise, golden rice is an old idea that looms just beyond the grasp of reality.

5 Surprising GM Foods

“This Rice Could Save a Million Kids a Year,” announced a Time Magazine cover back in 2000. Orange in color, the rice is genetically modified to contain a jolt of beta-carotene, the stuff that gives carrots their hue and that our bodies transform into vitamin A. Diets deficient in that key micronutrient are the leading cause of blindness of children in the global south, where rice tends to be a staple grain. A decade and a half since the Time article, golden rice has yet to be planted commercially—but it continues generating bumper crops of hype. “Is Golden Rice the Future of Food?” the great hipster-foodie journal Lucky Peach wondered last fall, adding that “it might save millions from malnutrition.”

If golden rice is such a panacea, why does it flourish only in headlines, far from the farm fields where it’s intended to grow? The short answer is that the plant breeders have yet to concoct varieties of it that work as well in the field as existing rice strains. This is made all the more challenging in the face of debates over genetically modified crops and eternal disputes about how they should be regulated.

After seed developers first create a genetically modified strain with the desired trait—in this case, rice with beta carotene—they then start crossing it into varieties that have been shown to perform well in the field. The task is tricky: When you tweak one thing in a genome, such as giving rice the ability to generate beta-carotene, you risk changing other things, like its speed of growth. The University of Washington anthropologist and long-time golden rice observer Glenn Stone describes this process as “bringing a superfood down to earth,” and it gets little attention in most media accounts.

The most serious effort to commercialize golden rice is centered at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the globe’s most prestigious incubator of high-yielding rice varieties. Launched with grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations in 1960, IRRI spearheaded the Asian part of what became known as the Green Revolution—the effort to bring US-style industrial agriculture to the developing world. (My review of Nick Cullather’s excellent Green Revolution history The Hungry World is here.)

Today, IRRI coordinates the Golden Rice Network and has been working to develop a viable strain since 2006. And so far, it’s having trouble. On its website, IRRI reports that in the field latest trials, golden rice varieties “showed that beta carotene was produced at consistently high levels in the grain, and that grain quality was comparable to the conventional variety.” However, the website continues, “yields of candidate lines were not consistent across locations and seasons.” Translation: The golden rice varieties exhibited what’s known in agronomy circles as a “yield drag”—they didn’t produce as much rice as the non-GM varieties they’d need to compete with in farm fields. So the IRRI researchers are going back to the drawing board.

Via email, I asked IRRI how that effort is going. “So far, both agronomic and laboratory data look very promising,” a spokeswoman replied. But she declined to give a time frame for when IRRI thinks it will have a variety that’s ready for prime time. Washington University’s Stone says he visited IRRI’s campus in the Philippines in the summer of 2015 and heard from researchers that such a breakthrough is “at least several more years” off. The IRRI spokeswoman also declined to comment on Stone’s time-frame report.

That’s not a very inspiring assessment, given that researchers first successfully inserted the beta-carotene trait in the rice genome in 2000, and that the technology has been lavished with research support ever since—including from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative), USAID, the Syngenta Foundation, and others, according to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.

Of course, among people who think biotechnology has a crucial role to play in solving developing-world malnutrition, IRRI’s agronomic struggles are compounded by anti-GMO zealotry as well as what it sees as over-regulation of GMOs in the global south. David Zilberman, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley, points out that most developing-world nations, including the Philippines, have adopted the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which stipulates a precautionary approach to introducing new GMO products, including restrictions on how trials are conducted. The Cartagena regime stands in sharp contrast to the much more laissez-faire one that holds sway in the United States, Zilberman says.

If the developing world embraced US-style regulation and treated vitamin A deficiency as a medical emergency solvable by golden rice, “it would have become available in 2000” Zilberman says. Based on that premise, he and German agricultural economist Justus Wesseler co-authored a 2014 paper claiming that golden rice has “been available since early 2000” and opposition to it has resulted in “about 1.4 million life years lost over the past decade in India” alone. Such claims abound in pro-GM circles. At a speech at the University of Texas last year, the Nobel laureate British biochemist Sir Richard Roberts accused gold rice opponents of have having committed a “crime against humanity.”

To be sure, opposition to golden rice has occasionally gone overboard. In 2013, activists destroyed one of of IRRI’s golden rice field trials in the Philippines, for example. “Anti-GMO activism has set back our work, in that we not only concentrate with our research, but we have to also spend time and resources to counter their propaganda,” the IRRI spokesperson told me. But the group makes clear that regulation and activism are only two of the challenges facing golden rice—getting it to perform well remains a major task.

Even if and when IRRI does come up with a high-yielding golden rice variety that passes regulatory muster, it remains unclear whether it can actually make a dent in vitamin A deficiency. As the Washington University’s Stone notes, vitamin A deficiency often affects people whose diets are also deficient in other vital nutrients. Vitamin A is fat soluble, meaning that it can’t be taken up by the body unless it’s accompanied by sufficient dietary fat, which isn’t delivered in significant quantities by rice, golden or otherwise.

According to Stone, only one feeding study (PDF) has ever showed a powerful uptake of vitamin A by subjects eating golden rice. The paper was much-cited by golden rice proponents, but Stone says it had a major flaw: The subjects were “well-nourished individuals” who already took in sufficient fat in their diets. The study “demonstrated only that Golden Rice worked in children who did not need it,” he writes. (The study has since been retracted on claims that the author failed to obtain proper consent from the parents of the participants).

