June 29, 2008

Links

1.  More on martian soil from Nature.  They say it's a pH between 8-9 which may actually be a bit high for asparagus.  I think olives and pomegranates can handle that kind of pH and probably most of your brassicas.  A high dollar boutique crop like "Martian Olives" or "Out of This World Pomegranate Juice" would probably be the way to go.

2.  Homemade twinkies.  (This is a good blog for those who are baking inclined - more towards the cake/cookie end of the spectrum)

3.  List of countries by total length of piplelines.  Further "underground" evidence that our infrastructure is completely sunk in petroleum.  

4.  Food books are flying onto the shelves these days and most are re-treading the same old ground but this one looks interesting.

5.  Who is the "trailing spouse" in your marriage?


7.  Addendums/Corrections:  That 6th foot was a hoax; and I'm still confused as to what that "pregnancy pact" was.

2 comments:

scott cunningham said...

Regarding #1. Is this all just a joke? The soil's fertility is very intriguing, but no one can actually grow anything on Mars can they because the atmosphere ain't right, right? (I'm an idiot, so humor me).

J said...

yeah, earth style agriculture would be out because of the atmosphere, or lack thereof, not to mention the dramatic fluctuations in temperatures-which are always pretty cool if I remember correctly, and the, as far as we know, lack of liquid water. i guess the interesting, mildly practical, thing with this recent discovery, at least in terms of colonizing another planet, is that it appears that the soil itself could support plant growth. you would still have to construct some kind of bio-dome to create an artificial atmosphere which I guess gives you some scalability limitations but probably not as bad as growing food by hydroponics, which I think is what they have traditionally talked about in terms of growing food for space travel/colonization. but what do i know? how crazy is it that this is even being talked about and could conceivably be attempted within our lifetime?

have you ever seen Silent Running? it's one of those old sci-fis I've never seen but know about somehow, and i thought about it with the dual news of WALL-E and the martian soil.

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