Our friends at CIAT are bursting with pride; at a workshop they are testing cloud technology for sharing geographic information. All I can say is that it seems to work, and that the mappers are pleased with the drawing speeds. The rest is beyond my technical chops, although if you had the skills, you could probably do something clever like add the distance to the nearest cassava processing factory. Or something.
Nibbling as the berries go round
Issue 56 of Berry Go Round – the botany blog carnival – is up at Seeds Aside. Plenty of goodies there, and here are the ones more directly related to our own interests:
- Phytophactor gives a one-word answer to the question “Can you eat flowering kale?” He also explains that “flowering” is a misnomer. To which I would add that as an ornamental, “flowering” kale is an abomination while as an edible, flowering kale is scrumptious.
- The great P.Z. Myers shares a photograph of a curcurbit tendril. And unleashes a storm of comment crap. Some people…
- And Joseph Craine has rounded up n most-important papers about N; where n=12 and N=nitrogen.
Now, why don’t you consider submitting to, or even hosting, the next Berry go Round?
Ex-pat wasabi flourishing
Luigi’s indefatigable quest for all the truth there is to be had about wasabi (Wasabia japonica) reminded me that long ago and far away, I entertained thoughts of growing the stuff commercially. Luigi alluded to the reason when he said “there is imitation wasabi on the market”. Amen to that. In fact, there’s almost nothing else on the market. Practically all the wasabi you, a mere mortal, are ever likely to try outside Japan (and much inside) is the wrong stuff. The right stuff commands a hefty price tag, the reason I was entertaining those thoughts to begin with. A little digging, however, persuaded me that the plant was far too persnickety and capital intensive to be worthwhile, so I gave up on it. Silly me.
Turns out wasabi is not nearly as hard to grow as people imagine. Richters, a reliable seed company that supplies the plants, says
[W]asabi will grow quite happily in any moist, organic-rich soil where there is shade and protection from the summer heat; running water is not required. After 18-24 months the rhizomes are harvested, washed, peeled and grated for fresh use.
Nothing there about no sharkskin.
Companies in the US and New Zealand are apparently making a decent fist of growing it on a commercial scale. At which point, I nearly gave up on wasabi again. But one more Google brought me to a suitably gushing piece in The Daily Telegraph less than a month ago. Talk about the wasabi zeitgeist! That too pushes the “wasabi is really difficult” trope, and more power to the plucky lads at The Watercress Company who pulled it off. Now to see whether I can get some of the real thing for a proper taste test.
No point trying to grow it here. Like watercress, which I miss terribly at times, the need to stay cool in summer probably dooms it. I expect it would do OK in northern Germany.
After the storm
Despite Sandy, NPR’s Planet Money, which is made in New York, had a brief podcast on Friday. After The Flood, The Backup Plan examined the different ways in which the US economy speeds recovery after natural disasters. ((But not, interestingly enough, after financial disaster, a point raised by the podcast but not actually dealt with.)) One of those ways is insurance and, even more so, reinsurance.
Those are the guys who insure the insurers, and while the insurance business as a whole is certainly aware of the impact of climate change on their business model, one J. Eric Smith, CEO of Swiss Re Americas, was at pains to point out that their reserves are plenty big enough to pony up for at least a couple of big natural disasters simultaneously. That’s reassuring.
When asked who insures the re-insurers, Smith was forthright:
We’re insured by diversification.
Just sayin’.
Magical thinking about olives
Luigi nibbled the ancient olives of Gethsemane a couple of days ago, and I’ve tried to hold my tongue since then. Tried and, now, failed. It is such a crappy article, I’m wondering not only why I’m bothering to link to it but also why it had to be that way. OK, so there are some old olive trees in the garden of Gethsemane. Big deal. There are even older olive trees elsewhere.
And this is just garbage:
“Despite their age, the 900-year-old olive trees were found in excellent health, unaffected by lead pollution and bacteria.
Amazingly, the garden’s earth appears to block insects and bacterial proliferation.”
Amazingly, indeed. Naturally not one of the entirely uncritical news reports I read refers to the original scientific paper reporting the results, although amazingly, nor do any of them repeat the amazing claim. It might have been interesting to see how the DNA of the eight sampled trees — identical in every one, according to the reports — matches up against other olives in the area and further afield. But not sufficiently amazing, I suppose to interest the Vatican’s supported scientists.
So why am I bothering? Because sometimes the crap just gets too much.