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James Wong is some sort of Media Presence in Britain:
Not surprisingly, he has Strong Opinions about how English gardeners are racist toward plants.
I was once asked to present a planting concept for E London to a room of (100% white) critics.
Feedback was that international planting ‘didn’t fit the area’ and I ‘should do native wildflowers’
The site was founded by Romans & an immigration epicentre for +2,000 yrs.
— James Wong (@Botanygeek) December 12, 2020
Aesthetics are racist. Diversity, which is our strength, demands that gardens everywhere in the world should look as random as the landscaping of Beverly Hills. *
The only way to beat his anti-English racism is to outflank it to the left: James Wong is an imperialist biological appropriationist. Kew Gardens is an example of the British Empire appropriating the wealth of diverse cultures, just as the Benin bronzes and the Elgin marbles are.
For a moment, I thought I might have made up a new bit of Woke craziness, but … no, it’s a real thing. For example,
The time has come to decolonise botanical gardens like Kew https://t.co/0kt294Eluc
— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 12, 2020
From The Independent:
The time has come to decolonise botanical gardens like Kew
Even the study of plants has roots in colonialism and appropriation. We must face its troubled history and make sure we do something about it, writes Alexandre Antonelli
Alexandre Antonelli is a professor of biodiversity and director of science at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Friday 26 June 2020 16:49
I’ve often struggled to answer the simple question, “Where are you from?” As I was born and raised in Brazil, my origin is mixed – comprising indigenous, African and Mediterranean ancestors – and I dislike pre-defined labels.
In other words, I’m probably even whiter than James Wong, but I’m sure as hell not going to let that self-promoter out-Diversity me in the media.
Having lived outside my birth country most of my life, I have experienced discrimination on multiple occasions. I have learned the history of imperialism from the perspective of a former colony.
At school, I was taught that Brazil was “discovered” in 1500 by the Portuguese. The fact that several million people lived there before that was barely mentioned in our books. We were told of a long history of brutal exploitation of our natural resources, including vast amounts of gold, rubber and timber. All this was achieved through the exploitation of our native people and African slaves – including my own ancestors.
Despite this, I am proud that Brazil is widely known also as the world’s most biodiverse country. It astounded colonial botanists. Charles Darwin was astonished at our “lands teeming with life”, as was Alfred Russel Wallace, who spent years in the Amazon. It is not lost on me that these were both white British men.
And Britain is also where I ended up professionally. After two decades studying biodiversity across the world, I’m now head of science at Kew, responsible for the world’s largest collections of plants and fungi.
For hundreds of years, rich countries in the north have exploited natural resources and human knowledge in the south. Colonial botanists would embark on dangerous expeditions in the name of science but were ultimately tasked with finding economically profitable plants. Much of Kew’s work in the 19th century focused on the movement of such plants around the British Empire, which means we too have a legacy that is deeply rooted in colonialism.
… But as the Black Lives Matter movement has rightly shown, change happens too slowly, or is superficial, or doesn’t happen at all.
In my own field of research, you can see an imperialist view prevail. Scientists continue to report how new species are “discovered” every year, species that are often already known and used by people in the region – and have been for thousands of years.
Scientists have appropriated indigenous knowledge and downplayed its depth and complexity. The first inhabitants of Brazil and the first users of plants in Australia often remained unnamed, unrecognised, and uncompensated. They are quite literally invisible in history. This needs to change.
How exactly Kew is going to go back 50,000 years into the past to identify the name of the Australian aboriginal who discovered the macadamia nut is left as an exercise for the reader.
* Now that I think about it, Beverly Hills’ landscaping isn’t as bad as its domestic architecture. Nathanael West wrote in Day of the Locust:
But not even the soft wash of dusk could help the houses. Only dynamite would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and every possible combination of these styles that lined the slopes of the canyon.
The problem with Beverly Hills’ home designs is too much individualism and creativity. As Paul Johnson pointed out in Art: A New History, the leading residents of Beverly Hills tended to be movie people with active imaginations, confidence in their own genius, an urge to stand out from their neighbors. and the phone numbers of set designers who moonlighted as architects. So the place is a discordant hodge-podge of house styles.
On the other hand, the city fathers of Beverly Hills in their landscaping followed a policy of balancing the craze for diversity with a certain degree of regularity. Their policy was to plant different kinds of trees on each street. Thus Coldwater Canyon features huge pine trees, while Palm and North Whittier Drives feature jacarandas that bloom lavishly in spring.
