Thanks to Jane, I just made the train to London at Waterbeach and found myself sitting opposite an older couple. They were cattle farmers from Michigan, visiting one of their children posted here. Today was the family outing to London. I was fascinated to learn that rather than the image of vast cattle herds, they keep around 50 cattle. The reason that this is successful, is that they are Simmental cattle, a versatile breed from the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. They are grown on pasture, without hormone or antibiotic treatment, as high grade beef.
It turned out that we had another thing in common, cyst nematodes. I'd worked with plants trying to make them resistant to potato cyst nematodes in the past. The farmer was bedeviled by the related soybean cyst nematodes, which adversely affected his crop of the plant.
Coming into Kings Cross Station, I turned on my microphone to collect record station sounds for an Evelyn Glennie project, as she is this years Resident Artist at Kings Cross. I turned off the microphone as my Piccadilly line tube left the station.
The afternoon was spent at the Quekett Committee meeting in the Angela Marmont Centre of the Natural History Museum. A welcome tea and carrot cake afterwards gave the necessary break before the evening's talk by Dr Geoffrey Belknap from Leicester. It was on using Citizen science in the 21st Century to recover and preserve information from the citizen science journals and periodicals from the 19th Century. This included the Quekett Journal. I learnt of two useful resources - www.biodiversitylibrary.org and www.talk.sciencegossip.org.
Also made aware of another Victorian woman scientist and children's book author, Mrs Margaret Gatty, from researcher Jenny Bryant. Margaret Gatty had an interest in marine biology, writing an accessible book on seaweeds and corresponded with other experts in the field.
Returning by tube to Kings Cross in the evening, I turned on the microphone and let it run, poking out of my cloth briefcase. In the station, I bumped into the Michigan couple again and chatted a bit before going off to order a light pizza and tea. I switched off my microphone as the train left the station.
White House Speaker Sean Spicer, came out with a whopper today, with the statement that not even Hitler used poison gas against his own people. Ouch! Holocaust denier? The press, Jewish groups and no less than Barbara Streisand responded vociferously. Sean apologised publicly, admitting his error at a false comparison.
Secretary of State Tillerson received backing from the G7 meeting for last week's US strike on Syria, in response to the gas attack on civilians. However, resistance from Germany, France and Italy meant that he did not set off for Russia with the threat of added sanctions against Russia. This caused proposer Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson a bad hair day in the media - literally. Whilst the West is trying to shame President Putin over his embarrassing links to illegal poison-gas-using President Assad, President Putin is preparing an alternative scenario, that of rebel forces using poison gas and making Assad the fall guy.
With such public differences, neither the West or Russia are going to publicly change views. President Trump is still bullish about having done the right thing in acting against Syria and dissing Obama. How long will it be before POTUS finds himself mired in the same way in the mess that is the Syrian conflict, with Assad winning with Russian help. Do the UK and/or the US actually have a plan?
Regarding Brexit, apparently the EU parliament is trying to decide what to do with the UK delegate places once the UK has left; redistribute amongst other countries or scrap and reduce delegate numbers.
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