Za'atar grilled chicken

Some time back a Turkish recipe for our dinner group called for za'atar, roasted thyme with sesame. After quite a search the package acquired had about 20 times as much as needed, so what to do with the rest? When this recipe turned up the condiments-imperative required that it had to be tried. The results were quite good, in fact excellent, so especially if you find yourself with lots of za'atar.
3 cloves of garlic (or use roasted garlic)
1/2 tbsp fresh rosemary chopped
1/2 tbsp fresh marjoram
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
a few dashes of Tabasco
1/4 cup za'atar
4-5 tbsp olive oil
salt & fresh ground pepper
Blenderize into a paste. Spread on onto 2 chicken breasts or chicken thighs and marinade for 30 min. Grill chicken. Slice and serve with cumin aioli (Whisk 1 tsp ground roasted cumin, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 small clove garlic minced, & dash of salt into 1 cup mayo.).
Enjoy.

Climate change "facts"?

Bob Carter is a geologist and a global warming denier. His recent opinion piece in The Age titled "An inconvenient fallacy" shows him using his own facts. Not being an expert on most of the issues, the Phactor will confine his criticism to just one fact. "Fact 3. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial. In increasing quantity it causes mild though diminishing warming (useful at a time of a quiet sun and likely near-future planetary cooling) and acts as a valuable plant fertiliser. Extra carbon dioxide helps to shrink the Sahara Desert, green the planet and feed the world. Ergo, carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor dangerous, but an environmental benefit."
First of all, does this guy think the Sahara is a desert because of the lack of CO2? OK, well, guess he doesn't garden or have house plants. Probably just a pet rock, and it seldom needs watering.
Next, the stuff about CO2 and plants is sort of OK, but when temperature gets added to the equation things change, and not only won't the Sahara get greener, the Amazonian rainforest might get a lot grassier, i.e., tree death may lead to a grassland savana replacing tropical rain forest. This change-over releases more CO2 because all those woody stems are store houses of CO2 that begin decomposing after the tree dies. This happens all the time, but if there are fewer trees to make wood, more CO2 will be released than taken up. Trees die because the rate of plant respiration continues to go up as temperature goes up, but photosynthetic rate tops out and then begins to decline. This means at higher temps more respiration, less photosynthesis. In one of the few long term studies, tropical tree mortality and average temperatures are negatively correlated; trees just respire themselves to death at higher temperatures. So our geologist is only correct if temperatures remain steady, but average temperatures are positively correlated to atmospheric CO2. Now of course the biologists who have been doing the study, my friends the Clarks, get their salaries and research money from grants, and their data and analyses that get published all have to get by lots of reviewers taking critical looks at their data, ideas, methodology, analyses, knowledge of science, etc., and they've been very successful for nearly 3 decades now. And in just 10 mins the Phactor let the air our of one of Prof. Carter's "facts". So who you gonna go with?

Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years.

Today was a glorious day so all the more difficult to deal with a great sadness. The Phactor met Betty nearly 44 years ago when but a callow youth. She was a singularly strong willed woman even then and only got more so as the years passed, but yet she was not without heart or compassion. However she suffered no fools, so carefully did the Phactor tread in courting and wedding her eldest daughter. Her passing came quickly, and somewhat unexpectedly, a blessing of sorts because she greatly feared being an invalid. Betty was the matriarch of the immediate family no matter what her husband thought. It seems clear from this perspective that her eldest daughter will take over her Mother’s leadership role, but not with such a heavy hand as now the family is but her siblings. Considering what an outsider the Phactor was, a non-Irish, non-Catholic, academic geek, and all, she almost always treated me well, ordering me around quite nicely in the early days, but eventually actually acknowledging my value even if another son-in-law was always her favorite (that suck up). Her daughter, my wife, evolved a life style very much different from her Mother’s because she was a pretty strong-willed woman herself, but for all of that Betty never acted as though it should be any other way, even accepting our cats. Just as she would have no one dictate to her, she herself would not dictate, except maybe a little now and then. Betty will be very much missed by all of us, and things seem a bit grayer today, as if an entire color has been removed from the palette of our family.

Insect hummingbirds

A neighbor was waving her arms at something flying about the garden. A first glance it appeared to be a hummingbird, but was way too small (3.5-4 cm long) for our local ruby-troated hummers. It was a day-flying hawkmoth (Macroglossum) and they can hover, go backwards, and rotate on a axis just like hummingbirds. They are wonderful insects and pollinate lots of flowers, mostly those with long, thin corolla tubes because they have a proboscis as long as their body or longer. Hawkmoths tend to be active in the early AM or late afternoon/early evening (crepuscular), but this one is day-flying. Our local species has a greenish fuzzy abdomen (viewed from behind) with a black stripe, so they might be mimicking a bee for protection from birds, and in this case it faked out my neighbor too. Image borrowed from a birder blog.

More on personified plants

Over on the AoB blog an article demonstrates that thinking of plants as people is often misleading. "There are times when anthropomorphising plants can effectively hide what is so fascinating about them." Ya think?