This brings English (via Wong) nuttiness to new levels (or, if you will, depths) of inanity! 😎
A beta white male sacrifices the human race to satisfy the hunger of a invasive plant that perpetually overstates its victimhood and hunger.
https://youtu.be/L7SkrYF8lCU
What weapon did this disgusting culturally genocidal bigot use to compel Britons to give him their pounds? Cf Hollywood. We must join the battle already in progress, and the minimum contribution must be to stop giving money to anything woke.
~ ~ ~Well, he certainly sounds like a fun guy. (Mushroom walks into a bar...)
~ ~ ~
https://nachosconhuevos.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/21-176-post/DSC_3376-2-1024x684(pp_w980_h654).jpgReplies: @J.Ross
This kind of “thinking” is indistinguishable from mocking satire or outright insanity.
Since We Are All Racists why are some still babbling on about it?
“It’s all so tiresome!”
Since We Are All Racists why are some still babbling on about it?
"It's all so tiresome!"Replies: @John Johnson, @dfordoom
Maybe we should start calling Britain parody island?
I think all pre-woke era seeds should be abandoned since they were all cultivated by racist Whites.
Time to make some protest signs for the farmer’s market.
FULL SIZED TOMATOES ARE RACIST
SEGREGATION LED TO SQUASH
NO JUSTICE NO SWEET CORN
1. Wong won’t make it all white.
2. “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
3. Don’t blame him for Kitty Genovese: that’s the other Kew Gardens.
While we’re at it, a minor prediction: it could soon be considered (if it isn’t already by some) offensive to say, for example, that the Saharan climate is “scorching hot” or similar. Not long ago, it was reported billions of trees were counted throughout that desert- I mean throughout the Sahara with the help of artificial intelligence, so what do you know, it might not be a desert after all, you bigot, it could be almost as lush as the Black Forest in Germany or whatever. Of course, this also applies to other climes: think twice before saying northern India has “torrential rains”, that the air in the Amazon rainforest or in the either of the Congos is “suffocatingly wet”, and so on. Refraining to explicitly say that a place is “exotic” to you (even if it very much is) might not be enough.
Sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun to come
If the sun don’t come, you get a tan from standing in the English rain…
Wong must be the eggman; he has the tan. But no English story would be complete without a lecher:
My warning to the woke, and everyone else, is that this is a really bad time in history to say dumb things. Search engines can give the appearance of making dumb things disappear but nothing biodegrades in the great information landfill of the internet.
Yes this story ran this morning in RT News so probably it is just Russian propaganda.
But really this is British Monty Pythonesque humor and leg-pulling at its best, but misunderstood by foreigners who don’t get the joke.
“Even the study of plants has roots in colonial…” Roots? Hilarious!
Native plants? Nice one!
But did you know that English lavender is not native to England?
https://dwwpmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/content/uploads/2016/02/01165555/Lavender-Festival.jpg
Or even turnips.
How long before we have to repeal all laws that restrict invasive species?
I suppose you could say that the Taino people who Columbus took back to Europe with him discovered Europe, which they certainly did, but they didn’t map it or write about it.
Equally you can say that Britain was not really discovered until the Romans wrote about it, even though they were obviously people living there who had a fairly sophisticated way of life, for instance tin mining in Cornwall, long before the first Roman wrote about it.
'Equally you can say that Britain was not really discovered until the Romans wrote about it, even though they were obviously people living there who had a fairly sophisticated way of life, for instance tin mining in Cornwall, long before the first Roman wrote about it.'
I don't think much of all this. I 'discovered' a good Japanese restaurant the other day; it was new to me. The Europeans discovered America; it was new to them.
The term is relative to the observer. If I see the Grand Canyon for the first time, I'm not denying others saw it before me; I'm just saying it's the first time I've seen it.Replies: @Expletive Deleted
Even talking about it is probably racist.
Why do you use that racist term?
I have learned the history of imperialism from the perspective of a former colony.
Imperialism, hah. After independence from Portugal Brazil developed her own offshoot of the Portuguese crown to seat not just a king but an EMPEROR. Take that you anti-imperialists.
And boy, did the last Brazilian emperor, Pedro II look the part.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/eoanb/images/9/98/Images-0.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20200610234203
Let alone to the shores of Green Bay.
Thanks.