Meanwhile, as IRRI scrambles to perfect golden rice, the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency is declining in the Philippines—according to IRRI itself— from 40 percent of children aged 6 months to 5 years in 2003, to 15.2 percent in 2008. “The exact reasons for these improvements have not been determined, but they may be the results of proven approaches to preventing vitamin A deficiency, such as vitamin A supplementation, dietary diversification, food fortification and promotion of optimal breastfeeding,” the group noted. That drop is part of a long-term trend that involves all of Southeast Asia. According to a 2015 Lancet study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, vitamin A deficiency plagued 39 percent of children in the region in 1991, but only 6 percent in 2013—without the help of golden rice.

But VAD, as the deficiency’s known, remains a huge scourge on the Indian sub-continent and in Africa, the study found, affecting more than 40 percent of children in both regions. Whether golden rice will ever help mitigate that ongoing tragedy won’t likely be known for some time. But the technology’s hardly the slam-dunk panacea its advocates insist it is.

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WTF Happened to Golden Rice?

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Marco Rubio Finds His Religion

by TaylahNweaaeb Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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With days to go before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, Marco Rubio has suddenly and emphatically found his religion as he seeks to sway the evangelicals who are likely to dominate the contest. During the last pre-caucus debate on Thursday night in Des Moines, the senator from Florida regularly found a way to squeeze in talk of his faith, even when it had no apparent bearing on the question at hand.

“Well, let me be clear about one thing, there’s only one savior and it’s not me,” Rubio said when asked if he could be the savior of the GOP. “It’s Jesus Christ, who came down to Earth and died for our sins.”

Later, when asked to back up a few attacks against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the previous debate, Rubio once again turned to religion. “You’ve just asked a very fundamental question about the role of faith in our country,” he said. “And I think this is an important question. I think if you do not understand that our Judeo-Christian values are one of the reasons why America is such a special country, you don’t understand our history.”

While he hasn’t gone into full pastor mode of citing Bible verses to defend his policies, religion has become a regular topic at Rubio’s town halls across Iowa. He repeated many similar points during a small town hall at Marshalltown Community College. Before a small mid-afternoon crowd, Rubio seemed to come alive whenever he had a chance to talk about his faith. Just two minutes into his speech, he began boasting of how Christianity made the United States special.

“We were founded on an incredibly powerful principle,” Rubio said, “the idea that every human being, your rights do not come from government, your rights come from God. It is our creator that has given us our rights.” When asked about taking care of the disabled during the Q&A portion of the event, Rubio again turned to the rights “from the creator” to draw a contrast with other countries. He reveled in a question about Planned Parenthood to tout his anti-abortion stance.

Rubio really perked up at a question about the Little Sisters of the Poor court case challenging the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage. “It’s part of a broader narrative and this all-out assault on religious liberty,” he said. He joked that religious liberty wasn’t just the right to believe anything you want, like worshipping trees. “Religious liberty is the right to live out your faith, personally,” he said. He noted that the government’s role isn’t to impose religion on others, though he was quick to reassure the voters in the room that he personally pursued that task. “I’m a Christian; you can’t impose Christianity,” he said. “Christianity is about the free gift of salvation, it has to be willfully accepted. You can’t force someone to convert to Christianity, won’t be legitimate. So I won’t force anyone to believe what I want. I’m more than happy to share my faith, and I always look for the opportunity to do that because my faith compels that, calls upon it.”

The event closed with another question that allowed Rubio to boast about how much he loves God and how important religion is to America. “It begins by recognizing,” he said,” whether you like it or not, that our Judeo-Christian values are an integral part of our history. It is, I believe, the reason why America’s the most generous nation in all mankind.”

Rubio’s ads have also recently taken on a religious bent. “Our goal is eternity, the ability to live alongside our creator for all time,” Rubio says in recent TV spot. “To accept the free gift of salvation offered to us by Jesus Christ.”

Why all the Jesus? It’s probably too late for Rubio to become the chosen candidate in Iowa, but with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas relying on evangelicals to form a version of Rick Santorum’s 2012 coalition, Rubio may be looking to peel off a sliver of the die-hard Christians who dominate the Iowa caucuses so he can cut into Cruz’s main voting bloc and position himself as a candidate with broad appeal heading into the full primary season.

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Marco Rubio Finds His Religion

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The Honest Life – Jessica Alba

by Myrna Posted on December 23, 2015

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The Honest Life

Living Naturally and True to You

Jessica Alba

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $0.99

Publish Date: March 12, 2013

Publisher: Rodale

Seller: Rodale Inc.


As a new mom, Jessica Alba wanted to create the safest, healthiest environment for her family. But she was frustrated by the lack of trustworthy information on how to live healthier and cleaner—delivered in a way that a busy mom could act on without going to extremes. In 2012, with serial entrepreneur Brian Lee and environmental advocate Christopher Gavigan, she launched The Honest Company, a brand where parents can find reliable information and products that are safe, stylish, and affordable. The Honest Life shares the insights and strategies she gathered along the way. The Honest Life recounts Alba’s personal journey of discovery and reveals her tips for making healthy living fun, real, and stylish, while offering a candid look inside her home and daily life. She shares strategies for maintaining a clean diet (with favorite family-friendly recipes) and embraces nontoxic choices at home and provides eco-friendly decor tips to fit any budget. Alba also discusses cultivating a daily eco beauty routine, finding one’s personal style without resorting to yoga pants, and engaging in fun, hands-on activities with kids. Her solutions are easy, chic, and down-to-earth: they’re honest. And discovering everyday ways to live naturally and authentically—true to you—could be honestly life-changing.

