Australian bees are BETTER than American bees 7 Sep 2007 So, you thought that Colony Collapse Disorder, which is causing billions of dollars in losses in American agriculture, was an act of nature? You poor fools! It’s a plot, I tell yez. We Australians have hardier bees than you do, so they can carry an infectious disease that your weakly pathetic American bees just can’t deal with. And it’s no accident that we sent them to you. Now you have to buy our produce! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Ecology and Biodiversity General Science Species and systematics
Ecology and Biodiversity Miscellany 26 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason. There’s a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist’s post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution – Problems with… Read More
History The Blue Book is in PDF 10 Sep 2009 Systematists know the tome by Gareth Nelson and Norman Platnick, Systematics and Biogeography (1981), as the Blue Book (shades of Wittgenstein!). It was published once and is now so hard to get that I have been unable to find a copy in ten years of looking. Now, Malte Ebach tells… Read More
History A meme. A medieval meme. 25 Feb 200818 Sep 2017 … a female deer. Oops, sorry, wrong thread. Anyway, a medievalist, goblinpaladin, has tagged me with a meme. Now I don’t’ get tagged a lot with memes, possibly because folk know I have published on them, both for and more recently against, but you can’t deny the buggers on the… Read More
When I first read your headline I thought it said that Australian beers are better than American beers, and as a proud supporter of Oregon and Washington breweries I was ready to take offense. Sure, I’ll happily eat your produce, but the day I have to trade in my Bridgeport or Deschutes for Fosters I’m expatriating to Belgium.
I do buy your apples during (our) summer. Also apples from New Zealand. Our markets sell US grown apples them, but they have been in cold storage for months and are not so yummy.
I keep trying to tell people. The reason we export Fosters is so we don’t have to drink that crap. True story – I used to work next door to the maltery that made the hops used in Fosters. Twenty five years later just the thought of that place brings the smell to my nose. I still hate it.
True story – I used to work next door to the maltery that made the hops used in Fosters. Hops are not made they are grown, and this from a man who write about biology!
You know, at one time this may have been a recipe for famine or disaster here. Hurray global economy!
I know they’re grown. Due to a bit of weasel wording in the local legislation of the time, we used to graft marijuana plants onto hops vines to evade prosecution (they changed it pretty quickly). But they roast it, or do something equally evil, and the smell is pernicious.
But they roast it, or do something equally evil, and the smell is pernicious. What they roast in a maltery is barley to make malt which is what gives beer and whisky their colour and some of their flavour. I will however agree that the smell is pernicious although for me it awakes fond memories. Also true story – I grew up in a small East Anglian village which boasted a splendid Edwardian maltings next to the railway station, about a mile and a half outside of the village. (Ben Trumans if there are any East Anglian beer experts reading this) The smell when they roasted the barley was as you say pernicious but it is a smell that evokes the care free days of my childhood so for me it is a positive and not a negative memory that is stirred.
Damn, you are right. The term “maltery” should have given it away. I blame the drugs I was on at the time. I was a technical proofreader in a small enclosed office next door, and the smell pervaded everything. Not pleasant memories at all.