If they find him, they can thank him for me. Love macadamia nuts! I remember I first experienced them in the mid-sixties the first time I flew on an airplane. My mother took me with her to visit her sick brother and my grandmother. The flight from Philadelphia to Buffalo took about 2 hours (it was a slow prop plane), yet they served a full meal with real dishes and stainless steel utensils. The macadamia nuts were served with the meal as a side dish. Not tossed at you like little bags of Delta peanuts. They were quite expensive when I was young so did not have them again until many years later. I always assumed they were native to Hawaii. Thank you, O ancient aboriginal Aussie nut fancier!
Wong was born in London to a British (Welsh) mother. So he is apparently part of the, ahem, native fauna of the British Isles.
UK banks are so racist and xenophobic that they won’t approve a mortgage or home-equity loan if there’s any Japanese knotweed on the property. You have to dig it all out with a backhoe, then incinerate the dirt because the tiniest fragment of the stuff can start a new infestation somewhere else.
Malaysian-Chinese father, British mother. He’s clearly understood his life chances are improved by claiming Chinese victimhood in a racist White culture and denying his White heritage when it suits him.
White women who marry foreigners should be shipped off to their husband’s country of origin. The rest of us would be better off all round for it. James Wong could have had a great career at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, climbing to the dizzy heights he achieved in Britain by claiming victimhood for being White.
These people have no originality, no courage, no commitment to truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEq9ogzaLfoReplies: @duncsbaby
No talk then of partners and de facto relationships not to mention same sex marriage
Two whites don’t make a Wong . . .
Similarly, he opines:
But somehow neglect to mention that his fellow countrymen are deforesting the Amazon (“the world’s lungs”) at a rate of over 50 acres per minute.
Somehow that seems relevant. But we’re not supposed to talk about what South Americans do because Reasons.
https://nypost.com/2020/12/01/deforestation-in-brazils-amazon-skyrockets-to-12-year-high-under-bolsonaro/
https://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm
All these white-ish people fighting and arguing over who is less white. As a completely non-white person, I find this all exhausting.
When I bought the property on which my current house stands, it was overrun with bamboo, which is an invasive species here (there was even a banana tree!). I had it exterminated at great cost and effort and re-populated the property with native plants (including sixty-some trees). All the neighbors were happy, except one (who apparently considered any extinction of plant life evil). The happiest neighbor was an immigrant from China (“Ah, the property looks great now!”), the crazy vegetarianist lady was white. Even the UPS delivery guy gave me a thumbs up.
I hate bamboo with the heat of a thousand suns. Well, unless it’s split and made into a fly rod.
Thanks for doing your part to rid North America of that awful stuff.
What about white men who marry foreigners? Should they be shipped off as well? No? You wouldn’t be a man, by any chance, would you?
I think one can be said to “discover” something when one places it in some kind of conceptual framework. The Reverend who found a dinosaur bone and thought it to be one of the creatures that didn’t make it onto Noah’s Ark in time can not be said to have discovered dinosaurs, but the man – Robert Owen I believe – who was able to correctly identify the bone as the remains of an extinct form of reptile can be said to have discovered dinosaurs. Who discovered oxygen is a tricky one because Priestley first isolated it and knew that it was crucial to the process of combustion but Lavoisier discovered its proper role.
Anyway, when Columbus set foot on what is now America he knew the Earth was round, and he knew there were lands waiting to be discovered. So he had the right conceptual framework. And of course once it was discovered by him it stayed discovered.
In any case we are Westerners, so we view things through a Westerner’s frame. That is not a criticism of our position, that is our position.
If you combine Wokeism and plants you might get “A Little Shop of Horrors.”
A beta white male sacrifices the human race to satisfy the hunger of a invasive plant that perpetually overstates its victimhood and hunger.
Wait a minute. Did I hear you say Sahara Desert?? You’d better check yourself.
Here’s a checklist to help you along:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/everyday-words-and-phrases-that-have-racist-connotations/ar-BB16nYUx
Thanks.
Emmett Till would have made a great gardener. Like his father, he knew the importance of planting his seed.
abortionists around if Till Sr managed to plant his seed.
Guns good black rapists bad.
Mr. Wong is a harmful invasive species
Would it be Wong of me to assume then that the peppers and tomatoes in my meal of Chinese takeout were not culturally appropriated? Or that the North American ash and maples grown in China, to be used profitably for the wood in shipping crates are again, not culturally appropriated?
Neither is the English Walnut.
On the other hand, Eugenia Cheng is about as chipper a Brit as one is likely to find, despite being a pureblood.
