14: Oaxaca Journal, Oliver Sacks
A more personal book than Island of the Colorblind or An Anthropologist on Mars. This is the account of a botanical trip Sacks took. Ancient (yup, still behind by a month or two) notes once again retrieved from a bookmark, this time a McKay Used Books (Chattanooga and Knoxville) one.
In a bit where Sacks wonder why every culture has chocoholics, I find this piece, which perfectly explains my food preferences:
Beans and corn (maize) provide all the essential amino acids. Really? Interesting.
In botany, whenever a new species is discovered, its formal definition is given in Latin. (This is no longer the case in zoology.)
Anacardiaceae: a family of flowering plants that include the cashew, mango, poison ivy, pistachio, and lacquer.
Ricinus communis is the source of castor beans, which in turn are the source of castor oil. Castor beans are also a source of ricin, the protein toxin that, delivered by umbrella, killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978.
Ants form 15% to 20% of the world's animal biomass and produce an awful lot of methane.
Fireflies contain nasty toxic substances not unlike those found in Digitalis, and eating them is not a very good idea. Every year, pet lizards (out of their natural, firefly-less habitat) die because they are fed fireflies.
Unlike chocolate and tobacco, rubber didn't make it big Europe until the late 17th century. Macintosh discovered how to ruberise fabric to make mac(k)intosh coats. More interestingly, Joseph Priestley invented the rubber, the pencil eraser, and thereby introduced the name "rubber" for the material.
Only one book added to the to-read list:
In a bit where Sacks wonder why every culture has chocoholics, I find this piece, which perfectly explains my food preferences:
Is it the phenylethylamine, mildly analeptic [i.e., stimulating the central nervous system], euphoriant, supposedly aphrodisiac, which chocolate contains? Cheese and salami contain more of this.
Beans and corn (maize) provide all the essential amino acids. Really? Interesting.
Most of the world's plants—more than 90 percent of the known species—are connected by a vast subterranean network of fungal fillaments, in a symbiotic association that goes back to the very origin of land plants, 400 million years ago. These fungal fillaments are essential for the plants' well-being, acting as living conduits for the transmission of water and essential minerals (and perhaps also organic compounds) not only between the plants and fungi but from plant to plant.
In botany, whenever a new species is discovered, its formal definition is given in Latin. (This is no longer the case in zoology.)
Anacardiaceae: a family of flowering plants that include the cashew, mango, poison ivy, pistachio, and lacquer.
Ricinus communis is the source of castor beans, which in turn are the source of castor oil. Castor beans are also a source of ricin, the protein toxin that, delivered by umbrella, killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978.
Ants form 15% to 20% of the world's animal biomass and produce an awful lot of methane.
Fireflies contain nasty toxic substances not unlike those found in Digitalis, and eating them is not a very good idea. Every year, pet lizards (out of their natural, firefly-less habitat) die because they are fed fireflies.
Unlike chocolate and tobacco, rubber didn't make it big Europe until the late 17th century. Macintosh discovered how to ruberise fabric to make mac(k)intosh coats. More interestingly, Joseph Priestley invented the rubber, the pencil eraser, and thereby introduced the name "rubber" for the material.
Only one book added to the to-read list:
- David Wolfe, Tales from the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life
posted by alex. at 7/28/2008 04:14:00 PM
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