Month: September 2005

The 100 billion Cavendish bananas consumed annually worldwide are perfect from a genetic standpoint, every single one a duplicate of every other.

Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike”, accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest.

Once a little-known species, the Cavendish was eventually accepted as Big Mike’s replacement after billions of dollars in infrastructure changes were made to accommodate different growing and ripening needs. Its advantage was its resistance to Panama disease. But in 1992, a new strain of the fungus – one that can affect the Cavendish – was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia. It has yet to hit Africa or Latin America, but most experts agree that it is coming.

Currently, there is no way to effectively combat Panama disease and no Cavendish replacement in sight.

Drs Rowe and Rosales have unbounded hopes for Goldfinger. ~ It can be grown without pesticides, and in areas where traditional banana varieties don’t grow. ~ Goldfinger is only one arrow in FHIA’s bow. PHIA-02, a Cavendish hybrid highly resistant to Black Sigatoka, is also being tested in various countries. Equally promising is FHIA-03, a rustic cooking banana being tested in seven African and eight Latin American and Caribbean countries ~. It’s even thriving in areas where dessert bananas and plantain won’t grow such as in poor, dry, acid and rocky soils. FHIA-03 also appears to be resistant to Moko, a bacterial disease and to Race 2 of Panana Disease.

How can I get ahold of a “Big Mike”? I’d like to try one.

Good heart information here.

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If you live in Europe, you might want to try ordering from these guys.

I’m thinking about becoming an affiliate.

To make fire from a can of coke and a chocolate bar is actually quite easy, and you don’t need any tools.

However, you do need some sunlight and some tinder when you’re actually ready to start a fire!

Find the four leaf clovers.
It’s like being 5 years old again.

Nello Ferrara, the son of Salvatore Ferrara, created the famous Atomic FireBall in 1954.

An estimated 15 million fireballs are consumed per week by people all over the world and the number continues to grow.

Atomic Fireball History.

Take a Virtual Tour.

I am constantly intrigued by simple things, light, water, fire, wood, lines and curves. I love shadows and textures. ~ I am still amazed by the beauty that surrounds me each and every day. Every blink reveals a new wonder.

My playground… the foothills of Colorado.

Seizing the day in Colorado.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Everything required for every tiny task in everyone’s day is the product of a technological iceberg that remains comfortably submerged and hidden from daily awareness.

Take for example the writing of a grocery list. You need a piece of paper and a pencil.

Let’s have a look at a pencil. I don’t know anybody who can make one. Graphite is a soft, crumbly mineral that comes from England or Sri Lanka or Mexico.

It is easy for me to be proud when I overhaul a Volkswagen engine “by myself”. But who gets the credit for the parts that I am able to buy, the tools that I must have, the machine work that imparts renewed life to old cylinders? I can only conclude that half the planet was involved in the overhaul of my engine.

If every act, every artifact, every move we make rests on the work of others, I can find no way to avoid the conclusion that a great many people are very good at what they do.

What is most puzzling, then, is the amount of friction that exists at every level between groups of people who need each other. Within organizations it is commonplace to hear open warfare between departments. ~ On a global scale, the rhetoric runs hotter, but the phenomenon is the same. The same people who expect to get a head of lettuce for 99 cents resent the presence of the people who pick it for $2 an hour.

With over three thousand former students in my teaching career, there is a chance that somebody, somewhere, has found a practical use for something they learned from me. ~ I got a Christmas card this year from a former student thanking me for recruiting her to work in the Microbiology lab. This job is no gem. It is cruddy, smelly, repetitive, and slightly risky work for low pay. Apparently, it caused her to rethink her educational goals and switch to Microbiology. By her testimony I changed her life. Oddly, she didn’t mention anything about the courses she took from me.

The whole world is giving money to help people along the Gulf Coast. Let’s hope that money is put to good use.

The city of New Orleans is not going to be rebuilt.
~
As much as it causes heartache to those of us who love New Orleans — the whole place, not just the one of myth and memory — cities are not forever.

When [the insurance industry] looks at the devastation here, it will evaluate the risk from toxicity ~ before it decides to write new insurance — without which nothing can be rebuilt.

~ Distinct from the city are the region’s ports, lining 172 miles of both banks of the Mississippi, as well as points on the Gulf.

For example, the largest in the Western Hemisphere is the 54-mile stretch of the Port of South Louisiana. It is centered on La Place, 20 miles upriver from New Orleans. It moved 199 million tons of cargo in 2003, including the vast bulk of the river’s grain. That is more than twice as much as the Port of New Orleans ~.

The Port of Baton Rouge, almost as big as the Port of New Orleans, was not damaged.

Also, downstream, there is the LOOP ~. The dazzling Offshore Oil Port, for example, employs only about 100 people. Even the specialized Port of New Orleans, which handles things like coffee, steel and cruise boats, only needs 2,500 people on an average day.

New Orleans IS going to be rebuilt. There’s so much money waiting to be spent.

I don’t see why it can’t be a requirement to be above sea level to get funded, but I don’t live there.