Mr. Wong is a dandelion
When your university or deep-pocketed non-profit is rendered ancillary by handheld scanning and broadband Internet, it makes sense those legacy firms would grow steadily more fussy and feminized with their Civil Rights pieties, in order to produce publicity fodder as their true function. They aren’t falling down on the job of training scientific proteges when that job doesn’t exist now. The old botanical collection of the Calif. Academy of Sciences, famously rescued from the 1906 fire by the single employee who didn’t go on the group outing to Galapagos, is easily browsed online; of course; in the absolutely expected current way of things:
https://plants.jstor.org/search?scope=plants&Query=ps_repository%3ACAS+AND+resourceType%3Aspecimens
I can’t fret much over this religio-scientific fad eating away the husks of those professions. Not as if we’d otherwise get the jump on Russia/China/India at the next I.G.Y. botany competition
Since We Are All Racists why are some still babbling on about it?
"It's all so tiresome!"Replies: @John Johnson, @dfordoom
I assumed it was satire. Are you telling me it wasn’t?
There is an interesting difference between the views of Wong and Antonelli.
Wong is going with the pro-immigration trend in progressive thought common in the west. No life form belongs to any particular country.
Antonelli is the view that says that biodiversity always belongs to the nation where it originally came from that is pushed by the Association of Like Minded Megadiverse countries from the global south.
https://lmmc.mybis.gov.my/
This trend is making bioprospecting for new pharmaceuticals or crops difficult as so many have to be payed off out of the profits . See
http://www.synbiowatch.org/captain-hook-awards-2016/?lores
for an example of this view.
Perhaps a bit tangential to the discussion here, but long term this could be important.
White ethnicities need to have their collective identities broken down so outsiders can exploit their societies as they see fit. Of course, non-immigrant non-whites don't care, it's only people like Wong who have internalised their sense of being interlopers who need to suppress their natives before they realise how people like Wong think about them and want to treat them who go nuts like this.
Wong feels bad and afraid because he realises whats being done to the natives. He fears a backlash because if the shoe was on the other foot he'd be terrified of what he'd do to somebody like him. Many such cases.
And of cultivating the soil. Can’t believe you left that one hanging!
Caroline Bryant was able to drive off junior Till because she had a gun. The unfortunate Italians didn’t have guns. Hope to God there were illegal
abortionists around if Till Sr managed to plant his seed.
Guns good black rapists bad.
Keep in mind that BoJo and Parliament just voted to allow 3.5 million of this guy’s fellow Chinese to move to Great Britain from Hong Kong, should they choose to do so. And many of them will.
Like with the Cubans, the first generation may be highly anti-PRC but subsequent generations will assimilate to their assigned class and ethnic roles (Even more intensely than those with native born parents as they seek to distance themselves from their 'weird' 'foreign' parents even though this will also take the form of romanticising their foreign identity) and become highly ethnocentric interlopers who wish to displace the natives in a form of passive ethnic war. They'll also likely form a vast potential fifth column for the PRC or future Chinese state.
You can have all the brain power you want, if you have a demoralised low trust country with no sense of a definable future you don't go far. A company full of mediocre people full of hope and enthusiasm is worth 10 companies full of very smart people who just don't care or feel all that invested in the future.
That’s speciesist! Humans didn’t “discover” the macadamia nut.
The poor chap, presumably it’s only the current Kung Flu restrictions that are preventing him from escaping to China, never to return?
When I bought the property on which my current house stands, it was overrun with bamboo, which is an invasive species here (there was even a banana tree!). I had it exterminated at great cost and effort and re-populated the property with native plants (including sixty-some trees). All the neighbors were happy, except one (who apparently considered any extinction of plant life evil). The happiest neighbor was an immigrant from China (“Ah, the property looks great now!”), the crazy vegetarianist lady was white. Even the UPS delivery guy gave me a thumbs up.Replies: @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
How does one survive in your neck of the woods? Doesn’t winter frost kill it?
There was also lots of poison ivy, and the property suffered from poor drainage as well (which required regrading the whole thing and re-turfing). It was a lot of work.
You think that’s even possible? Have you any idea how many corporations support BLM alone? Or proudly sponsor Pride spectacles of abomination?
~ ~ ~
Well, he certainly sounds like a fun guy.
(Mushroom walks into a bar…).jpg)
~ ~ ~
Beats me. It was alive until I had it uprooted. My understanding is that it never bore any fruit, but stayed alive.
There was also lots of poison ivy, and the property suffered from poor drainage as well (which required regrading the whole thing and re-turfing). It was a lot of work.
