Tuesday--

I always look forward to two bloggers' posts each week. One is John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report which appears on Thursdays and the other is James Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation which should have appeared today. When I didn't find it in my e-mail I went to the site to find out what had happened. It seems his site has been under DoS attack for the last two weeks with particularly sustained attack for the last two days. However, Patreon has it crossposted on their site. It is classic Kunstler which skewers everything about the leading presidential contenders and their failure to address the most urgent problems this country faces. Is that why his site is under attack?

Wednesday--

We went to the farm market yesterday. It was only the second day and the first weekday so we are trying to get a feel for which venders are there on what days. I got the strawberries to finish out one of the tower pots and a couple more lisianthus to keep the first one company. We also found our locally produced honey, maple syrup, asparagus and spinach and some nice tomatoes from a woman who brings early produce in from the south. We are so glad when ever the market opens for the season. This last winter has been a particularly bad one for veggies of any kind from the supermarket. The quality has been markedly poor whether it was fresh or frozen. We don't buy much in the canned veggies any more but those had disgusted us some time ago.

It will be cool today but sunny for the early part of the day. Should be able to do a few things in the gardens.

When I read the title of this my first reaction was "Bhopal." It seems to be one of those gifts that keep on giving.

Business Insider had this item today which has me shaking my head. High tech is so damned sexy--especially high tech genetic engineering. There are several problems with the proposal. First, it is a long term proposal that might (probably) won't ever yield truly useful results. For comparison take a look at all the promises of a "cure" for cancer. There are so many possible, and some proven, causes that a cure is impossible. Scientists have discovered several genes that predispose people to cancer and each acts differently and responds to treatments differently. The scientist presenting the proposal to identify the genes in mice that prevent some individuals from transmitting Lyme disease to ticks (and hence its ultimate transmission to people) describes a similarly complex situation. Furthermore, no one knows how many different functions each of those genes actually perform within the cell. Any one of those genes might accomplish the purpose of preventing transmission of the Lyme bacterium but have another action we might like even less. Maybe the money could be better spent on other less high tech projects.

The comment on the link at Naked Capitalism sums up the story quite well: "third world stuff." We wondered why it took so long for the news media to call the California primary. This explains it. And, yes, it is definitely third world stuff.