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The Honest Life – Jessica Alba

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Too bad NASA’s plan for space-based solar never happened

by CharityMullens Posted on September 21, 2015

Too bad NASA’s plan for space-based solar never happened

By on 21 Sep 2015 4:20 pmcommentsShare

It’s always irksome when tech companies talk about their latest “moonshot.” The actual moonshot was one of the most incredible accomplishments of humankind. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged NASA to put someone on the moon by the end of the decade, and NASA, which hadn’t even put someone in orbit yet, was like, “On it, boss,” and then had three people on the moon eight years later. So sorry, Google, even if Google Glass hadn’t flopped, it wouldn’t have been a moonshot, and neither will anything else that comes out of the “moonshot factory.”

So it’s a real bummer to find out that the agency that today’s most powerful engineers and entrepreneurs so desperately want to emulate had a mind-blowingly awesome plan for a space-based solar factory back in the ’70s that never came to fruition. Here’s the scoop from Motherboard:

At the height of the oil crisis in the 1970s, the US government considered building a network of 60 orbiting solar power stations that would beam energy down to Earth. Each geosynchronous satellite, according to this 1981 NASA memo, was to weigh around 35,000 to 50,000 metric tons. The Satellite Power System (SPS) project envisaged building two satellites a year for 30 years.

To get said power stations into orbit, the once-powerful aerospace manufacturing company Rockwell International designed something called a Star-Raker, which, in addition to sounding like something from a sci-fi movie, also would have acted like one:

The proposed Star-Raker would load its cargo at a regular airport, fly to a spaceport near the equator, fuel up on liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and take off horizontally using its ten supersonic ramjet engines. A 1979 technical paper lays out its potential flight plan: At a cruising altitude of 45,000 feet, the craft would then dive to 37,000 feet to break the sound barrier. At speeds of up to Mach 6, the Star-Raker would jet to an altitude of 29km before the rockets kicked in, propelling it into orbit.

Just to recap: The Star-Raker would have broken the speed of sound by diving seven miles. And the spacecraft would have been making so many regular trips to orbit that it would have essentially been a 747 for space, Motherboard reports.

In terms of feasibility, here’s how one scientist put it at the time:

“The SPS is an attractive, challenging, worthy project, which the aerospace community is well prepared and able to address,” physicist Robert G. Jahn wrote in the foreword to a 1980 SPS feasibility report. “The mature confidence and authority of [the working groups] left the clear impression that if some persuasive constellation of purposes … should assign this particular energy strategy a high priority, it could be accomplished.”

Putting solar plants in space would’ve been hard, sure, but this proposal came just 10 years after NASA landed Apollo 11 on the moon, so doing seemingly impossible things was kind of their thing. Even if SPS hadn’t happened as planned (and for more details on what exactly that plan was, check out this in-depth look from Wired), there’s no doubt that with the right amount of support and funding, NASA could’ve done something incredible in the cleantech arena.

Today, NASA remains an indispensable source of climate change research. Unfortunately, politicians aren’t as eager to throw money at the agency now that we’re no longer trying to show up the Soviet Union (in fact, the U.S. government is now relying on Russia to take U.S. astronauts up to the International Space Station). And some members of Congress (lookin’ at you, Ted Cruz) have it in their heads that NASA shouldn’t even be doing Earth sciences research in the first place.

We know from the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars back in 2012 that NASA still has the ability to inspire and astonish. People geeked out hard over those “seven minutes of terror” and for good reason. Getting that same kind of support behind something that addresses climate change would be exactly what this world needs. If only the one organization proven capable of doing moonshots wasn’t beholden to a bunch of science-hating idiots.

Source:

The Space Plane NASA Wanted to Use to Build Solar Power Plants in Orbit

, Motherboard.

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Too bad NASA’s plan for space-based solar never happened

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SuperBetter – Jane McGonigal

by Myrna Posted on September 15, 2015

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SuperBetter

A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient–Powered by the Science of Games

Jane McGonigal

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: September 15, 2015

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


An innovative guide to living gamefully, based on the program that has already helped nearly half a million people achieve remarkable personal growth In 2009, internationally renowned game designer Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion. Unable to think clearly or work or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a resilience-building game. What started as a simple motivational exercise quickly became a set of rules for “post-traumatic growth” that she shared on her blog. These rules led to a digital game and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. Today nearly half a million people have played SuperBetter to get stronger, happier, and healthier. But the life-changing ideas behind SuperBetter are much bigger than just one game. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the ways all games—including videogames, sports, and puzzles—change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting a more “gameful” mind-set. Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to real-world goals. Drawing on hundreds of studies, McGonigal shows that getting superbetter is as simple as tapping into the three core psychological strengths that games help you build:    •  Your ability to control your attention, and therefore your thoughts and feelings    •  Your power to turn anyone into a potential ally, and to strengthen your existing relationships    •  Your natural capacity to motivate yourself and super-charge your heroic qualities, like willpower, compassion, and determination SuperBetter contains nearly 100 playful challenges anyone can undertake in order to build these gameful strengths. It includes stories and data from people who have used the SuperBetter method to get stronger in the face of illness, injury, and other major setbacks, as well as to achieve goals like losing weight, running a marathon, and finding a new job. As inspiring as it is down to earth, and grounded in rigorous research, SuperBetter is a proven game plan for a better life. You’ll never say that something is “just a game” again. From the Hardcover edition.

