- If you’re here from Tangled Bank 102, welcome. Go vote, please. If you’re here anyway, go read Tangled Bank.
- Bleeding canker threatens British horse chestnuts.
- Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, fertilizers threaten the Drumstick Truffleclub.
- Michael Pollan welcomes higher food prices. And more on his new book on “nutritionism”: eat food (not individual nutrients); mostly plant-derived; in reasonable amounts.
- Breadfruit balls anyone? Try charging more for that delicacy, Michael!
- Or, indeed, this. Or any of these for that matter.
- The weird food stuff just keeps on coming. Now there’s buzz about camel cheese. And a Peanut Lolita to help it down?
- Horizon scanning spots 25 novel threats to biodiversity in UK. Agrobiodiversity apparently totally safe. Phew.
Nibbles: Gene smuggling, teaching, UG99, fungi, fermentation, horse, livestock
- Customs unit seizes smuggled chromosomes, Sri Lankan academics uncooperative.
- Teachers urged to use Global Seed Vault in lessons; native Memphian available for comment today!
- No UG99 in Pakistan (yet). Optimism abounds everywhere.
- Cool new book: Fungi in the Ancient World.
- And on a related topic: full text (kinda) of old(ish) book on fermented foods.
- New book peddles old how-horse-domestication-changed-the-world (or at least Europe) story. Prof. Renfrew has already commented. Lengthily.
- Livestock need a Svalbard too. Old, but the videos are nice, and I don’t think we linked to this before.
More on Columbian Exchange
Columbus not responsible for lice.
Ancient brewing
Puebloans and ancient Irish brewed beer. Pass the bottle.
Eat more crap!
It’s a little too preciously written for my taste, but the article at SFGate.com a couple of days back says some sensible things about bugs. Basically, its message is not to be so scared of bacteria on food. They’re agricultural biodiversity too, and can be good for us, essential even. Unfortunately,
the cultural mind-set at large runs directly opposite. So much so that we could be, in effect, cleaning and scrubbing and protecting ourselves to death, as our immune systems whimper and wither and drug-resistant bacteria get nastier and nature always, always finds a way to thwart our silly efforts to eradicate its wild side.
Hence the exhortation in my title, which I’ve nicked from the text of the article. Thanks, Ruthie.