With the ongoing controversy over global climate change, it’s interesting to look back at a big scientific controversy from the 80s and 90s, “CFCs and the ozone layer”:http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp. The CFC industry fought change for 20 years, but it turned out to be a) a worse problem than even the “doomsayers” anticipated and b) less costly to fix than even the best estimates. A very complete overview of how science, business, and politics collide.
Monthly Archives: June 2004
Fungus: At the Root of It
From the BioOrganics, Inc. newsletter:
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What Do These Plants Want, Anyhow?
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It bears repeating. Providing mycorrhizal fungi spores to plants is NOT giving them something “extra.” It is NOT a miracle-plant-food-sort-of-thingy. It is NOT some sort of mystical additive.
Simply put, a plant without mycorrhizae on its root system is not equipped to uptake the necessary nutrients to flourish. You can fiddle with “soil chemistry” as much as you wish, and you may have some short-term success, but if the plant has evolved a dependence on soil fungi over millions of years, that plant will not achieve its full genetic potential without the fungi.
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Because it’s there
This is the _real_ reason why exploring space is important. We may think we know what we’re going to find, but we *don’t*. For example, a “comet in our own solar backyard”:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/stardust_results_040319.html has “baffled space scientists”:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/stardust_results_040617.html by refusing to conform to our ideas of how comets should act. Silly comet.
_A detailed analysis of the comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt 2″) has left astronomers astounded at an object that has no known peers in the solar system._
_The comet, examined in a close flyby in January by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft, has towering protrusions and steep-walled craters that seem to defy gravity. More than a dozen jets of material shoot out from its insides. Dust swirls around the comet in unexpectedly dense pockets._
Reclaiming
Since I seem to be on a holy roller, here’s another little goup y’all might want to check out called Reclaiming.
Chris, it’s like the feminist wicca stuff I do, only boys get to come, too. Yay!
Starhawk started it and she’s got this great book called The Fifth Sacred Thing. It’s like a thought experiment in how to implement non-violent action against all odds. I love her vision . . .
See also
This “interesting art project”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/technology/circuits/17info.html sounds like the kind of thing I used to do with my 1972 World Book encyclopedia. It’s fun to take a random idea and riff on it by following links.
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