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SuperBetter – Jane McGonigal

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Do-It-Yourself Herbal Medicine – Sonoma Press

by Myrna Posted on September 1, 2015

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Do-It-Yourself Herbal Medicine

Home-Crafted Remedies for Health and Beauty

Sonoma Press

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: July 10, 2015

Publisher: Arcas Publishing

Seller: Ingram DV LLC


The Modern Guide to Using Herbs and Essential Oils You don’t have to identify with the goddess or Earth Mother labels to get going with holistic treatments for your everyday health needs. If you already buy organic produce, make an effort to eat whole foods, and tend to choose Method products over Windex, it only makes sense that that you’d approach your health, wellness, and beauty regimen with a similarly all-natural approach. Do-It-Yourself Herbal Medicine inspires you to easily and affordably take charge of how you look and feel by sharing simple and fun recipes that use Mason jars, sauce pans, and even your French press in creative ways. In these pages, you’ll find: • Down-to-earth info on the exploding popularity of essential oils and why they’re so effective • In-depth profiles of 5 must-have herbs to kick off your herbal medicinal projects, as well as 30 additional herbs to get to know and use • Over 200 recipes for face and hair care, body and skin care, intimate care, mental health and wellness, common ailments, home cleaning products, and self-care for the day common occurrences, from a hangover to a Netflix binge watch Improve your health and empower yourself today with these simply, powerful remedies.

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Do-It-Yourself Herbal Medicine – Sonoma Press

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These bizarre, beautiful cities of the future are also super green

by LinnieJ15fyfs Posted on March 3, 2015

These bizarre, beautiful cities of the future are also super green

By on 2 Mar 2015commentsShare

I consider myself somewhat of an expert on future cities. When I relocated to Seattle just over a month ago, I moved into an “apodment,” which is basically Bruce Willis’ apartment from The Fifth Element, one of the greatest futuristic sci-fi flicks of all time (opinions are my own). Sure, my place doesn’t have the automatic bed-maker or window access to floating restaurants that Bruce’s did, but it’s roughly the same size, and I think that’s enough for me to maintain the delusion.

So I was stoked to hear about a new exhibit at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects that shows historical depictions of future cities from as far back as 1900. The images are part of an analysis of how our visions of future cities have changed over time and what that means for our actual future cities over the next 50 years. The U.K.’s Government Office of Science commissioned the report as part of its Future of Cities project.

The researchers looked at more than 80 future cities concepts, classifying them into six categories, including “layered” cities that contain multiple physical levels and “informal” cities that cater to nomadic lifestyles. They then analyzed the popularity of these categories over time and, fortunately for the planet, found a recent surge in “ecological” cities that prioritize sustainability:

The Ecological City paradigm evidences increasing concern about the longevity of the city, adaptability to climate change, resource management and resilience of changing social dynamics and populations.

They also found a shift toward “hybrid” or “smart” cities that integrate physical and digital infrastructure.

I guess that means I’m ahead of the curve here in the Emerald City, where we have one of the greenest office buildings in the world and a fancy climate action plan. All I have to do is connect my micro-studio to the Internet of Things, and I’ll be ready for the future!

Here’s a taste of the exhibit:

Forshaw’s London community map (1943): This map shows a proposed restructuring of London after World War II. It attempts to combat urban sprawl, integrate the city’s various ethnicities, and create a generally more egalitarian society. Patrick Abercrombie

Cosmic City (1963): This city features huge towers built to house 5 million residents. Nature fills the spaces between towers.Iannis Xenakis

Autopia Ampere (1978): Using a technology called Biorock that grows and repairs coral, this city would grow from the sea.Newton Fallis

The Berg, Berlin (2009): Replacing the skyscraper as the city’s identity, this 1,000-meter human-made mountain would tower over Berlin. Mila / Jakob Tigges

Cloud Skippers (2009): Helium balloons lift communities above flooded areas and go wherever the jet stream takes them. Studio Lindfors

Red Hook Brooklyn and Governor’s Island (2010): A nonprofit group of “urbaneers” built this model of a sustainable Brooklyn. Terraform 1

Saturation City, Melbourne (2010): This post-sea level rise Melbourne features a dense city of “superblocks.”Bild Architecture

Singapore (2001-2021): This city masterplan was developed using parametric software that evolves urban architecture from the natural landscape.Zaha Hadid Architects

Source:
18 Visions of the City of the Future, From the Past

, Fast Company.

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Unclutter Your Life in One Week – Erin Rooney Doland

by Myrna Posted on December 23, 2014

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Unclutter Your Life in One Week

Erin Rooney Doland

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: November 3, 2009

Publisher: Gallery Books

Seller: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.


