sobriquet

I performed my first ever Lophophora 2 Pereskiopsis graft. The loph seedlings weren't really growing at all after 4 months and I decided I'd experiment with them. In one of the grafts I used one of Eileen's larger spines to fix the graft! We'll see how it goes. I'm considering it as practice or a trial run for the competition coming up on EBA. Peace.

The relatively poor success some people have with Peganum harmala or Syrian rue is almost certainly due to incorrect pH of the soil. In a book I've been reading it says the following: Syrian rue grows easily from seed sown in Spring, taking about two weeks to germinate. The plant self sows freely. Soil should be fairly rich, sandy, and well drained. Full sun is required. The plants die back to the crowns every winter, and should be mulched where temperatures dip below 10 F. An alkaline pH between 7.3 and 8 is preferable. Now that alkaline pH is probably what brings people undone because few plants thrive in alkaline conditions. And since many general mixes are by default acid (containing peat) then it's not surprising that this plant fails. So if you are cultivating this plant then the addition of a few handfuls of garden lime to your potting mix may increase your chances. I've had many seeds germinate only to mysteriously die soon after. I'm planning to plant some with an alkaline soil and see how it goes. Maybe others can try the same and report back? Peace.

Just wondering if there are any other knife nuts out there? Most of my knives are collector pieces and I try to get hard to find and rare discontinued items. Often these are the knives that no one really considers all that special when they are available but they suddenly take on a value beyond what they were worth when they are no longer made. One such knife that's on the way out currently is the Spyderco Karambit. The karambit design is one that originates from the Indonesian archipelago. Its two constant distinguishing features are the ring it has at the end of its handle and the sharply recurved blade which leads to a special cutting profile. They can be held in a variety of grips but the most devastating is the reverse grip where the forefinger goes through the ring and the curved blade faces forwards with the fist closed. In that position its blade is so bitingly sharp that it simply has to be laid upon an attacker's flesh to cut as they work to get away from it. It's been adopted into many 'silat" Indonesian martial arts and I recall seeing a devastating defensive maneuver where the attacker is left with a cut from their anus through to their scrotum as they are flipped over. The thing that makes it even more awesome is that it is next to impossible to disarm a person with one of these since the finger is through the ring; whereas other knives are much easier to lose in a struggle or be disarmed of. This is a drawer queen for me. It's so scarily sharp it goes through a polyethylene bottle and slices it with little friction. I've got many larger knives and many won't even raise a blink from most people, but this one uniformly gets a WTF when drawn out in more public situations. Interestingly though this knife was not originally a defensive weapon at all. Rather it was designed as an agricultural knife that farmers and men of the field would use! You can see how it might be useful to score seeds or pods; and cut plant tissue. Cheers and post up pics or your own knife stories.

Hi all, I've planted ten or so Leonotis leonurus, Lion's ears, wild dagga and about 6 of them came up in a pot. I put a humidity dome over two of the central ones and they are at least twice as big as the surrounding plants. I've read quite a bit on this plant and the use of it in an ethnobotanical sense. It seems to be true that the flowers are more potent than the foliage in terms of effect where people get the effect. What I have intuited and suggest is that it is the BRACTS of the flowers that have the most concentration of the active compounds. The bracts are the green parts at the base of the flower that contain the orange petals. People familiar with cannabis will know that it is the flower bracts which have the most amount of active compound. I propose that the same is true of this plant. I think that if one has this plant and wants to test the theory, then they might collect the flower heads when they are mature enough but just before they've opened or if they have opened then discard the orange petals and retain the bract at the base to dry and prepare as smoking material. It would be good to get reports about this. As we know from other plants like Papaver sp. the active components while they can be found spread throughout the plant are concentrated in particular parts and at particular times (pods after 10-14 days following petal drop typically in this case). So I believe that the bracts are where the action is in Leonotis leonurus. Peace.

Hi all and forum admin/moderators, I want to suggest that http: type url links in posts be 'deadened' or 'inactive' so that they can't be directly clicked. The reason is that such clicks send a referrer link to the website visited. If the site in question happens to be government sites or other sites that may be aroused by knowing their information is being quoted or used here it may lead to unwanted actions. It is quite straightforward to simply add a blank or pseudo tag to the http: line to achieve this. For example: ht[dead link]tp://www.google.com If anyone wishes to visit the page they will have to copy and paste the text to a new window which doesn't send a referrer entry to the site visited. Hope it helps.

