This is a poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, the most beautiful euphorbia. (Euphorbius was a Greek physician, who promoted the use of resin spurge's sap as a painkiller. He was right to do so.) You will note that the colour of the bracts (bracts are the leaves immediately below the flowers, whi...
The Sunday Times asked me to review Oliver Morton's book Eating the Sun. A fine book that made it easy to review. Better yet, Oliver has a blog for each of his books, where he collects reviews and responds to them. Thoughtfully. That’s a neat idea. As for not writing enough about agriculture, I...
Start: 95.4 Last week: 90.1 This week: 88.6
Wednesday 12 December: Yup, it has been almost two months, and a packed time at that. Barely time to glug my oil. But I'm back on that now, and still bouncing around the 88-89 kg mark. I suppose that by now I should know that it neither goes on nor come...
Al Gore, accepting his Nobel prize:
In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authorit...
