Stuff

Forget the SUV's as enemy: just stop eating:

One third of greenhouse gas comes from agriculture.

the story doesn't even mention why: Not just the cows, but the methane produced from the traditional "flood the fields to rot the weeds before planting" rice cultivation.

China is starting to use "dry" methods to grow rice to lower their methane emissions.

And the local rice scientists from the gov't are working with Chano to see if newer methods of planting and working the fields can do the same (but since we are organic farmers, and can't kill the weeds with pesticides, I am not sure this will work as well...we'll let you know after next year's harvest).

----------------------------------------------------

I sing because I'm happy
I sing because I'm free

No, the singing sands sing because

"The size of the grain controls the actual sound," Dagois-Bohy concluded.
Why exactly this happens, and how the sound itself is created, is still uncertain. However, the Parisian group suspects that, during an avalanche, grains of sand move together down the dune—each grain colliding with and rolling around its neighbors, creating a constant stream of collisions. Larger grains of sand move around each other at slower rates, and vice versa for smaller grains.

----------------------------------
CHOCOLATE

No, not chocolate, but the brown hills of the Philippines are called the chocolate hills and are a tourist attraction...yet it is still being argued how they were formed.

photo from Philippine travel guide website.

-----------------------------------------

A book review of Anne Applebaum's new book on Eastern Europe after World War II...

like another book, Bloodlands, this part of history is usually ignored by the elites, because it went against their ideology that communism was peaceful with happy people, so only fascist right wing evil people opposed the USSR...

and one of these days, someone will write a book about the famines and ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe after the First World War...Wilson's ideas reinforced nationalism and led to dismembering the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, with mass population shifts (aka ethnic cleansing) and starvation...

-------------------------------

Belmont Club remembers the Seige of Manila...with photos.


----------------------

Another little known fact: the Spanish brought tomatoes to Europe from Mexico, but a genetic analysis suggests  it is found in greater diversity in the Andes...

The data obtained would fit a model in which a pre-domestication took place in the Andean region, with the domestication being completed in Mesoamerica. Subsequently, the Spaniards took plants from Mesoamerica to Spain and from there they were exported to the rest of the world.

This is called the Colombian exchange...

Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no potatoes in Ireland, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no donkeys in Mexico, no chili peppers in Thailand or India, and no chocolate in Switzerland.