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What a fig is.

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

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Re: What a fig is.

#61

Post by peterwwillis »

eru wrote: post #57
peterwwillis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the more you know about where your food comes from, the better. maybe you wouldn't eat that burger if you knew the pesticides, hormones and antibiotics that go into it. maybe you wouldn't eat that shellfish which may be full of birth control hormones. and maybe you wouldn't eat that genetically modified corn. in the bigger picture, eating a dead wasp seems like the healthy choice.

I can sympathize with your first example. But what's so bad about modifying genes?

i am not a geneticist, but i look at any change without lots of historical data and studies as alpha or beta quality and i assume a possibility for bugs.

Re: What a fig is.

#63

Post by eru »

peterwwillis wrote: post #61
eru wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize with your first example. But what's so bad about modifying genes?

i am not a geneticist, but i look at any change without lots of historical data and studies as alpha or beta quality and i assume a possibility for bugs.

The older alternative to direct genetic modifications is using radiation to cause random changes in the genome.

Systems biology looks like progress.

Re: What a fig is.

#64

Post by acqq »

larsr wrote: post #47
bd wrote: post #26

If you are squeamish and like figs, this may comfort you. According to a comment in the original post, majority of commercial ones do not contain insects: "Only some kinds of figs (so called 'Smyrna' types) are pollenated by wasps. The vast majority of figs eaten come from varieties that produce fruit parthenocarpically. It is highly unlikely that the fig you ate at the supermarket was of a variety pollenated by wasp…

Most of the commercial figs grown in California are wasp pollinated. If a fig is crunchy, it contains seeds, and if it contains seeds, the flowers inside it were likely pollinated by at least one wasp. Here is a great article with more details :) http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune99.htm

Luckily the wasps are not the wasps most people think of, from the article: "The tiny wasps are only two millimeters long."

Re: What a fig is.

#65

Post by simonsquiff »

SwellJoe wrote: post #54
sbierwagen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to quibble! 1.) Wasps as man's greatest enemy? Really? If we were being poetic, here, then I'd say that Man's greatest enemy is Man themselves, but this is HN, so I won't. For a runner up, I would at least choose an animal that can actually kill a healthy human, rather than one that and annoy a healthy human and kill a subset with allergic reactions of venom. 2.) There are a lot of species of wasp. According to…

If we were being poetic, here, then I'd say that Man's greatest enemy is Man themselves, but this is HN, so I won't. For a runner up, I would at least choose an animal that can actually kill a healthy human, rather than one that and annoy a healthy human and kill a subset with allergic reactions of venom. How about one that kills one to three million humans, mostly very young children, every year? The mosquito is man…

Surely it is the malaria parasite that is the killer, rather than the mosquito?

Re: What a fig is.

#66

Post by DeusExMachina »

simonsquiff wrote: post #65
SwellJoe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were being poetic, here, then I'd say that Man's greatest enemy is Man themselves, but this is HN, so I won't. For a runner up, I would at least choose an animal that can actually kill a healthy human, rather than one that and annoy a healthy human and kill a subset with allergic reactions of venom. How about one that kills one to three million humans, mostly very young children, every year? The mosquito is man…

Surely it is the malaria parasite that is the killer, rather than the mosquito?

The mosquito is the vector of transmission, so the couple mosquito-parasite makes it an enemy as a whole.

Re: What a fig is.

#67

Post by fractallyte »

pigbucket wrote: post #18
latch wrote: post #15

Ripe figs are delicious, and knowing that they've also, potentially killed a wasp - man's greatest enemy - only makes their nectar sweeter to my tongue.

The knowledge of enclosed vespine corpses just adds one more item to my growing list of things I hate about fig trees, of which I have two. Two fig trees are at least one and probably two fig trees too many. Too much pruning is required because spring growth is extensive. Too much fall raking is required because there's a ton of foliage too. But the real pain in the ass is harvesting. Figs really have to ripen on the…

On our fig tree, the figs ripen without falling off. But, it's a race to get to them before the local fauna: they seem to be a real delicacy for birds and wasps. Later in the season, half-eaten figs (ripe, brown and wrinkled) fill the topmost branches, attended by crowds of wasps.

When I pick them, I go in a T-shirt and shorts. Yes, the leaves are sticky - but not irritating in the slightest. It's usually a warm humid day anyway, so a cold shower is very refreshing.

And as for the figs: infinitely more delicious than anything from grocery stores. Messy to eat? Less messy than an apple.

I think we must be referring to different types of trees...

Re: What a fig is.

#69

Post by frobozz »

jmspring wrote: post #21

I have to say from experience... If you move into a house (purchase/rent/otherwise) with a fig tree and plan to relandscape. Be very careful. Fig tree roots run very shallow, and even older trees are susceptible to damage to the roots. I found out the hard way - rototilling an overgrown back yard due to too much grass, weeds, bulbs, etc. The 'till chomped through two or three large surface roots ( Be careful when gar…

Figs prefer a bit of constraint in their roots, so they should be planted out in a buried pot.

Re: What a fig is.

#70

Post by swombat »

_delirium wrote: post #48
maggit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) the "naturally" versus "artificially" distinction is a bit, erm, artificial, if you just think of humans as another species (...) "Aritificial" means "man-made", and is a (man-made/artificial) word invented to describe things that are done by humans, not other animals. By definition, everything a farmer makes is artificial.

Well, yes, I meant more the philosophical assumption that there's a difference between "natural" and shall we say "unnatural" things, rather than viewing humans as just another part of nature. If "artificial" is just a shorthand for "the part of nature strongly influenced by Homo sapiens ", then that's fine with me.

One of the more interesting consequences of this line of thought (of course depending on definitions of the words at hand) is that you can make a reasonable statement that man is utterly incapable of doing anything unnatural - since by definition, since man is a part of nature, everything man does is also what nature does.

Personally, I find this set of words (artificial, unnatural, etc) to have way, way too much baggage, so I prefer to just define them as nonsensical (i.e. it's impossible to do anything unnatural) rather than assume that they are useful tools for communication like other words (since most people will have varying definitions of what is unnatural, which aren't rationally guessable).

Holding this line of thought also allows to instantly come across as an annoying smart-arse in parties (and online too, I suppose).

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