June 30, 2004

• We tried to make bananas grow in Alaska. We had a greenhouse that was heated all winter, and had mercury lights on 12 hour shifts. The soil was heated a foot deep year round. In Spring we would place ripe bananas around the stalks and dance and pray to the banana gods. The plant never got beyond the vegetative state, but it was really fun to dance.
• We eventually figured out that mercury vapor lights, while bright, were in the wrong spectrum to cause flower primordia initation. The rumor that we learned about this from indoor cannabis growers is absolutely false. The rumor that we got the lights from the local police department at a discount is also untrue. Bananas. We were just growing bananas.
• *laughs like a maniac, having just been given many top "bananas"*
• Hey, only 50% more dimming and I'll be able to open the shades in my computer room and work in sunlight! You go, earthlings!
• Wolof, it may be that you can add to the scientific aggregate of knowlege re: bananas. Please feel free to send me anything re:banana horticulture. My email is on my umwaddycallit page. That is, if you live on the same continent. We have learned that most strawberry varieties are day-length-dependent, whereas tomatoes are actually free of both light restrictions and external pollenation. Every time the plant gets to the fourth node,buds begin, no matter what light or darkness happens, as long as the night temperatures are above 55 degrees Farenheit. This is due to a mutation that occured about a thousand years before Cortez and his men squished the tomatoes that grew in the roof gardens of the Aztec townsmen. Oh, sorry. There's more, and it's scintillating as all get out, but it's time for me to do something......else. Bananas. That's what we grew. What does this have to do with bananas?
• *shakes hand of bananas at patb* I am not on your continent. But the principles of this stuff are more or less invariant. Need to know stuff? Email gets you answers.
• Monkeyfilter: I am not on your continent.
• Oh fabulous. Global dimming. I already sleep 10-11 hours a night during the winter, and that's with the help of a full-spectrum light box. My scotch bills have been astronomical. I better look at commuting to the southern hemisphere before I start hibernating completely. Fucking SAD.
• I like it darker.
• You sick fuck!
• shinything don't fall into the trap of the Industrial Revolution, where everyone works every day. Only conifers are not deciduous. They have shorter lives than hardwoods. SAD is bullshit in a world that recognizes the deciduous. Otherwise we look at an apple tree and say 'I've seen what it can do when it wants to. Lots of food for everyone. But at this time of year...it just isn't trying. It's lazy. Its disabled' pompous ass? yup. time for me to go to bed.
• Whoa, now -- this is the straight poop on apples. Apple trees are hopeless slackers -- they dinna bear so much as a fistful of edible fruit unless doused and drenched with a minimum of eighty sprays per year. [Not exagerrating.] Every pest and plague under the sun beelines for apple-trees. The litter under them has to be removed constantly, lest wee crawlies and creepies that will attack the trees next season multiply in it. All manner of unseemly things get under their bark, nest in their blossoms, embed themselves in the devoling fruit, so that in general the vicinity of a cultivated appletree resembles a ballfield where hordes of opponents periodically gather and tussle, over and over again. Been living in an old apple orchard for 25 years now, and know the lazy, loutish ways of these trees.
• SAD is bullshit in a world that recognizes the deciduous. Agreed, PatB. Unfortunately the old "So sorry but I've been a hardwood for the last 3 months" argument fails when it's time to pay the mortgage. And no matter how often I search Monster for openings, the leisure class sector is tighter than a drum. they dinna bear so much as a fistful of edible fruit unless doused and drenched with a minimum of eighty sprays per year Bees, have you read "The Botany of Desire"? The section on apples talks about all the different varieties that used to be grown. Some were good at withstanding winters in certain parts of the country, others were resistant to specific kinds of pests. The stuff we grow now seems wimpy in comparison. Except for the lovely grocery store Red Delicious. (bleh)
• shinything -- "Old" apple orchard, with no trees planted more recently than the 1940s, and some considerably older than that. No, haven't read The Botany of Desire, but will keep an eye cocked for it. Monocultivation is the pits, and lack of diversity may prove our undoing as the climate alters.
• I thought "global dimming" was a phrase used to describe intelligence?
• In that case, the globe has always been dim.
• The world gone stupid? Unpossible.