SIMPLICITY IS REVOLUTIONARY. Organization expert Erin Rooney Doland will show you how to clear the clutter, simplify your surroundings, and create the stress-free life you deserve—in just one week. Her down-to-earth approach and useful, innovative suggestions for tackling the physical, mental, and systemic distractions in your home and office will help you: •Part with sentimental clutter •Organize your closet based on how you process information •Build an effective and personalized filing system •Avoid the procrastination that often hinders the process •Maintain your harmonious home and work environments with minimal daily effort •And much more!

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Unclutter Your Life in One Week – Erin Rooney Doland

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What’s Wrong With the Science of “Interstellar”?

by SallyFurlong Posted on November 12, 2014

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What’s Wrong With the Science of “Interstellar”?

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The Mother Jones Guide to Evil NBA Owners

by JungDellinger Posted on October 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Six months ago, the NBA rid itself of its worst owner, perpetual sleazebag Donald Sterling. Everyone praised the swift, harsh punishment meted out by commissioner Adam Silver for Sterling’s racist tirade—well, almost everyone. Shortly after the league announced the lifetime ban of the Clippers owner, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank celeb Mark Cuban called the league’s move “a very, very slippery slope.”

Cuban got on board the next day, even tweeting that he agreed 100 percent with Silver’s decision. But what was he so worried about? Well, the league’s 30 owners might not have Sterling-like baggage, but there’s plenty of embarrassing biographical material to mine—offensive emails, family feuds, sketchy business deals, and more—just like we here at Mother Jones did for their counterparts in baseball and football. So, with an eye on political contributions and general scumbaggery, here’s how the NBA’s most powerful men (and woman) stack up:

Atlanta
Boston
Brooklyn
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Golden State
Houston
Indiana
LA Clippers
LA Lakers
Memphis
Miami
Milwaukee
Minnesota
New Orleans
New York
Oklahoma City
Orlando
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Portland
Sacramento
San Antonio
Toronto
Utah
Washington

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlanta Hawks: Bruce Levenson, reportedly worth $500 million, likely won’t be the Hawks owner for long, not after the email he self-reported to the league following the Sterling debacle. The offending missive included observations like “My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base” and “i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season tixs demo,” and “I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.” (Notably, a league higher-up told one reporter that Levenson didn’t actually self-report the email, and others have suggested that he might have used it as an ownership exit strategy.)

Boston Celtics: Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck—son of H. Irving Grousbeck, the cofounder of Continental Cablevision, which sold for $5.3 billion in 1996—was a Princeton rower before becoming a venture capitalist and eventually buying the Celtics with his dad in 2002. In his spare time, Grousbeck moonlights as a drummer (he once played with former Celtic Walter McCarty). His brother, a singer-songwriter who goes by Peter Walker, told the Boston Globe in 2004 that “Wyc’s pretty much a straight-up rock dude.”

Private equity investor Stephen Pagliuca is managing director at Mitt Romney’s old haunt, Bain Capital. But Pagliuca’s politics lean left: He’s a big Democratic donor, and in 2009 he ran for the party’s nomination to replace Ted Kennedy. He came in last of four candidates.

Brooklyn Nets: The famously tech averse Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov (who reportedly doesn’t use a cellphone or computer in his office) bought the Nets for $200 million in 2010 and helped oversee their move from New Jersey to Brooklyn. He’s one of the tabloids’ favorite back-page curiosities, and why not? In 2007, he famously brought eight Russian models with him to the French Alps to help entertain the dozens of business associates he was partying with. French authorities temporarily detained him, fearing that he was encouraging prostitution. Prokhorov’s response: The French elite were just jealous because they were way behind when it came to fashion, life, and sex drive. (He later told 60 Minutes that he hadn’t yet found a woman who cooked well enough to marry.) He’s also really into jet skiing:

Charlotte Hornets: Six NBA titles. Five league MVP awards. Countless pairs of ripped jeans. Michael Jordan has stumbled often since his days as the league’s premier player, gumming it up as an executive, sneaker mogul, and even Hall of Fame inductee. Legendary for his competitive nature—and penchant for attacking teammates he saw as weak links—His Airness can’t seem to help himself when it comes to being the official arbiter of all-time NBA greatness. Mix in a decade as management, and you get plenty of “Back in my day…” moments, like when he recently called out superstars LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki for suggesting that the league scale back its 82-game schedule: “Are they ready to give up money to play fewer games? That’s the question, because you can’t make the same amount of money playing fewer games.”

Chicago Bulls: Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owns baseball’s White Sox, has always been more of a baseball man. That’s where he’s focused much of his energy over the years, becoming one of the players union’s biggest adversaries and a pioneer of publicly funded stadiums. When he threatened to move the Sox to Florida in the early 1990s, he got a sweetheart deal from Illinois—or, as one confidant told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1993, “Not only are there ticket subsidies from the state, but if a light goes out in the bathroom, the state pays for the bulb and the installation. If we sent him to the Middle East to deal with the Arabs, they wouldn’t have any oil left. He’s that good.”

