Blogger Bio-Blitz 2008

The 2008 Edition of Blogger BioBlitz took place the previous week, from september 20th to the 28th. I was not sure as to how I would be able to blitz myself this year (I did it last year at Pittsburgh, and in Northern Pennsylvania), but I eventually had the opportunity for a couple of hours of quick blitzing, the 26th, ca. between 13h00 and 15h00, in a small wood area about 35 km southwest of Paris (map here).

"Grille Noire" Woods, Orsay (Sept. 2008)

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BGR #9 is posted!

Berry Go Round #9 is posted at Gravity’s Rainbow. There are a lot of botanical pictures to enjoy, and this BGR edition is taking in with the best gardening has to offer: botanical gardening. Enjoy your reading there!!

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Plenty plant urbanism

Okay, you’ll remember Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens, or vertical farming (not vertical framing!), and a friend wondered about the green building thing in the previous ad. So let’s add some more green architecture after the following link…

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Domestication, quickly

There’s a top post on top models there at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Interesting ideas have been developped on key questions about the origin of agriculture and may be the time for a thinking shower. How fast can domestication syndrome be driven? What about multiple or single domestications? Etc. Enjoy the reading… I may have a look at the sources if time allows.

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Augenblick

Well, I’m a PC, but not to the point of advertizing it on a blog. Well, sort of. Why on hell would I do that? This might be the next Seeds Aside game… Two readers can guess “quite so fairly” easily. Unfair? Guess why! (this is a hint, and there’s another in the categories, and of course any French reference in the ad might somewhat be some).

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Blogging too much?

Blogging can turn into a very addictive obsession, not only wasting time but also potentially harming actual (as opposed to virtual) social relationships, etc (there’s even a word for this, and it’s bad!). Thanks to… fruits, I’m not completely zombified, as suggested by the following test result measuring my blogging addiction (though this is in itself also a blogging trap).

47% How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

But being aware blogging might somehow take me down, I’ve been looking lurking for blogging cures around. Beware many cures are just not working at all, when they are not making things worse… But here at Seeds Aside, we’ve been testing a very efficient way to naturally slow down blogging.

It’s a natural method, 100% organic, with fairly light side effects (well, to the except of sleep deprivation, but it isn’t worse than the sleep loss due to blogs anyway). In addition to being efficient, it has very strong beneficial effects on social life and self-esteem, as many people just take the opportunity to say hello and even congratulate you:

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Miltomate -1-

Miltomate berries

There’s a green sauce in your tacos. Fresh, acid, fruity. This sauce is traditionally made from a little American fruit, the miltomate. Or tomatillo, your taste. And guess what? This is a post all about this strange crop.

Even the species scientific name is sweet: Physalis philadelphica. This is a member of the economically star botanical family, the Solanaceae. But the species has a somewhat less successful story than its cousins like tomato, potato, tobacco or even eggplant. Well, not really less successful, but clearly a species not as illustrious as its more famous co-taxa. Even the Cape gooseberry tends to come to mind first when speaking of Physalis. So let’s do justice to this amazing vegfruit…

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Veggie meme

There’s a veggie meme running these days, and surprisingly, there’s been a number of stuff listed that I’ve eaten already, so I’m not too ashamed of taking my turn. Given prices for meats in France, I’ve been practicing ‘vegetarianism’ by economic necessity as a late student, so I guess it somewhat helped a bit. What’s more, since I am opportunistically prone to freeganism (when I realised it isn’t that worse), you guess I’m way more reluctant about junked meats than greens, vegs and fruits…

Bolded = tried (thought this is not exhaustive, given I hadn’t time to check for food names and I may have eaten some of them):

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(…)

Music sharing. Amadou and Mariam (official website here):

Senegal fast food (with Manu Chao)

Je pense a toi

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Homology arguments of others

Could an utterly irritating site like Conservapedia *, be a useful resource for teaching (and thus deserve the original meaning of encyclopedia)? Well, as weird as it seems at first sight, there’s a post up there at Botanizing showing that, yes, it can…

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* As a note to my few readers who are ignorant of this very unbiased conservative encyclopedia (probably some of my nice French readers): I do not link, but you may still use google for a good laugh if not suffering from any bad heart condition (it’s sometimes quite hard to realise some people actually think things you may find there, but they do, really really).

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