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Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

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Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#71

Post by saagarjha »

p-e-w wrote: post #69
ImHereToVote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if the US is a democracy or not.

Democracy is a scale, not a binary state. The actually relevant question is "could the average American have prevented Abu Ghraib?" And I believe the answer to be No, so 'Americans' cannot possibly be responsible under any reasonable definition of responsibility.

Well you can also have average Americans who think they have no business taking responsibility after it happens, since it wasn't something that concerned them, and nothing ends up done in response to it happening. Or you can note that some people did horrible things under the banner of your country and accept it as such, vowing to never let it happen again and holding those directly involved in the decision to account for what they did. Being upset that someone said "Americans committed war crimes in Iraq and calling it hate speech" is definitely not that.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#72

Post by EdwardDiego »

p-e-w wrote: post #65
EdwardDiego wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha okay. Who was working for the British landlords in Ireland? Solely the Anglo-Irish? No-one from Britain? Who voted for governments that enforced the Corn Law? Drawing ahead in Irish history by 60 - 70 years, who made up the bulk of the Black and Tans? But sure, can't blame the British for what their aristocracy and elected government did in Ireland, for... ...reasons? Feel like you need a satirical hashtag, like…

> Who voted for governments that enforced the Corn Law? Not "the British people", if that's what you are implying. Until the Reform Act of 1867, only a tiny fraction of British adult men (and none of British women) had the right to vote. The average Briton during the Great Irish Famine had as much influence on the British government as the average Irish person did. Which is to say, none at all.

Tiny fraction?

> Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult men in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number.

1/7th isn't that tiny. 1/14th is a fair tiny fraction if we're including disenfranchised women.

Being fair, the Corn Law wasn't intended to hurt the Irish, it was meant to protect British farmers against the cheap grain of the traitor colonies in North America.

But it was British/Anglo-Irish civil servants who enforced it in the face of obvious famine.

And it was a British government that refused to revoke it in the face of obvious famine.

Shit, ol Robert Peel, the creator of the 5-0 in Britain, the origin of two slang words for the Police (bobbies, peelers) had to vote against his own party to repeal the Corn Law.

Anyway, point is, the British government, the government that claimed to represent all the peoples of the United Kingdoms, their policies caused this famine, whether by explicit action, or failure to act.

You can't really #notallbritish this.

It's not like the British government of the 1800s was a police state cracking down on dissenters like it's Saudi Arabia and you're a dominant noble family aligned with the Wahabbi.

And, as I asked earlier, when the great majority of the Black and Tans were British, is it still a tiny fraction of Britain that was keeping Ireland down?

> The average Briton during the Great Irish Famine had as much influence on the British government as the average Irish person did.

They had far more influence than the average Irish person. For starters, they weren't Irish.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#73

Post by jeromenerf »

mrmincent wrote: post #52
ifdefdebug wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. It will eradicate the potatoe bug and then go extinct for lack of prey. This is incredible! It takes two HN nerds just 5 minutes to come up with a good plan a group of scientists would have needed months to develop.

I’d like to think this is the exact same conversation that gave Australia it’s 2nd favourite purse material, the cane toad.

The brought-in-for-some-purpose, escape-to-bush, become-feral, become-pest worked also for cats, dogs, horses ... up-to camels. I am not aware of Australian Feral Elephants but it may exist.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#74

Post by zo1 »

rocqua wrote: post #14
roschdal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Irish Potato Famine and the much later famines in the Bengal regions were the result of misguided or malicious “capitalist” efforts by the British state and empire to enforce who gets to eat. Interesting, tell me more about how the economic system in Britain caused the famine in Ireland.

Ireland was a colony of Britain. The economic system of Britain was much more concerned with extracting value from its colony than it was in caring about the people in its colony.

Sure but how did it benefit them to let their "crop" die of famine? Seems like a stupid thing to do, even if you don't care about the well being of your "stock".

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#75

Post by jjgreen »

Roark66 wrote: post #5
creyes12345 wrote: post #2

Requiring calorie-heavy diets to carry out their punishing workloads, [the Irish impoverished tenant farmers] were soon consuming between 40 and 60 potatoes every day.

I'd imagine how much actual calories that is depends on the size of the potatoes. When potatoes fail, they often do so by producing tiny tubers. The smallest I personally ate were less than an inch in diameter. Also,people who don't do any farming don't realise how much effort goes into pest/disease control. Especially with potatoes the main pest around here(central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the c…

... around here (central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the correct name for it in English)

Usually just the "Colorado Beetle" in the UK at least. Little bastards.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#76

Post by bregma »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #17
Roark66 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine how much actual calories that is depends on the size of the potatoes. When potatoes fail, they often do so by producing tiny tubers. The smallest I personally ate were less than an inch in diameter. Also,people who don't do any farming don't realise how much effort goes into pest/disease control. Especially with potatoes the main pest around here(central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the c…

Would it help to switch crops around between plots or would these beetles stay in the ground for years even if they couldn't find any potato plants to feed on?

I've had them come back after at least 10 years. Anywhere within about 100 m of a previously infested area.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#77

Post by bregma »

EGreg wrote: post #6

It’s one thing to have a bad crop. It’s another to have your government enforce some heartless economic system at the expense of people’s lives, and utterly fail at helping them by accepting foreign aid from other countries. Just as the Holodomor[1] and Great Chinese Famine[2] were the result of misguided or malicious “socialist” collectivization efforts by Stalin and Mao, the Irish Potato Famine[3] and the much late…

It was more mercantilism than capitalism. The same ism that resulted in the American Revolution in which one set of mercantilists overthrew another set. Capitalism was arising at the time but was not yet ascendant.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#78

Post by wlll »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #17
Roark66 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine how much actual calories that is depends on the size of the potatoes. When potatoes fail, they often do so by producing tiny tubers. The smallest I personally ate were less than an inch in diameter. Also,people who don't do any farming don't realise how much effort goes into pest/disease control. Especially with potatoes the main pest around here(central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the c…

Would it help to switch crops around between plots or would these beetles stay in the ground for years even if they couldn't find any potato plants to feed on?

There’s a general rule in amateur gardening that you rotate the location of your potatoes on something like a 4 year schedule. In wider agriculture you’re looking at “crop rotation”. I don’t know how this affects specific beetles etc.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#79

Post by rsynnott »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #70
rsynnott wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that's probably pushing the technicalities too far. Sandymount was part of a a separate administrative region until the 30s (in much the same way that, say, SDCC is today), but for practical purposes it was part of Dublin, and it was contiguous with Dublin; I'm pretty sure even in the mid to late 19th century you could walk from the city centre to Sandymount without leaving the urban area.

Fair enough, was only like 4km from Dublin proper, and as you say, contiguous. I just like occasionally being technically correct on the Internet, the worst kind of correct.

Oh, closer than that; walk 2km and you're in Dublin 2. Unless you're a Viking it's be hard to argue that that wasn't Dublin proper.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#80

Post by rsynnott »

zo1 wrote: post #74
rocqua wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland was a colony of Britain. The economic system of Britain was much more concerned with extracting value from its colony than it was in caring about the people in its colony.

Sure but how did it benefit them to let their "crop" die of famine? Seems like a stupid thing to do, even if you don't care about the well being of your "stock".

Few things about the former British administration of Ireland (or indeed of Scotland, Wales, or Northern England; the UK has never gotten the hang of regions even in modern times - before it left the EU, 7 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe were in the UK) would lead one to assume competence.
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