Cleveland Cavaliers: Not only is Dan Gilbert the nation’s most notorious user of Comic Sans, he’s also the billionaire owner of the country’s second-largest mortgage lender, Quicken Loans. And while Quicken has cultivated a squeaky-clean image over the years—note its annual place on those best-places-to-work lists, as well as its goofy emphasis on Gilbert’s “isms”—it did face its share of post-crisis lawsuits. Now that LeBron is back in Cleveland, Gilbert has just one rebuilding project to focus on: his commitment to turn around his hometown of Detroit, where he has bought and updated some 60 downtown properties at a reported cost of $1.3 billion, and moved 12,000 of his own employees there. (Some even have taken to calling downtown Detroit “Gilbertville.”) It’s a risk, but then again, Gilbert bankrolled roughly half of a $47 million campaign to bring gambling to Ohio via a 2009 ballot initiative. The initiative passed, and Gilbert’s Horseshoe Casino opened in downtown Cleveland in 2012.

Detroit Pistons: Tom Gores, 50, is a Beverly Hills tech buyout king and owner of Platinum Equity, which has bought out everything from steel manufacturers to the San Diego Union-Tribune (though it lost out on a bid for the Boston Globe back in 2009). Gores was born in Israel and moved to the Detroit area as a child; he worked at his brother Alec’s software company and private equity firm before leaving to start Platinum. The brothers’ relationship cooled when it was revealed that Tom, who is married with three kids, had a sexual relationship with Lisa Gores, Alec’s wife. (Alec had Los Angeles private detective Anthony Pellicano follow Lisa and Tom, and the scoop came out in Pellicano’s 2008 trial for illegal wiretapping.) For photos of Gores’ squinching game, check out the gallery at TomGores.com.

Indiana Pacers: Herbert Simon and his nephew David run one of the world’s largest real estate investment funds, the Simon Property Group. He has eight kids and is on marriage No. 3, to former Miss Thailand Bui Simon. He started SPG with his brother, Melvin, David’s father. When Melvin died, his widow, Bren, feuded with her stepchildren, calling David “a terrorist” and stepdaughter Debbie “Debbie bin Laden.” Herbert and Bui fought off three successive lawsuits from former domestic employees—all brought by the same attorney.

Miami Heat: In a 2005 Washington Post profile of Heat owner Micky Arison, team president and then-coach Pat Riley raved about him: “He’s about as down to earth as you’re going to get for a billionaire…He doesn’t need, nor does he pursue, the spotlight.” Arison took over Carnival Cruises from father Fred and presided over its rise—as well as its recent Poop Cruise-era fall. (He stepped down as CEO last year.) Still, Arison seems to take setbacks in stride, given his gracious response to LeBron James’ departure for Cleveland this past offseason and his general outlook on the business world (as told to the Post): “In any given year, out of 30 NBA teams, there is only one winner. In business, we can all be winners.”

Milwaukee Bucks: The most memorable thing hedge fund exec Wesley Edens—whom Vanity Fair described as a “cerebral, intense, very private wunderkind”—has done as one of the Bucks’ new owners is send his 18-year-old daughter, Mallory, to the NBA Draft Lottery this past May to represent the Bucks. (The team snagged the second pick.)

Meanwhile, fellow hedge fund exec and Clinton confidant Marc Lasry was up for consideration for the French ambassadorship—only to pull out just before stories emerged about his taste for high-stakes poker.

New York Knicks: Where to start with tabloid staple and Cablevision CEO James Dolan? With the sexual-harassment scandal involving former coach Isiah Thomas and team executive Anucha Browne Sanders? Or perhaps the lawsuit this past March from a shareholder alleging “grossly excessive” executive pay after Cablevision’s board approved $80 million in bonuses for Dolan and his father, chairman Charles Dolan? Then there’s the endless kookiness surrounding the team’s media policy, which requires a member of the PR office to be present for all interviews with Knicks players and coaches—and then to send transcripts up the chain of command, even to Dolan? Oh, and Dolan also fronts a band called JD & the Straight Shot. He wrote a song called “Under That Hood” (It’s all good/Under my hood/So misunderstood) about Trayvon Martin.

Orlando Magic: From Andy Kroll’s expansive profile on Richard DeVos and his political family:

He fit the part of GOP rainmaker-in-chief, wearing a diamond pinkie ring and Gucci loafers, driving a Rolls-Royce and frequently commuting to his nearby office by helicopter. He once docked Amway’s $5 million yacht on the Potomac River in Washington to hold court with Michigan’s congressional delegation, RNC staffers, and personnel from 12 embassies representing countries where Amway did business. DeVos was also a strident voice within the party: In an era when Republicans still courted labor, he urged the GOP to ignore union members. “If they want to be represented by somebody else,” he once said, “good for them.” At a party meeting in 1982, he called the recession that was spiking inflation and unemployment “beneficial” and “a cleansing tonic” for society.

DeVos recently was the subject of an Orlando Sentinel column headlined, “Is Magic’s Rich DeVos Next NBA Owner to Become a Target?” (The story, which came out after the Sterling fiasco, was about DeVos’ anti-gay views.)

Philadelphia 76ers: Buyout-firm maven Joshua Harris made his billions in private equity, cofounding Apollo Global Management, which made headlines in 2011 when it was revealed that it had paid a former California Public Employees’ Retirement System board member tens of millions of dollars to score billions in investments from the pension fund. (Apollo wasn’t accused of wrongdoing.) Harris, who also owns the New Jersey Devils, reportedly is on the verge of buying the English Premier League’s Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, the rebuilding-focused Sixers continue to suck; in April, following the team’s 19-63 season, Harris called the year “a huge success.”