Hello all, This is a plant I've wanted for some time though I haven't been pro-active in trying to find it until now. I know its legal status and that aspect doesn't need discussion. I'm just interested in firstly getting seeds (which I'm aware are short lived) or rooted cuttings. I've tried the international avenue that has been discussed here before and they appear to be inactive and have not responded to emails. While I'm happy with the idea of capitalism & commerce, this is just an interest of mine and I don't want to pay excessively for these from someone local. I know if I had some specimens then I'd be happy to share these. The only way forward is for this plant to become more available locally and even escape to the wild through deliberate plantings and natural bird movement type spread. So any help in obtaining these would be greatly appreciated. Please PM or email me any details. Cheers.

Hi all, I was wondering whether anyone had watched this DVD called "Mushroom growing made easy". http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/532286/3271092/ It's a 3.23 GB file but it may be a worthwhile download. Can anyone give their opinions on it? Is it good or is it whack? EDIT: Here's a link to online video http://opposingdigits.com/vlog/?p=468 Looks OK.

The famous 'gold digger' Anna Nicole Smith is dead in a hotel room. A tragic life.

EDIT: Most LAWN seeds have large percentages of RYEGRASS it appears. Fortunately the cheaper 'budget' varieties have even more! So if you require some ryegrass seeds as substrate then that's the way to go. Regards.

I was thinking about the whole issue of people craving the old vibe of the forum and having to put up with newbies and banter that in my opinion is all happening in the off topic areas and not polluting the informational subforums anyhow. Nevertheless maybe the existence of the different vibe (which I put down to the stagnation and failure of EBA and thus the increased recruitment here) can be stemmed by creating a subforum here which is for the inner sanctum. Those people who are the solid backbone of this community, who have either through time on the forum, posts on the forum, or value in some other sense sets them apart from the crowd. The 'old timers' and keepers of the culture of the place might have a section only for them to hang out. This might even create an incentive for newbies to gain access through good behaviour and respect of the culture established. New people could be brought into the inner section by invitation and secondment from existing members of it. I think it may achieve the 'old vibe' and also create incentives for newer members. What say everyone else?

Perhaps I don't have to answer this except to show the old timers examples of the old times. At least this old thread hasn't been sanitised (yet), allowing us to glimpse the rules in (in)action and the possibility of hypocrisy being considered by those who take offense at my non-offensive and polite replies to members. Let's get in the time machine together and look at: http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...anica&st=25 Here are some quotes from Torsten from that thread... Yes it was quite a while ago, but the forums had been up for at least two years when that ugly episode appears to have transpired. It was actually sad reading it and I understand the chaos and trauma it must have generated. Surely people can see that all the hullaballoo about recent posts is minor compared to that stuff in 2002? Surely there's room for differences of opinions and style? Surely people aren't so narrow minded that they can support banning people unjustly?

You're actually not damaging me at all with these baits. Rather you're showing up the moderator's blindness (perhaps selectiveness) to your antics of deliberately trying to bait me. You're screwing yourself and making the moderator look bad.

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David 1787. Despite claiming death-defying loyalty to his city, Socrates' pursuit of virtue and his strict adherence to truth clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society.... But perhaps the most historically accurate of Socrates' offenses to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of immorality within his region, Socrates worked to undermine the collective notion of "might makes right" so common to Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the gadfly of the state, insofar as he aggravated the establishment with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenian's allegiance to justice may have been the source of his execution.

They're not actually 'nicotine receptors' but rather acetylcholine receptors and they are in fact present in all neuromuscular junctions. There are two types of acetyl-choline receptors however and one is called the 'nicotinic' type that responds to nicotine in addition to acetylcholine. The other type is the 'muscarinic type' interestingly which responds to 'muscarine' which was amazingly isolated first from the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinic_ace...holine_receptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscarinic_ac...holine_receptor

Cheer up apoth, it was actually a joke You'll find it amongst Irish comedian Dave Allen's repertoires. (One of his trademarks was making jokes about the Catholic church).

