The #WeeklyRewind 20/03 - 26/03: #MovieMania #FilmFan #Deals #Coupons #Shopping #Gardening #PetParenting

Over the last week I saw the movies Hidden Figures, Doctor Strange and Fences, and pilots for the TV series Taken, Murder Chose Me, and 24: Legacy. The only thing I liked was Hidden Figures, but as it's a movie about women who broke barriers in STEM fields this is hardly surprising. Fences wasn't badly acted or poorly done, but I simply didn't relate to it. It was flat. And it still seem like a staged play vs a movie and that wasn't my expectation, I guess. Everything else was lackluster and even bad.

I scored some fun shopping deals including a bottle of Colgate Mouthwash and a canister of Maxwell House Coffee (only $0.12 OOP for both), two bags of Brownie Brittle (by stacking a sale, coupons and rebates I actually made money on this deal), a jar of Tostitos Salsa (Kroger Free Friday Download) and a digital copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (movie app test freebie).

I took a couple surveys to replenish my "free" money stash, played SYWR sweepstakes to build up my rewards points balance and scheduled the pickup of the Veggetti Pro Spiral Vegetable Cutter that I ordered with my last round of SYWR points.

I also "pruned" my avocado sapling and nursed pup, who has a cold.

What a week! On to the new one.

#PiDay 3.14: Feed the World. Let Them Eat #Maths.

It is said that Mathematics is the language of Science. (The same could be said for Music or Engineering.) All fields which require an understanding of numbers. Weights, measures, meters... and pie. Sorry, that's Pi, or more accurately, π.

One of my favorite relational numbers, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. A constant. That π. Circles are lovely creatures, are they not? So round, so ourobouros, eating itself. No end. No beginning. Just complete. (Let the circle be unbroken...)

So on this day, 3.14, we celebrate the beauty of this perfect ratio by ...eating pizza. No? Odd, isn't it how everything leads us humans to food. I guess there is truth to the old adage that "you are what you eat" ...and I eats Maths ...for breakfast.

Eat Pi. That's amore!

#GWCRD: George Washington Carver Recognition Day! #Peanuts #SweetPotatoes #STEM #ChildhoodHero

As an asocial geeky little girl, I gravitated toward the life stories of those who used their intelligence and ingenuity to overcome adversity and contribute to society. (I've mentioned my esteem for Ben Franklin in this vein before, but) This day belongs to a man who held particular significance in my juvenile mind. Today is George Washington Carver Recognition Day. Salute!

Born into slavery in the Deep South (Missouri), Carver became an inventor who made lasting contributions to the field botany, in part by promoting alternative crops to cotton that would allow poor farmers to not only provide food for their tables, but also provide products that could improve their quality of life. (Because he spent a good deal of his life at Tuskegee University in Alabama, which is only a hop, skip and a jump away from my native Georgia, I read a children's version of his biography at quite a young age. His extensive use of crops like peanuts --- a mainstay in Georgia's agriculture --- and sweet potatoes, which were very familiar to me as a poor rural Southerner only heightened my interest.) He also took a lead in advocating environmentalism. George Washington Carver was a man ahead of his time. Thank goodness.

#Farming #ThreatWatch: Black-Eyed #Peas vs Cowpea Curculio #AgTech #Entomology

While browsing yesterday's AJC, I came across a "Sunday Conversation" feature with an UGA entomologist, Dr. Stormy Sparks (which is quite a moniker, but he should have perhaps been a meteorologist) discussing a pest which threatens black-eyed peas, a weevil called the cowpea curculio. No doubt the article was included partly as a human interest story, because many folks, particularly Southerners, believe eating black-eyed peas --- my favorite recipe is (a vegetarian) Hoppin' John --- on New Year's Day will bring good luck, a tradition with its roots in the time of slavery (that peculiar institution). I love peas generally, but personally I'd have to say that the black-eyed pea is at the bottom of the list --- although I appreciate them more now than as I child. Regardless, of my personal distaste for black-eyed peas, I have no desire to see a virulent pest threaten the plants' vitality.

South Georgia used to be a big producer of black-eyed peas (circa 1950s) but in recent decades production has decreased due to a combination of factors, which include a pest that has developed resistance to various pesticides. Entomologists are working to understand the weevil's odd effects on the black-eyed pea plants' ecosystem, in hopes of finding other ways to counteract it. This might take the form of a better (man-made) chemical pesticide or an organic agent.

I am greatly interested in entomology for three main reasons: 1) bugs often look cool (this is my childhood fascination), 2) insect borne disease transmission is an ever growing threat to human (and domesticated animal) survival, and 3) insect crop devastation is another major threat to human survival. I hope to use my fascination with bugs (1) to discover methods to help combat 2 and 3. This is the main reason why I have tried to absorb everything I could with regard to entomology. When one intends to live off the land (farming, hunting, fishing, etc.) and one lives far from the madding crowd (acreage in or near wilderness) the likelihood of detrimental pest encounters goes up exponentially. One must be prepared.

Being an amateur ecologist as well, I understand that chemical pesticides can bring their own harmful side effects, and so it's my hope to discover and/or develop natural, organic methods to counteract bug issues. (For instance, I have recently been experimenting with food grade diatomaceous earth.) In the history of agriculture, our reliance on chemical pesticides is a modern contrivance. I hope to employ "ancient" methods augmented with modern science and technology plus a bit of ingenuity to defeat any encroaching pests, be they ticks, weevils or what have you. I will look to farming cultures of old and update and adjust.

To GMO or Non-GMO

What's that you're eating? What's in your food?

As a STEM+M (that's Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Music) girl, I am not blanket anti-GMO. I get the science and understand the potential benefits. On the other hand, I'm also not rah-rah pro-GMO.

GMOs may not be harmful if swallowed, but I believe I have a right to know, if I am eating them. I advocate choice & transparency, particularly where my food is concerned. Labels should tell you the actual ingredients in your food and disclose things like GMOs, Fat, Cholesterol, etc., so that consumers can make informed choices.

I believe in truth in advertising and product quantifiers. So if something says "vegetarian" on the label (or menu), then it should darn well be vegetarian. Do I eat GMOs? Yes, certainly, but it is my choice to do so.

If a company expects me to purchase its product/s, then that company shouldn't have any qualms disclosing exactly what said product is.

And that's my two cents on the issue. Way to go, Vermont!

NOTE: I tend to use STEM+M (my own creation), in place of the well-known acronym STEM, due to the fact that Music, like Science and Engineering, uses Mathematics as its language. Therefore, I submit that Music is a closely related discipline (activating similar regions of the brain), and so should get its due or honor of place. There's a simple reason that a good many engineers & scientists are also musicians and music aficionados. Birds of a feather....