Toronto Raptors: There are many fun things about the NBA’s only foreign franchise, including its throwback dino uniforms, its F-bomb-dropping general manager, and one of the smartest and most raucous fanbases in the NBA. (And, occasionally, Drake.) Owner Larry Tanenbaum, however, is boring as sin.

Washington Wizards: For a glimpse of Ted Leonsis at his peak, this 1995 New York Times Magazine profile is chock full of great stuff: As a bachelor, Leonsis would occasionally bring an Elvis bust with him when dining out with friends; later, as an AOL exec, he came around to the fact that the company was more Norman Rockwell than MTV: “Face it, when you go to a cocktail party and America Online diskettes are being used as coasters, you know you’ve become mainstream.” These days, Leonsis is DC sports royalty as owner of the Wizards, the WNBA’s Mystics, and the NHL’s Capitals—he once got into a physical altercation with a heckling fan, who accused Leonsis of grabbing his neck and throwing him to the ground after a Caps game.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Dallas Mavericks: What is there left to say about Mark Cuban? The guy speaks for himself: This year alone, the self-made billionaire and self-identified Randian has defended Donald Sterling, waded into the Trayvon Martin controversy, and predicted the NFL would collapse within 10 years. Over the years, he’s been fined nearly $2 million by the league, tried to draft Michael Bloomberg to run for president, and commissioned a mural about his life. He’s come out of an insider-trading trial unscathed and actually built a pretty decent basketball team. Literally and figuratively, he’s the biggest shark in the tank.

Denver Nuggets: Stan Kroenke—a.k.a. “Silent Stan” for his reluctance to talk to the media—collects sports franchises like trophies. Besides the Nuggets, the multibillionaire owns the Colorado Avalanche, the St. Louis Rams, a MLS franchise, a lacrosse team, and has a majority share of the UK soccer club Arsenal. He’s made good money in real estate, but buying a bunch of teams is easier when you’re married to Ann Walton, of the Bentonville Waltons. Kroenke served on Walmart’s Board of Directors in the 1990s and has benefited from Walton ties for decades: The Denver Post reports that his retail ventures (often anchored by the megastore) have landed hundreds of millions in tax breaks.

Golden State Warriors: Peter Guber’s résumé sounds more appropriate for a Lakers owner. He’s a longtime showbiz exec and producer of big-time hits like Rain Man and The Color Purple. Since the ’90s, he has run Mandalay Entertainment, which has produced art-house gems like I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Guber is a fairly loyal Democrat, but he’s also said on record that President Obama has disappointed Hollywood, and he has sometimes donated to Republicans, such as the late former Sen. Ted Stevens. The Warriors have thrived under Guber’s tenure, but he may not have mastered email yet: He recently replied-all to the entire organization, writing that he had to learn “hoodish” in addition to the languages of the Warriors’ international players. (He claims that he meant to write Yiddish.)

Joe Lacob is the more hands-on, day-to-day owner of the Warriors. He’s a partner at the elite Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which is the subject of a nasty, ongoing sexual-harassment lawsuit. Ellen Pao, a former partner, is suing the company for wrongful termination after she reported sexual harassment to senior management.

Houston Rockets: A billionaire New York financier, Leslie Alexander fits the stereotype of a fat-cat owner: He’s got a $42 million penthouse in Manhattan and launched a Hamptons wine club with a $50,000 entry fee. He ran First Marblehead, a for-profit student loan company that tanked during the 2008 financial meltdown—but not before cashing out nearly $300 million in stock. His love of green extends beyond taking people’s money, though—he’s also an outspoken animal rights activist who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to PETA and affiliated groups. He also reportedly donated to a militant animal rights group whose US leaders were convicted of terrorism charges in 2006.

Los Angeles Clippers: Steve Ballmer is the newest (and with a net worth of $22.5 billion, richest) addition to the owners’ club. He forked over $2 billion in pocket change this year to rescue the Clippers from Donald Sterling. He’s fresh off a 14-year tenure as Microsoft’s CEO, abruptly quitting after years of internal and external criticism of his leadership. To be fair, he did preside over a very rough patch for the company—losing billions, getting beat by Apple, and overseeing the flop of the Zune. Forbes even called him the “worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company…without a doubt.” The famously exuberant BasketBallmer is now looking to rebound with the resurgent Clips—but not before banning Apple products from the locker room.

Los Angeles Lakers: Technically, the six children of Jerry Buss—the longtime Lakers owner who died last year—own a majority share of the team, but day-to-day owner Jeanie Buss has the final say. (Brother Jim focuses on basketball operations.) That unofficially makes her the league’s sole female owner. Despite her short tenure, she’s been criticized for the crazy deal she offered Kobe Bryant and her engagement to Lakers legend (and Knicks president) Phil Jackson. Earlier this year, Jackson was being considered for a job with the Lakers, but Jim was against hiring him, leading to even more Buss family strife.

