While I'm On a Train to Maryland

You can be doing more fun things. I'll be out of touch and my blog will be quiet. But you could be reading some of my old colleagues and some new cool stuff at the new cooperative blog group "Scientopia." Zuska's there and Dr. Free Ride, and a lot of awesome folk - so have fun!

Sharon

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The evening before the Free-Ride offspring went with their day-camp on a field trip to the Exploratorium: Dr. Free-Ride: Do you want to look at the Exploratorium website tonight to get an idea what you might see on the field trip tomorrow? Elder offspring: No. Dr. Free-Ride: Why not? Elder…
Dr. Free-Ride has graciously put the slides from her talk at the Science Blogging Conference on the conference wiki, so I'm thinking I can go ahead and blog about the stuff I thought I couldn't blog about in my earlier post. Specifically, Dr. Free-Ride spent some time talking about conversations…
What a crazy month July has been! First with PepsiGate (also here, here, and here), then once things started to quiet down a bit, we were hit with the NY Times Magazine nonsense. But today I have some pretty exciting news. You may have heard about a new blog collective that has been formed called…
As captured in SprogCast #7, the Free-Ride offspring consider Mike Dunford's Earth Day resolutions meme. We discover that a kid's sense of scale is kind of different from a grown-up's. You can grab the mp3 here. The approximate transcript of the conversation follows. Dr. Free-Ride: I think I told…

Yup - no, he's going early. We're getting picked up at the same time, though.

Sharon

Hi Sharon, Small grass based dairy in western New York. Loggers start tomorrow taking out our white ash, doomed by emerald ash borer. Amish moving to our neighborhood by the ton, not farming, only running shops. Solar powered farming still reluctant to enter the rat race here. Give us a shout, come visit. Kim Shaklee

By Kim Shaklee (not verified) on 04 Aug 2010 #permalink

Kim: "Loggers start tomorrow taking out our white ash, doomed by emerald ash borer"

Ah, no!!!!

Sigh. I know it's likely too late to stop it; and you probably really need the money- and your loggers are probably honest- but from the biological point of view this is a HUGE disaster.

Really. The entire "clean out the disease" concept in forestry actually = Wipe out all the trees. Make sure any that just barely survive- don't. So there are not progeny; and NO chance of evolution of resistance.

Take a look here: http://www.badgersett.com/info/publications/Bulletin8v1_0.pdf

It's about butternuts; but the principles are identical.

Who said they're all going to die???? In nature- that almost NEVER happens. Oh, except when foresters get in there and kill all the trees, so the pest can't.

Greenpa, I know you don't like me but I have a question for you:

I liked butternuts as a kid in Illinois and so have planted several where I now live in northwestern New Mexico and most of the seedlings are thriving under drip irrigation. Do you think that the trees could be already infected with Sirococcus from the nursery? Also, do you think that this organism might spread to Arizona walnuts? Thanks.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 05 Aug 2010 #permalink