“Left that one hanging.” You’re wicked, you are.
The Glory of the Garden, by Rudyard Kipling
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-” Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
Re. Aborigines in Australia and their botanical discoveries: One of the grossest tendencies in historical research, which I believe started in Australia, is to ask rural people, with a limited vocabulary, and who otherwise can't remember how to avoid fecal-oral contamination, about their past. There are Australian researchers who were told, and believed, and published stories about the colonization of Australia by the current indigenous people. Apparently, grandpa was told by his grandpa about the latter's grandpa being kungz and s**t.Replies: @Anonymous
If loving Kew is Wong, I don’t want to be White.
I, for one, welcome our new Triffid Masters.
The world was a much simpler place when wives -and children -automatically took their husband’s nationality
No talk then of partners and de facto relationships not to mention same sex marriage
But that’s DIFFERENT, because Rosie.
Immense and irreversible damage has been done to the Australian ecology and environment by introduced species. From all I read, similar damage has been wrought on other countries. Anybody who believes in open borders for plant and animal species merits a hideous death as far as I’m concerned. Nature doesn’t give a toss about your political theories.
Published by whom? non-white countries have plenty of publishers and bookshops of their own. It’s like those people who whine about how ‘white’ Hollywood is, while Bollywood, Nollywood and Asia make many more films. One of the biggest problems I have with SJWs is their insistence on acting as if 90% of the world doesn’t exist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEq9ogzaLfoReplies: @duncsbaby
She’s certainly an improvement over the naked anti-Brexit professor and I don’t even like math.
Is Mr Wong married? Does he have kids? Has anyone told him that Two Wongs can never make a White?
He has no place in England.
The Audubon Society has always recommended that gardeners plant lots of native plants because birds are not infinitely adaptable and like to live in familiar surroundings.
In most of the Middle East, the offspring of foreign men are denied citizenship. It can cause a big headache for the kids when they reach adulthood. I think Western countries used to have something similar but you know women’s liberation happened.
Wong is going with the pro-immigration trend in progressive thought common in the west. No life form belongs to any particular country.
Antonelli is the view that says that biodiversity always belongs to the nation where it originally came from that is pushed by the Association of Like Minded Megadiverse countries from the global south.
https://lmmc.mybis.gov.my/
This trend is making bioprospecting for new pharmaceuticals or crops difficult as so many have to be payed off out of the profits . See
http://www.synbiowatch.org/captain-hook-awards-2016/?lores
for an example of this view.
Perhaps a bit tangential to the discussion here, but long term this could be important.Replies: @Altai
It’s not a contradiction, like everything else, biodiversity for me, invasive species for thee.
White ethnicities need to have their collective identities broken down so outsiders can exploit their societies as they see fit. Of course, non-immigrant non-whites don’t care, it’s only people like Wong who have internalised their sense of being interlopers who need to suppress their natives before they realise how people like Wong think about them and want to treat them who go nuts like this.
Wong feels bad and afraid because he realises whats being done to the natives. He fears a backlash because if the shoe was on the other foot he’d be terrified of what he’d do to somebody like him. Many such cases.
Yup, any right winger who moans about ‘how they’ll work hard, unlike our lot’ is asking for this and likely to be the sort of person who will themselves or whose sons will be working for Mr Wongs in the future.
Like with the Cubans, the first generation may be highly anti-PRC but subsequent generations will assimilate to their assigned class and ethnic roles (Even more intensely than those with native born parents as they seek to distance themselves from their ‘weird’ ‘foreign’ parents even though this will also take the form of romanticising their foreign identity) and become highly ethnocentric interlopers who wish to displace the natives in a form of passive ethnic war. They’ll also likely form a vast potential fifth column for the PRC or future Chinese state.
You can have all the brain power you want, if you have a demoralised low trust country with no sense of a definable future you don’t go far. A company full of mediocre people full of hope and enthusiasm is worth 10 companies full of very smart people who just don’t care or feel all that invested in the future.
Never heard of this fella, really thought it was very clever satire.
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !Replies: @Dacian Julien Soros
So the English were the origins of the famous “do the needful”.
Re. Aborigines in Australia and their botanical discoveries: One of the grossest tendencies in historical research, which I believe started in Australia, is to ask rural people, with a limited vocabulary, and who otherwise can’t remember how to avoid fecal-oral contamination, about their past. There are Australian researchers who were told, and believed, and published stories about the colonization of Australia by the current indigenous people. Apparently, grandpa was told by his grandpa about the latter’s grandpa being kungz and s**t.
