Here we're talking about sweet, or bell peppers (as opposed to hot, which it's best to call chiles to avoid confusion). When it comes to sweet peppers, color is far more important than shape. Actually, there's only one color that really matters: green. Green peppers may be "mature," but they are not ripe, at least not if ripeness implies the peak of flavor. Where a green pepper is sharp, almost acrid, and likely as not to cause indigestion, the same pepper picked a week or two later, when red, yellow, or orange, will have mellowed considerably. Of course red peppers are usually more expensive than green, and not always available, so there are times when we have to settle. But there is no question which pepper is preferable. Note: Purple peppers are green peppers in disguise; the purple color gades to muddy green as they cook, and the flavor is usually bitter.

Any economist will say that Americans have been living better than they should—which is by definition the case when a nation’s total consumption is greater than its total production, as America’s now is. Economists will also point out that, despite the glitter of China’s big cities and the rise of its billionaire class, China’s people have been living far worse than they could. That’s what it means when a nation consumes only half of what it produces, as China does.

Neither government likes to draw attention to this arrangement, because it has been so convenient on both sides. For China, it has helped the regime guide development in the way it would like—and keep the domestic economy’s growth rate from crossing the thin line that separates “unbelievably fast” from “uncontrollably inflationary.” For America, it has meant cheaper iPods, lower interest rates, reduced mortgage payments, a lighter tax burden. But because of political tensions in both countries, and because of the huge and growing size of the imbalance, the arrangement now shows signs of cracking apart.

In an article two and a half years ago (“Countdown to a Meltdown,” July/August 2005), I described an imagined future in which a real-estate crash and shakiness in the U.S. credit markets led to panic by Chinese and other foreign investors, with unpleasant effects for years to come. The real world has recently had inklings of similar concerns.

The largest plant in the world today that produces synthetic rubber is in Texas. ... Large as the plant is, however, it's swamped by what surrounds it: one of the most monumental constructs that human beings have imposed on the planet's surface. The industrial megaplex that begins on the east side of Houston and continues uninterrupted to the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles away, is the largest concentration of petroleum refineries, petrochemical companies, and storage structures on Earth.

.. A satellite mounted CT scanner flying over Houston would reveal a vast, tangled, carbon-steel circulatory system about three feet below the surface. As in every city and town in the developed world, thin capillaries run down the center of every street, branching off to every house. These are gas lines, comprising so much steel that it's a wonder that compass needles don't simply point towards the ground. In Houston, however, gas lines are mere accents, little flourishes. Refinery pipes wrap around the city as tightly as a woven basket. They move material called light fractions, distilled or catalyically cracked off crude oil, to hundreds of Houston chemical plants. ...

Hundreds of other pipes full of freshly refined gasoline, home heating oil, diesel, and jet fuel hook into the grand patriarch of conduits--the 5,519 mile, 30-inch Colonial Pipeline, whose main trunk starts in the Houston suburb of Pasadena. It picks up more product in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, then climbs the eastern seabord, sometimes aboveground, sometimes below. The Colonial is typically filled with a lineup of various grades of fuel that pump through it at about our miles per hour until they're disgorged at a Linden, New Jersey, terminal just below New York Harbor--about a 20-day trip, barring shutdowns or hurricanes.

... Beneath the Texas Gulf coast are about 500 salt domes formed when buoyant salts from saline beds five miles down rise through sedimentary layers. Several lie right under Houston. Bullet-shaped, they can be more than a mile across. By drilling itno a salt dome and then pumping in water, it is possible to dissolve its interior and use it for storage... Some salt dome storage caverns below the city are 600 feet across and more than half a mile tall.. Because salt crystal walls are considered impermeable, they are used for storing gases... Piped directly to an underground salt dome formation, ethylene is stored under 1,500 pounds of pressure until it's ready to be turned into plastic.