Memphis Grizzlies: At 36, Robert J. Pera is the youngest NBA owner, and one of the world’s youngest billionaires. The Silicon Valley native founded Ubiquiti, an internet technology company that wants to kill off Cisco in the quest to wifi-ify America’s offices and cities. A former high school player, the 6-foot-3 Pera tweeted that he could easily take Mark Cuban in a 1-on-1, and even challenged Michael Jordan to a $1 million game. (Jordan called it “comical.”)

Minnesota Timberwolves: Glen Taylor has that classic life story: grew up on a farm, pulled himself by the bootstraps, and made himself into a multibillionaire by cobbling together a business empire based on printing and electronics. Big surprise, then, that he’s a staunch Republican: He was a Minnesota state senator from 1981 to 1990 and has given more than $700,000 to Republicans, particularly fellow Minnesotans like Rep. Michelle Bachmann. (He also just bought the left-leaning Minneapolis Star-Tribune for $100 million, and suggested he’d make it more conservative.) Politics aside, Minnesotans have been critical of Taylor’s track record as owner: He feuded with star big man Kevin Love and lost him to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Timberwolves, meanwhile, suffer the league’s longest playoff drought.

New Orleans Pelicans: Tom Benson’s two-pronged moneymaking strategy consists of selling cars and taking taxpayers’ money. Louisiana’s richest man, he owns dealerships all over the state and in Texas too, in addition to New Orleans’ Fox affiliate and the New Orleans Saints. Thanks to a complex deal he negotiated on the Superdome (yup, he also owns that), Benson is set to rake in nearly $400 million in state subsidies on the taxpayers’ dime. He initially wanted to move the team—especially after Hurricane Katrina—but it seems he’s settled for this deal. Benson was honored with a statue outside the Superdome for his trouble; Louisiana has cut health care and education funding to save money.

Oklahoma City Thunder: Oklahoma hedge fund baron Clayton Bennett is easily the most hated man in the Pacific Northwest: He’s responsible for moving the beloved Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City. In 2006, Bennett bought the team from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and essentially promised to keep the team in Seattle. Almost immediately, he and his co-owners conspired to move the team, while assuring Sonics fans they’d stay. Minority owner and Bennett buddy Aubrey McClendon even went on the record in 2007, saying that they’d never intended to keep the team in Seattle. (McClendon, who founded the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, is a leading proponent of fracking, opponent of gay rights, and—as if all that weren’t enough—a former Swift Boater.) In spring 2008, Bennett and McClendon got their wish: The Sonics were officially defunct, and replaced by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Seattle was devastated.

Phoenix Suns: It’s tough to find an owner as loathed by his team’s fans as Robert Sarver. The 53-year-old Tucson native made his money running and selling a series of community banks, writing more than $1 billion in loans to Arizona businesses and homeowners during and after the financial crisis. He bought the Suns in 2004, and since then has presided over a steady exodus of talent—both on and off the court. Phoenix fans, who argue that he’s insanely cheap, are hyperbolic about his tenure, arguing that he’s run the team into the ground for his own profit. ESPN’s Bill Simmons once said Sarver “destroyed basketball” in Phoenix.

Portland Trail Blazers: Paul Allen does a lot of things: The Microsoft cofounder is an investor, philanthropist, film producer, art collector, blues musician, and yachting enthusiast. In his spare time, he tends to his sports franchises: the Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks, and soccer’s Seattle Sounders. He’s worth more than $16 billion and has pledged to give at least half of that away (e.g., his $100 million gift to fight Ebola). He’s given generously to political causes, including $1 million to back a charter-school bill with his old pal Bill Gates and more than $500,000 to committees and candidates—65 percent of it to Democrats.

Sacramento Kings: Vivek Ranadivé, an Indian-born billionaire—and the first and only Asian American NBA owner—could be the Most Interesting Man in Silicon Valley. He attended MIT, supposedly as a penniless exchange student, and went on to engineer software that digitized stock trading for Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs. His Twitter feed is a steady stream of chill: hanging out with Shaq, hobnobbing with world leaders, and fawning over his wannabe pop-star daughter, whom he coached to a girls’ basketball championship. In addition to trying to turn around the long-struggling Kings, Ranadivé also has the modest goal of revolutionizing data, and has huddled with the new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—no friend to Muslims—on bringing basketball to India.

San Antonio Spurs: Peter Holt is American tractor royalty: His great-grandfather built the first one a century ago, and his family’s company, Holt Cat, is the biggest Caterpillar dealer in the country. His small-market team has won five NBA titles—all without paying a luxury tax—making Holt one of the more admired owners in the league. He counts Rick Perry in his fan club: The Texas guv has received more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from Holt since 2000, and returned the favor with a state appointment (Parks and Wildlife Commission) and some generous, multimillion-dollar tax breaks for Holt’s businesses.

Utah Jazz: Greg Miller inherited the Jazz from his dad, Larry, along with an expansive business empire that includes real estate, retail, and car dealerships. He seems an affable guy—although not even he was immune to feuding with Karl Malone—with a Twitter feed that showcases his globetrotting off-road expeditions. (He was even on Undercover Boss!) Miller is also a devout Mormon who credits “divine intervention” for the success of his franchise and businesses. During the 2012 election cycle, the Miller family companies gave nearly $1 million to the Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future after a brief flirtation with former Utah governor and Mormon cool-dad Jon Huntsman.

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The Mother Jones Guide to Evil NBA Owners

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