Sylvia/48
Kudzu seeds have never been worth much as food. But Kudzu has huge underground tubers, full of an excellent, very nutritious starch. The tubers can reach 7 feet long and weigh over 400 pounds. The starch is used for food, and also for healing of digestive and other problems.

Getting the starch out of the tubers is quite a production, but there are businesses in Japan that make money doing that.

Kudzu leaves and shoots are eaten as vegetables in Japan. They are also used as a commercial source of chlorophyl. The leaves make outstanding fodder and hay for farm animals.

The stems are accessible after cold weather kills the leaves. They have an excellent long fiber for making cloth, like linen or sisal. The stems can also be used as bio-mass to make biofuels.

Kudzu is unmatched for rebuilding badly-eroded soils. It also adds much nitrogen to the soil, and prepares depleted soils to grow crops again.

Learning to take advantage of Kudzu commercially might be a better option all-around than loosing a new fungus on the world to erradicate it.

(See “The Book of Kudzu” Shurtleff and Aoyagi.)

If the rust mutates to attack rice, barley, etc, the rupture event becomes several orders of magnitude more serious.

“So why don’t we prepare for them? A reviewer of Posner’s book put the problem succinctly. Human beings don’t prepare for what they can’t clearly anticipate.”

Tradition used to be that preparation, as imperfect as it was. It was the sum-total of centuries of experience baked down to cultural traditions, always conservative, that got us through thick and thin. We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves in recent decades to the point where ivory tower thought is now seen as the mode to follow. How short-sighted we’ve become!

The boy scouts say “be prepared”. That there are limits to how much preparation is practical or possible is not any excuse for not doing what you can.

1 Thessalonains 5:1-4

1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

@ #43. buddy larsen:

Surviving The Ruptures
Will you be left behind?

I thought the same thing when i saw the title. not sure if the double entendre was part of wrechard’s intent or if you and I are just afflicted with a similar quirk. Im surprised no one mentioned it be fore comment 43

@ #64. Charles:
funny you should bring up Moby Dick as im reading it for the first time at the moment.

I’m trying to shake that public shcool meme that I was infected with. You all know the one … “important books are hard to read and you don’t need to read them.” What hogwash!

Right now Ishmael is taking Queequeg to see the Pequod for the first time. I must say its not nearly as difficult a read as I had steeled myself for… so far im actually enjoying it, but dont tell the teacher… he will undoubtedly say I’m doing it wrong.

PS. Wrechard I’m loving the 10 minute timer.

Telling kids that they are smart is bad for them; Scientific American: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
“In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.”

I speculate that this effect is endemic among the “elite”, along with narcissism, which it may feed.

“… On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.“

Just a speech or two, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Brown, saying “we will freeze next winter if need be, we don’t care, we will make blankets” because “the people of Georgia and Ukraine are human beings and thus have certain God-given HUMAN RIGHTS” would do.

But (*crickets*)

Charles/64; “…the modern sale of indulgences — exposes everyone to an immense amount of witchcraft”

wow. that’s tellin’ it, man.

(BTW, Georgia is home of the earlist western Christian iconography north of the holy land)