Jeremy Cherfas

Language Log; Slurs inside idioms are still slurs

Our Daily Bread 30 - A Perennial Dream http://ow.ly/8pcy30lB5vW Wheat is an annual plant; it dies after setting seed. Each year, the farmer has to prepare the land, sow seed, fertilise and protect the plants. When the ground is bare, between crops, wind and water can erode the soil. The shallow root systems of annual plants fail to exploit the resources of the soil and do little to improve it. So although wheat feeds us, it does so at considerable cost to the environment. It isn't sustainable. What if wheat were perennial? Photo by Jerry D. Glover; annual wheat on the left, Kernza™ on the right.

Replied to a post on www.kickscondor.com :

Very interesting read; I too didn't realise quite how effectively Google sucked all the fun out of the web, even though I was there at the time. Pure serendipity to read your comment about Pinboard and reread this talk from Maclej on the same day. http://idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a_tool_using_animal.htm

Listened to the first episode of Bundyville, because it was on 99PI. Instant subscribe. Very fine narrative podcast about an important subject.

Our Daily Bread 29 - It's a Hard Grain http://ow.ly/3Zvt30lB5rE Durum wheat is only about 5% of the total wheat harvest around the world. For those of us who like our pasta, that's a very important 5%. Different gluten proteins make a durum dough stretchy rather than elastic -- perfect for pasta. The kernels are very hard and need dedicated milling machinery, which produces small granules -- semolina -- rather than flour. That, however, may be about to change.

So excited. And in a few days I may actually have time to sit and read.

Our Daily Bread 28 - Anything but Grim http://ow.ly/MAbj30lz3WQ The one process in the whole business of turning wheat into bread when time is of the essence is the harvest. It's back-breaking work, and the slightest delay can ruin the quality of the grain. In Europe, a ready supply of peasants got the job done. In America, labour, especially in the newly settled midwest, was extremely scarce. Inventors had to come up with machines.

Checked into Piazza Francesco Cucchi

Twitter weirdness. Ability to follow links seems to have changed. In Safari, with mu-block, I can click on a link shared directly by someone, but not on a link in a retweet. Is this a change in behaviour, or something I simply never noticed before? Or both.

#indieweb

Our Daily Bread 27 - Bread and Political Circuses http://ow.ly/SUG530lz3Uo An enormous amount of wheat, roughly one fifth of the total harvest, is traded internationally between countries and, as might be expected, if the supply falls, prices rise. Given the strategic importance of wheat, countries try to ensure that they have an adequate supply, even when doing so actually makes things worse, at least in the short term. Wheat links a drought in China to the fall of Egypt's government in the Arab Spring of 2011.