I never found the Amazon “suffocating,” although I wouldn’t want to run a marathon there
“Dumb” is largely a social construct. As absurd as wokeness is, and as repulsed as you or I might be at the thought of assenting to the lies of wokeness, these people are acting quite rationally.
When I bought the property on which my current house stands, it was overrun with bamboo, which is an invasive species here (there was even a banana tree!). I had it exterminated at great cost and effort and re-populated the property with native plants (including sixty-some trees). All the neighbors were happy, except one (who apparently considered any extinction of plant life evil). The happiest neighbor was an immigrant from China (“Ah, the property looks great now!”), the crazy vegetarianist lady was white. Even the UPS delivery guy gave me a thumbs up.Replies: @Johann Ricke, @JMcG
Twinkie, I already held you in some esteem; but to now find that you have eradicated bamboo? Truly your powers are otherworldly.
I hate bamboo with the heat of a thousand suns. Well, unless it’s split and made into a fly rod.
Thanks for doing your part to rid North America of that awful stuff.
~ ~ ~Well, he certainly sounds like a fun guy. (Mushroom walks into a bar...)
~ ~ ~
https://nachosconhuevos.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/21-176-post/DSC_3376-2-1024x684(pp_w980_h654).jpgReplies: @J.Ross
Insofar as we give them money, we must stop.
And here I thought Kew was just a widely debunked conspiracy theory.
I suppose the nice thing about having Australian Aboriginals around is we’re able to say “Thank You” to prehistoric hunter/gatherers. If we were to discover some a tribe of proto-Europeans on some remote North Atlantic island and found them mining coal, domesticating animals and pushing wheeled carts I doubt we’d treat them so romantically.
Not coal, but somehow acquiring lots and lots of copper, plus making horses see sense, rather than being hunted out like they and camels were in America by their profligate former Eurasian neighbours. Quite a lot of horses around these days, I believe.
Also improving the travois to make it less bumpy and effortful for the poor little horsies or oxen. By bending a sled or a ski round a wee bit more until it joined up and didn't get stuck in stuff pointy-end first (you know how that feels). Kind of like a snowshoe on its side.
It's not hard, all of it. You just have to have a need to do it.
The best domesticators were that half of Europeans who immediately preceded them, from around the Dardanelles/Aegean. Cows and sheepy-goat things.
Of course the original locals had already figured out dogs. But not ducks.
On the other hand, where would we be today without hardworking immigrant plants such as potatoes, tomatoes and chili peppers?
The best song about invasive species was the Genesis song “Revenge of the Giant Hogweed”.
The song predicted Hogweed behavior not observed until several decades afterwards.
It is the only song I know of that ends with the Latin name for a species of plant.
Now I have the sound of Roger Hawkins — in the pocket, as always — in my head. Thanks.
Kudzu. It’s “who we are.”
葛 kuzu is Japanese for Pueraria spp., but it is homophonous with 屑 kuzu, which is Japanese for "crumbs, scraps, waste, trash, scum" as in 人間のクズ ningen no kuzu "human trash, human scum, the scum of humanity." (The name of the plant is usually spelled as kudzu in English, but this is not an accurate transcription of the historical Japanese spelling of the word for Pueraria spp. The name of the vine was historically spelled as くず kuzu, and it is still spelled this way in kana today. However, the word for "crumbs, scraps, waste, etc." was historically spelled as くづ kudu; this underwent a series of regular sound changes, first coming to be pronounced as kudzu and eventually merging with くず kuzu both in pronunciation and in kana spelling. The word くづ kudu > kudzu > kuzu for "crumbs, etc." is the root of the derived verb pair kudure- > kudzure- > kuzure(-ru) 崩れる "[v.i.] to crumble, to collapse" and kudus- > kudzus- > kuzus(-u) 崩す "[v.t.] to demolish, to destroy, to level, to break (down into component units), to throw into disorder, to write (letters) in cursive style.")
One time I was at Villa Montalvo (in Santa Clara County; please don’t refer to it as “the Montalvo Arts Center“), and I ran into some hippy (this was either in the late 80s or early 90s, so yeah, there were still a handful of hippies left in the Bay Area), on his hands and knees, with a pile of dead plants next to him. It seems he was performing unpaid labor all day long (as he frequently did; I gather it was something of a hobby) in order to extirpate invasive species. This seemed like a worthy endeavor to me at the time, and still does. If that guy is still alive, I wonder if he would regard his own behavior as problematic, or whether some hippies have evolved into Trump voters. I suspect the latter. They are White, after all.
