I don't know who's harassing who, but I can say that Schneier may be wrong about terrorists and their interest in photography.

I live near Keystone and Breckenridge, CO. We have reservoir up here at 9000ft elevation that is owned by the city of Denver, CO and supplies water to the city. There's a road over the dam and when the weather is really bad, blowing snow, the road is closed.

Now this is a popular place for people to practice their interest in photography with the lake and mountains as a backdrop. Last winter when the road was closed two men were apprehended who claimed to be shooting footage for a music video on top of the dam. The problem was they were both of Afghani origin, here on work visas, one working for the Denver International Airport. It's just a fact that we don't have a lot of middle eastern tourists up here, let alone ones from Afghanistan shooting music videos in snow storms on our public works.

The FBI was involved, and who knows who else. The water company shut down the road for a couple of weeks, barricading off ever possible way on to the dam. The whole thing has been kept very secretive. The names of the suspects have never been released. And recently the water company has stationed 24-7 security on the dam.

Photography may have just been a front, but what there is little doubt about is that activities and /or vulnerabilities have got officials spooked and the events that have transpired have been highly out of the ordinary.

Also, quite the opposite from what most comments have stated here, officials have gone out of their way to keep things under wraps, for whatever reason they may have. They've certainly done nothing to spook us. I'd rather we would have been fully informed, if it not harm an investigation, because the public could be policing the structure more effectively than anyone else if they were told what to be on the lookout for. Instead we've mostly forgotten about it and basically been led to be believe that there's nothing going on.

Well, since we used to call everything the universe, and now scientists / astronomers and the lot now tell us what they include in the set called the universe isn't universal, then don't we need a name for the set that includes everything even as we find more stuff, other than the infinite?

We really need a new name for the universe though something to define what's in between a galaxy and what scientists are now calling the universe. I mean, it's not like you get out there and there's suddenly a wall like in the Jim Carey movie. They say the universe is expanding, stuff is drifting out to where there's no stuff, but that 'empty' space is still something, we just don't know what it is.

So sure why not call it God.

I'm currently researching this more in depth for my blog www.marketblog.com. My initial impression is there's a combination of things going on including those already mentioned.

One factor I suspect is the rise of microbreweries, as I suspect they may use more hops for the same amount of beer.

Another, probably the biggest, is the weakness of the dollar, incentivizing exports. If we export more, there's less available locally, and therefore brewers have to pay more, or buy from overseas, where they pay more due to the weakness of the dollar, so the price goes up relative to the change in the dollar, for everyone.

Another factor, for which I have yet to find any evidence, may be speculation. Though hops contracts do not trade on an exchange, they do exist, and can be bought sold off market as are many derivative markets that hedge funds participate in. Hedge funds are having more and more say in the day to day operations of many businesses, in many sectors, especially agriculture, and businesses are getting more and more into derivatives markets. They like to call it risk management, but the truth is they do a lot of speculating of their own these days. So I'm inclined that at least some of the price increase is due to this kind of long only speculation.