Seen and Noted

One of my pet peeves about the modern world is the way it seems that EVERYTHING has to be dumbed down. From the King James Bible all the way to children’s literature and all the stuff in between, we’ve been busily bringing it all down to the lowest common denominator. So I guess it’s not a surprise — just a huge disappointment — that now, botanical Latin seems to be under attack.

A recent article in the New York Times says that the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (as of Jan. 1) no longer requires botanists to give Latin descriptions of new species. Now, to be fair, it’s possible that there are as many as 100,000 undiscovered plant species. There’s also a fair likelihood that the combination of climate change and the rise of invasive species may put as much as a third of these species at risk of extinction. Tempis fugit and all that.

However, given that botanical Latin has been in common use since the 18th century, I do have to ask why, suddenly, does the practice need to be discontinued? Presumably (and certainly traditionally), botanists are also scholars. Surely, they have some command of Latin. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Latin names often give clues as to the color, texture and growing habit of a plant. For those reasons and a few others, this nod to convenience (or dumbing down, as I see it) is just another marker on the downhill slide of ignorance. How sad that it’s always celebrated as an advance.

Every once in a while you hear about a pairing that, on the face of it, is so unlikely or so bizarre as to be completely unbelievable. However, the impossible appeared last week — and almost as quickly disappeared. According to the GardenRant blog, the National Wildlife Federation announced that they were partnering with Scotts, the TurfBuilder people. That statement alone was enough to make a gardener’s head spin. But that wasn’t all that was rotten in Denmark.

Scotts is owned by the Monsanto Corporation. Now for those who aren’t aware, Monsanto is the company responsible for not only Round Up weed killer, but also Round Up Ready crops. That might ring a bell, because one of their Round Up Ready crops caused an innocent Canadian farmer to lose everything he owned. Some of their GMO (genetically modified organism) crop, through wind pollination, wound up in his fields and Monsanto sued him for patent infringement. Yes, actually! And those crops end up being what the environmentally aware like to refer to as Frankenfood.

Long story short, the idea of one of the nation’s leading environmental protection groups joining forces with a company like Monsanto leaves one gaping in astonishment.

Fortunately, the garden blogosphere lit up like a Roman candle when the news came out, and shortly thereafter, the NWF announced that it had thought better of the whole thing and backed out of the deal. Kudos for the decision, but I’d still think twice before donating to NWF again ...

Surfing the Web earlier this afternoon, a headline on the Huffington Post sidebar caught my eye – and raised my blood pressure several notches. It read, “Rick Santorum on Abortion in Rape Cases – “Make the Best of a Bad Situation”. Wait -— what???

In the interest of full disclosure, I consider Santorum to be, at best, an ignorant twit. The idea that anyone could take him seriously as a presidential candidate is alternately amusing and terrifying. And my blood pressure always skyrockets when men presume to make pronouncements against abortion. After all, since they can’t get pregnant and hence will never have to deal directly with the problem, I don’t see how they’re qualified to address the subject. However, when I read this article, I about popped a vein.

The long and the short of it is that Santorum seems to feel that, even if you’ve been raped, you should just carry that reminder around for nine months, deliver it and then attach yourself to it for the next couple decades so that you’ll continue to be reminded of that horrible, terrifying ordeal! After all, whatever you’ve endured and whatever ramifications it may have for your physical and mental health is nothing compared to the rights and sanctity of the unborn child. While I could go on at length about the absurdity (not to mention the grotesque unfairness) of this view, it would just distress me to no good purpose, so I’ll just reiterate: “Wait -— what???”

I regularly follow the great gardening blog “GardenRant”, which is always full of curious, useful and interesting information.  Things that you wouldn’t know about otherwise.  Checking up on it today, I see that author Amy Stewart (one of the founders of the blog) posted about UCLA selling off its Japanese garden.  Yes, actually.

Apparently the university is in need of funds, so it got permission to divest itself of a Japanese garden that was donated to it in 1965. Upkeep costs in the neighborhood of $150K annually, and only gets a couple thousand visitors in a year. Now, everyone understands all too well that everything gets costlier by the day in this country. But selling it off?  Really?  I find it hard to believe that there isn’t a horticulture program somewhere in the general vicinity. Even if UCLA doesn’t have one of their own, surely one of the affiliates like UC Davis would have one.  I see on the Web that UCLA does have an extension program for horticulture.  The students could assume the upkeep as a practicum if nothing else. What – no Master Gardeners that could take the project on?  What about a local bonsai society? Admittedly, I don’t have any knowledge about what’s gone on behind the scenes, but it just seems like an exceedingly odd way to raise funds.  And how is it that a school like UCLA is so hard up for funds?  I imagine a year there costs a pretty penny.

At any rate, the garden apparently will be listed with Coldwell Banker out there, and will be available to anyone with a few million bucks to throw around.  Well, there’s a new accessory for the insanely wealthy – your own, ready-made Japanese garden. Second homes, yachts and island retreats will soon become passe’.

So we’ve had the day of the Internet protest. Sites such as Wikipedia and others went blank in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). What does it all really mean?

The official line is true up to a point. No one will argue that there is a lot of piracy of intellectual property; movies, music, etc. You see it constantly, and there’s no question that something needs to be done about it.  However, these bills are so poorly conceived and poorly written that it’s obvious they aren’t the vehicles to accomplish the task. Most people are telling Congress to go back and get it right, and then we’ll talk.

It’s the unofficial line that gives many of us pause. My own opinion is that the real agenda here is censorship, which will in turn control information. Most of the backers of the legislation as it currently exists are corporations, many of whom own the major media outlets (papers, network news, etc.).  In case it’s escaped anyone’s notice, in recent years news has started degenerating into fluff. Hard news and information has given way to infotainment – and there’s more tainment than info, for my money. This is no accident; the powers-that-be in America have no desire for an informed populace. It’s about the last thing that they want, because if we all really knew how dirty their hands are, we’d rise up in righteous wrath. As long as they can control what gets out to us, they can continue to pursue their evil aims pretty much unchecked. They were seriously honked off when Wikipedia aired all that dirty laundry, and they’re eager (dare I say, desperate) to keep that from ever happening again. No, I for one fervently believe that this is about censorship and restricting information – and I for one am agin’ it!

Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement started last fall, there’s been much sniping and dismissiveness from the 1 percent about it.

“No cohesive message.” “Won’t last.” “Just a bunch of hippie wannabes and malcontents who need to get off their duffs and get a job.”

Well, guess what – the 1 percent-ers are more uneasy than they’ve let on!

A recent issue of The Nation magazine reported that one of their editors came into possession of a proposal written by a couple of partners in a prominent Washington lobbying firm to the American Bankers Association. The gist of it was an outline of an $850,000 smear campaign against OWS (that would presumably make them go away). The lobbyists, according to The Nation, have close ties to House Speaker John Boehner (shocking!) – and the language quoted was telling, to say the least. It warned that OWS “has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bulls-eye”. Now that’s enough to get just about anyone’s attention, but try this on for size. It goes on to say that, “the bigger concern…should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street Companies.” (The italics are mine, but I think the emphasis is more than warranted.)

So, I guess that shows pretty clearly that a) the Republican party (and many Democrats, to be sure) don’t give much of a rip about us 99 percent-ers and b) that all their protestations about the ineffectiveness and lack of purpose of OWS is a demonstrable crock.  They’re very nervous indeed – and good enough for them, too. I can’t wait to see where this one goes…..