Villa Montalvo was the country estate of ex-San Francisco Mayor and U.S. Senator James. D. Phelan, something of a perennial favorite around here.
It is worth noting that the vast majority of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are the descendants of voluntary migrants from China in the late 19th century . They came for work which the British created -either in tin mining or in rubber plantations . (The local Malays being Muslim preferred a less strenuous life )
Maybe we should also remember that the rubber industry was the result of colonial robbery involving the theft of wild native rubber seeds from Brazil with Kew Gardens playing a major role . ( the Americans had their own rubber quasi colony in Liberia )
So this guy owes his ( presumably agreeable ) life as a ( more or less ) Westerner to the British Empire on at least one and maybe two counts
Equally you can say that Britain was not really discovered until the Romans wrote about it, even though they were obviously people living there who had a fairly sophisticated way of life, for instance tin mining in Cornwall, long before the first Roman wrote about it.Replies: @Colin Wright
‘I suppose you could say that the Taino people who Columbus took back to Europe with him discovered Europe, which they certainly did, but they didn’t map it or write about it.
‘Equally you can say that Britain was not really discovered until the Romans wrote about it, even though they were obviously people living there who had a fairly sophisticated way of life, for instance tin mining in Cornwall, long before the first Roman wrote about it.’
I don’t think much of all this. I ‘discovered’ a good Japanese restaurant the other day; it was new to me. The Europeans discovered America; it was new to them.
The term is relative to the observer. If I see the Grand Canyon for the first time, I’m not denying others saw it before me; I’m just saying it’s the first time I’ve seen it.
Us .. or Them?
Where in LA County do people with money AND class live? Palos Verdes? In the 1950s, maybe San Marino.
La Canada, Sierra Madre, parts of Pasadena, parts of Glendale, Toluca Lake, Agoura Hills, Claremont, Palos Verdes, Westwood, Cheviot Hills, Hancock Park, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Manhattan Beach, Pacific Palisades, etc.
San Marino is still beautiful but it’s mostly Chinese nowadays.
La Canada is at about 1,500 feet elevation up under Mt. Wilson, so it is a few degrees cooler than average, enough to have a lot of original growth oak and sycamore trees, which are rare in Southern California suburbs.
The Hollywood Hills are rich but due to the topography, they aren’t really a neighborhood — you can’t really walk around on winding mountain roads to wave to your neighbors without risking your life of being hit by a car.
Re. Aborigines in Australia and their botanical discoveries: One of the grossest tendencies in historical research, which I believe started in Australia, is to ask rural people, with a limited vocabulary, and who otherwise can't remember how to avoid fecal-oral contamination, about their past. There are Australian researchers who were told, and believed, and published stories about the colonization of Australia by the current indigenous people. Apparently, grandpa was told by his grandpa about the latter's grandpa being kungz and s**t.Replies: @Anonymous
The Wikipedia article about Wolf Creek crater in Australia contains a claim that the local people have a folk memory of the impact 100,000 years ago.
The longer I live, the more 'folk memories' the Aborigines come up with.
Anthropologist Doug Jones says that local Indians have folk traditions of the eruption of Mt. Mazama that formed Crater Lake National Park in Oregon 7,700 years ago. That seems like one of the older plausible oral traditions.
Nice pun.
葛 kuzu is Japanese for Pueraria spp., but it is homophonous with 屑 kuzu, which is Japanese for “crumbs, scraps, waste, trash, scum” as in 人間のクズ ningen no kuzu “human trash, human scum, the scum of humanity.” (The name of the plant is usually spelled as kudzu in English, but this is not an accurate transcription of the historical Japanese spelling of the word for Pueraria spp. The name of the vine was historically spelled as くず kuzu, and it is still spelled this way in kana today. However, the word for “crumbs, scraps, waste, etc.” was historically spelled as くづ kudu; this underwent a series of regular sound changes, first coming to be pronounced as kudzu and eventually merging with くず kuzu both in pronunciation and in kana spelling. The word くづ kudu > kudzu > kuzu for “crumbs, etc.” is the root of the derived verb pair kudure- > kudzure- > kuzure(-ru) 崩れる “[v.i.] to crumble, to collapse” and kudus- > kudzus- > kuzus(-u) 崩す “[v.t.] to demolish, to destroy, to level, to break (down into component units), to throw into disorder, to write (letters) in cursive style.”)
