Outrage! Pure, totally distilled, essence of outrage!

This story will raise your blood pressure, so if at risk, proceed with care. A man living in a small town in British Columbia faces six months in jail if he doesn’t cease “all agricultural activities”, i.e., gardening, on his 2.5 acre lot on the edge of town. Now that just screams of a mindless bureaucracy in action. Some stupid ordinance must say that farming within the city limits is not allowed, but gardening? And where do you draw the line between a garden and a farm? Does it have a barn? Does it have a home-made mailbox made from a plow? Does it have broken down, rusty agricultural machines lined up behind the garage? If not, it’s not a farm, at least as the Phactor knows farms. Outraged? Well, just wait. It gets even worse.
The former owner of these 2.5 acres removed all the top soil from the land and sold it. Then the sand was removed and sold, and finally the gravel beneath, lowering the landscape by nearly 4 feet, leaving nothing behind but a barren wasteland created by exploitative greed with nary a concern about the results of raping nature to make some money. The current owner restored the land well enough to allow successful gardening. See the pictures here for the before and after. Now this is what really rubs my rhubarb! It was OK by the town to totally destroy the land and leave a moon scape behind, but restore the land and plant a garden, that’s illegal. The needle on your outrage-o-meter should be bouncing off the right hand side of the scale! The mayor should be pinning a medal on the guy instead of prosecuting him for gardening.
Speaking of mindless bureaucracy, remind the Phactor to tell you a story about nature, lawns, rules and regulations, and the Army Corps of Engineers.
HT to the Garden Rant.

Care and use of non-existent animals

Everyone in biology knows about IACUC (Insitutional Animal Care and Use Committees). If you study animals, at least those far enough along the phylogenetic tree, you have to construct protocols for their proper and humane care and use. So far those of us of a botanical sort are not subject to such protocols. You want to make cole slaw; slice and dice away. This is fortunate because the Phactor does not react well to over bearing bureaucracies, but this story isn't about the Phactor. One of my colleagues does something a bit strange. Every now and again he travels to the northwestern USA, joins up with some cryptozoological colleagues, and heads out into the boondocks to look for Bigfoot. It's probably a nice hike. But now IACUC wants him to file a protocol for Bigfoot. Huh? A protocol for the care and use of a non-existent beast? Don't you have to ask if there are established protocols for unicorns and trolls? Well, if you actually go looking for trolls, then you deserve having IACUC demand a troll protocol. Fortunately no botanical equivalent of cryptozoology exists, although there is a society for plant neurobiology, which certainly is studying something that doesn't exist. Cryptobotany doesn't exist because botanists have been so successful at finding extinct plants, but if you happen upon a glossopterid, oh, please let us see it!

Monday's Bureaucratic Wonder!

As you are probably aware, Lincolnland is second to no one in the careful nuturing of politicians and bureaucrats sensitive to your needs. Since our great public institution's credit was not as good as my own, the Phactor had need to use his own personal credit to charge baggage fees for students and a colleague on a recent tropical field trip. The cost had been budgeted and it was a simple matter of filing for reimbursement. However, our Comptroller, the one who regulates, directs, and restrains, the one who interprets state rules and regulations to generate the most circuitous and annoying procedures, decreed that my colleague, who had not spent a dime, must file for imbursement (it wasn't re- anything) as the traveller, and then if the spirit moved him, repay me. See how nicely that keeps track of everything? Someone who did not spend any money must file paper work to get the money you spent, and then give it too you. Wow! Perhaps we need a policy where in an annual balloting the bureaucrat voted least helpful and the greatest hinderance could be voted out of a job and off campus. And maybe if we are extremely lucky, she'll take her husband with her (he only came in third in the voting). Since the Phactor is an equal opportunity fellow, the administration shall have the same opportunity to vote faculty out. Oh, wait, they already do that!