Category: Information

Just a week after 112, 113 appears. The fortnightly Tangled Bank schedule, in other words, is over its little hiccup and is back on track at En Tequila Es Verdad. Which reminds me, I wish I could get our resident peanut expert to explore his other favourite plant, agave, and give the straight dope on all those fine tequilas he’s experienced. But I digress. Which is what Dana does too in her post. All over the shop. In time and space. Visiting some parallel universe, she aims to persuade one C. Darwin to publish his book, where the less than thunderous reception of his paper at the Linnean Society seems to have dimmed his ardour. Perhaps in that universe Mr Darwin actually bothered to trek up to London for the evening and bored the Burlington Berties rigid himself. Anyway, Dana sets him straight, I think, with a massive round-up of the many, many fields of endeavour that depend ultimately on him publishing that blessed book.

The best bit, natch, is that our own humble contribution elicits exactly the correct response from the parallel Mr D. and gives Dana the opportunity to expound on the Tao of Science.

We’re chuffed. But there’s also lots of other good stuff there. I passed a few very pleasant minutes reading about mumps in Vancouver (maybe not your cup of tea) and Sterile Insect Release, and I have an agricultural question related to the latter: aside from screwworm and medfly, has it been used successfully on other agricultural insect pests?

Go. Read. Comment.

Berry Go Round No. 8 is up at Not Exactly Rocket Science. This is “the carnival that celebrates the blogosphere’s coverage of all things botanical” and, very gratifyingly, there’s some faintly agricultural stuff there. Some of it we had already noted here, but one we hadn’t. Midoria has an introduction to Quercus serrata, konara in Japanese, an oak that is used as a substrate for shiitake mushrooms. Yum.