*snort*
The longer I live, the more ‘folk memories’ the Aborigines come up with.
Nor daffodils.
Or even turnips.
'Equally you can say that Britain was not really discovered until the Romans wrote about it, even though they were obviously people living there who had a fairly sophisticated way of life, for instance tin mining in Cornwall, long before the first Roman wrote about it.'
I don't think much of all this. I 'discovered' a good Japanese restaurant the other day; it was new to me. The Europeans discovered America; it was new to them.
The term is relative to the observer. If I see the Grand Canyon for the first time, I'm not denying others saw it before me; I'm just saying it's the first time I've seen it.Replies: @Expletive Deleted
Alrighty then. Who discovered the backside of the Moon?
Us .. or Them?
Those “proto-European” guys started off in the Southern steppe below sort of Moscow and Yekaterinburg.
Not coal, but somehow acquiring lots and lots of copper, plus making horses see sense, rather than being hunted out like they and camels were in America by their profligate former Eurasian neighbours. Quite a lot of horses around these days, I believe.
Also improving the travois to make it less bumpy and effortful for the poor little horsies or oxen. By bending a sled or a ski round a wee bit more until it joined up and didn’t get stuck in stuff pointy-end first (you know how that feels). Kind of like a snowshoe on its side.
It’s not hard, all of it. You just have to have a need to do it.
The best domesticators were that half of Europeans who immediately preceded them, from around the Dardanelles/Aegean. Cows and sheepy-goat things.
Of course the original locals had already figured out dogs. But not ducks.
Beverly Hills doesn’t have hard freezes. You can grow anything there easily. Even sensitive plants can be grown with very extremely rare need for protection in winter. Dumb assessment.
I had to log in to some wifi just to LOL here (was reading a cached page). Nice job!
Every time one of these over-educated whiny Turd Worlders is given a platform to speak, they demonstrate very clearly why it is that “their people” have never produced anything useful or contributed much to the progress of human civilization; it isn’t bad luck or location (no such thing really), but rather must be a lack of intellect; the ability to think critically, and more importantly, independently, and thus creatively. Do none of these people ever have an original thought?
The use of certain herbs and plants aside, primitive people had no real STEM. Some American civilizations fared better at maths, and used that knowledge to make surprisingly accurate astronomical observations, around which they constructed both edifices and their religious myths and rituals.
However, that’s as innovative as it got. Nobody seems to ever have taken any serious or rigorous approach to fundamental sciences beyond the aforementioned astronomy. And I would characterize the efforts of “indigenous peoples” in botany to be limited entirely to function, derived completely from direct experimentation (ie, eat this and see if you die, or if you get better). They could harvest materials from the natural environment and observe some of their properties, but deriving information about these found substances was based on simply tasting/using/applying them.
So their “science” is really nothing more than simple trial and error. And per the latter, they made no effort to actually understand what was going on at a fundamental level. They had no concept of drug action, which is to be expected there wasn’t any understanding of the molecule or atom. I suppose you could call what they did with plant pharmacology a form of “macro-botany” that never extended to horticulture or any form of chemistry. So they were able to use substances found in situ that could be used as medicines or poisons, whichever application being needed at the time.
However, merely recognizing the toxicity or therapeutic value of something, only via trial and error, is no way to make any real progress. Once you’ve licked every tree frog, or dipped your arrows in all the exudae you can find leaking from flowering or resinous plants, there’s simply nowhere to go with that. There’s no “shoulders of giants” to stand on, to build any further knowledge.
You can cut out a bunch of hearts from human sacrifice victims, but even direct knowledge of the heart as an anatomical object confers no useful knowledge in understanding it as an organ, beyond the very rudimentary concept of it as a pump of the blood, whose secrets they never unravelled.
There is no medical specialty for “non-consensual removal of heart” – and that can never lead to any greater knowledge. There’s no medicine, no information, no useful applications for heart removal, no matter how much you hone the process of incising the torso , or of tunneling up through the abdominal cavity. You create zero value through human sacrifices, and one could argue that such actions, unless taken with regards to some kind of very sophisticated “culling” program, to weed out the physically and intellectually defective, for instance, serve no productive purpose whatsoever.
TLDR: uppity non-Westerners bashing Western culture ironically lack the ability to create/mimic what we have made; thus they seek to destroy or diminish it. It is the result of an intense racial enmity that revolves around envy, jealousy and greed.