Bicycle design & human anatomy

The design for the classic bicycle seat was actually found in a dungeon torture chamber. Not only is too little surface area supporting too much weight, but the nose-shaped front of the seat puts a lot of pressure on a fellow's johnson. This can lead to erectile disfunction that no little blue pill can fix. Of course the tight little shorts don't help any either and they never were flattering. A re-design of the seat, a nose-ectomy, can greatly allieviate the problem and improve comfort. Although interested in an academic sense, none of this is matters to the Phactor because long ago the self-imposed torture of the traditional seat, and an aging stiff neck, led him to be an early purchaser of a bikeE, a wonderfully designed, great riding, semi-recumbent bicycle. Not only is it comfortable because you actually sit on your buttocks, but rather than the force of pushing on a pedal lifting off your seat, on the bikeE it pushes your back against the seat wasting far less energy. And the much lower center of gravity and the ability to put both feet down flat makes it safer for us "middle-aged" guys. Unfortunately the company is defunct, bought out and shelved (?) so they are getting quite hard to find. So take note guys, an anatomically correct seat can keep everything in working order even if you can't get one of these.

The biology of Marriage

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council claims scientific validation for one-man-one-woman marriage. "Marriage is a natural institution—rooted in the order of nature itself.
The reason marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman is because it takes precisely one man and one woman to create a new human life. Marriage is treated as a public institution because it is in the public interest (not just in the private interest of particular couples) for the human race to reproduce and continue into future generations."
Sure, that's why different human cultures have viewed marriage in so many different ways. Clearly this fellow knows very little about biology. Mating just isn't so simple out there, why plants have something like 16 different sex expressions of which just one is "male and female" plants. Harems the norm among many animals, so a sultan's harem can claim the same; it's a natural institution. Pair bonding is in no way the norm, and promiscuity is everywhere! Does Peter wish us to castigate celibates or childless couples because they choose not to reproduce? And when a burgeoning human population can be found contributing to so many of our problems, indeed, is it in the best interests of future generations for the human race to reproduce quite so much? Of course, we all know that none of this actually matters; science doesn't support his position. It's all about religion and religious bigotry aimed at homosexual marriage, but rather than say "my religion makes me a bigot" they try to suggest science supports their position. In the small minds of such people as Peter, the only religious freedom is their religious freedom, and everyone else had better conform. Think carefully about political candidates who proclaim a religious motivation for seeking public office, especially those who say god told them to do it. Fortunately just enough legislators in New York State saw the issue clearly enough, without a religious bias, that our USA democracy took a small step forward. The rest of them would happily endorse their version of the Taliban.

Are plants intelligent?

It never struck me that they were intelligent at all. Meristemi asks, "Do plants dream of green sheep?" Clever, and clearly influenced by Philip Dick. Are plants persons? No, although this does not mean natural objects should not have standing or a right to exist, and people do not understand plants as capable organisms as opposed to inanimate objects. As pointed out over at the AoB blog, a primary instigator of such a question was Anthony Trewavas who wrote an AoB article in 2003 about plant intelligence, and others have talked about plant behavior, and there's even a society of plant neurobiology for the study of non-existent plant neurons, all perhaps as a result. "A simple definition of plant intelligence can be coined as adaptively variable growth and development during the lifetime of the individual." Plants of course to react to each other and various aspects of their environment, but calling growth phenomena intelligence, or even a behavior, still seems rather anthropomorphic, and it eludes me how this improves our understanding of plant reactions and communication. As pointed out sometime back, these terms have considerable baggage, unintended implications, and rather than understanding "intelligence" as meaning plants can grow in response to things such that they improve their chances of survival, people immediately begin talking of plant sentience. They should spend more time talking to their petunias. This all leaves me wondering if wading through Matthew Hall's book will be worth the time or not. Let me know if you have a go at it; for now the Phactor is giving it a pass. Such ideas can go no where good; bans on coleslaw and carrot sticks will surely be next.

Bird dispersal

Fruit eating birds are great seed dispersers. Small seeds pass through the GI tract and get depositied hear and there in bird droppings. Larger seeds and pits get regurgitated after the fleshy parts get ground off in the birds crop, and this often results in much larger number of seeds, and all in the same place. Bird behavior determines their movements, and as a result seeds end up in a non-random distribution. This becomes very evident each year when the weeds are removed from under a large bald cypress. Clearly this big tree is a favorite place for birds to roost after having eaten. Based upon the seedlings pulled, a dozen or more for every square foot, wild cherries were a big favorite, following by pokeweed. Other bird dispersed seed include hackberry and black raspberry. Fortunately this tree has a deep accumulation of organic material, and the pulling is easy, if you don't wait too long. Slowly the Phactors are gaining on the weeds, but soon travel will reverse all that. Ah, well.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Swamp Milkweed

Well, just like that the Phactor is two days late on posting a new fabulous flower. How does that happen? Milkweeds are much under appreciated as having beautiful flowers. The individual flowers aren't big, but they grow in some huge clusters and in some great colors too. As a native wildflower, one of the best is swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). The native plant is quite handsome and a number of pretty vividly colored cultivars are in the market too. It's a bit of a struggle for our garden because of the late summer heat and accompanying drought. As its name suggests, swamp milkweed like a wet setting. This one was growing on a shore. And few flowers attract more butterflies than do milkweeds.