Well, my three months’ break in Kenya is coming to an end, unfortunately. I’ll be starting a new job in a couple of days, and, what with the moving and getting settled in and stuff, blogging will probably be a bit slow over the next week or so. But Jeremy will take up the slack, wont you Jeremy?
The First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition
I was pretty blown away by a student video on biodiversity that I first saw at Evolving Thoughts, a science blog. It is a really classy little film, one I would have been proud to have made myself, a rapid romp through the entire subject of biodiversity and why it matters. But — you knew there was going to be a but — the entire thing devoted about half a sentence to agricultural biodiversity, and even then it was a throwaway line about food coming “from nature”.
Well, that just won’t do. So Luigi and I had a quick conversation and decided to launch the First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition: make a better movie (which we will interpret very liberally — animation, Ken Burns-style stills, whatever) and focus on agricultural biodiversity. Perhaps there should be a second category for posters?
We haven’t yet decided on a prize (how about an iPod nano?) or the detailed rules or the closing date or how to enter or how the winner will be decided. But we’re announcing it now so that people have a chance to prepare their entries. Maybe it should run for a year? Help us, please, by sending us your comments on this hare-brained scheme and also making it known to anyone and everyone who might be interested.
The Rules are here. If you don’t like them, tell us why.
Keep posted
I’ve added a little gizmo that makes it easier to keep up with comments happening here (the hidden agenda being to encourage people to share comments). When you go to leave a comment, you’ll see a link that lets you subscribe — and email will notify you of new comments. You don’t actually have to leave a comment to use it, so you can subscribe to a post that has a lively discussion without having to join the discussion.
Housekeeping help needed
A couple of people have reported problems with the comment system here. As it happens, both had Hotmail accounts, and messages from Hotmail were being bounced. I have no way of knowing whether this is a problem with the blog software or with Hotmail itself (and I am not about to sign up for Hotmail just to see). So, if you have a Hotmail account — or any insight into the problem — could you please try and share that information by leaving a comment to this post?
If that doesn’t work for you, please use to Contact Us link about to tell us what happened.
Thanks
The Management
p.s. Later … I wonder if it is anything to do with this hacker attack yesterday?
Welcome Bankers
A warm but somewhat belated welcome to everyone visiting from Tangled Bank 72, so ably hosted by Ouroboros, and the other blogs that have linked to us this week. We’d have put the mat out earlier, but my esteemed colleague Luigi, who wrote the article on new software approaches to taxonomy and identification, is traveling and temporarily out of reach. (I have no excuse, other than the demands of paying work.)
Anyway, aside from kicking around and seeing if there’s anything here that attracts your fancy, we’d also like to enlist your help. If you come across any trifles that relate to our obsession with agricultural biology, please toss them our way. We look, but we can’t find everything, or even a small part of everything. There’s a contact form, or you can simply comment on any item. One of us is generally keeping an eye on them.
Thanks.