Reminds me of a world war II story an Italian veteran once told me where a convent in Rome was repeatedly marauded by the advancing German troops where they raped all the nuns except for Sister Maria. He said that this occurred on at least on 12 occasions and I obviously asked why the German troops never raped Sister Maria in all those raids. He replied that "Sister Maria didn't like that sort of stuff".

Au contraire, this was only an appendix, you seem to have missed the main exercise which you can do as homework But I don't know who's more naive... those who think the forum doesn't warrant an 'inner sanctum', or those who can't see that one already exists.

The cure for all sorts of ills including cigarette smoking has been around for ages. A frontal lobotomy. Who in their right mind would trust white coated goons with vaccines and procedures. There's a Romanian saying that goes along the lines of... "if a bald person had a cure for baldness, then he'd put it on his own head (as opposed to trying to sell it to others)"

I think we can safely conclude that the concept of creating an "ivory tower" seems to be detested by all, as does it seems the concept of segregation. Creating classes amongst members is rightly deemed uncool. But how intellectually honest are the people saying these things? Namely, the ready embracing of the concept of the class of moderated members... where are the anti-segregation mob now? No to ivory tower, yes to dungeon.

EBA is now back. Let's make it work everyone.

Also brain tumours.

Here's a picture of the first agar plate innoculated. This one was streaked with the needle that was used to scrape off the spores from the print. The needle had some residual spores visible and these were streaked rather than discarded. Waste not, want not. The first signs of life

WARNING: The post below may be a rumour and contains non-validated information so take it for what it's worth. I heard that recently a package arrived from overseas containing a spore print of P. tampanensis to someone I know of. They say they prepared some rye grass containers (without gypsum that they didn't find out about till it was too late) by soaking rye grass for 12 hours with a touch of washing detergent to act as a surfactant and increase wettability of the seed. It was pressure cooked for 90 minutes. At the same time some liquid culture Karo medium was prepared and sterilised. In addition to these some potato dextrose agar was cooked up and sterilised. This was a go for broke attempt apparently. No risks were taken with sterility and everything was done with new materials guaranteed to be sterile. A glove box was used with plenty of antiseptic sprays beforehand. The idea is to use the liquid culture to innoculate more containers in several weeks. She says she will attempt to case and fruit most of the containers attempting to get spore prints as a priority on this first grow. She innoculated 5 jars and three agar plates + liquid culture (125 mL distilled water with 5 mL of Karo) with a 10 mL spore syringe. She only used 5 mL of solution keeping the remainder in case the rye grass seed turns out to be fungicide treated and another batch of substrate needs to be made. She thinks she will use WBS (Coles budgie mix) if the grass seeds are unsuccessful. The uncertainties are: 1. ?? Fungicide on rye grass seeds (Yates brand lawn mix) 2. PD agar being sufficient in nutrients for P. tampanensis 3. Liquid culture taking. 4. Amount of spore material in 5 mL being sufficient to have successfully innoculated the substrates. The print had 3 small 1 - 1.5 cm prints of moderate purplish look and one full 1 cm print was used leaving two on the print for culturing later if needed. If this attempt turns out completely botched then she will probably sell the remaining print with the 2 larger prints still on it. What says everyone about this? Any ideas to share with her?

Let me say again that I'm only reporting my experiences and I don't pretend to know the untold history about it. However I must say that having learned of some of the history I understand better why people are angered and thank you for explaining it a bit further. Ultimately I think that the frustration I felt as a stranger not being able to register must have been magnified even more in the members who knew of the problems and were powerless to act so I understand the frustration against what I have posted but it is only my experience I've recounted. I'm stating what I did as an independent third party to the events which were obviously occuring at the terminal stages of the forum.

Very disturbing, I could hardly explain this image to a friend without my voice wavering at points and a feeling of knotting coming to my throat and tears to my eyes. I don't buy the 10th or 100th story as if that were true there would be many more photos or images like this one. This child has been unfortunate enough to have its carers die before them, and it's much more common for the children and babies to die before the adults as they are more susceptible to disease and mostly dehydration through disease. Regardless the child is in a miserable condition and almost sure to die. Don't ask me why but this scene reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia, where the fellow had dropped off the camel and the fact is realised only after a long while has passed. The more experienced people of the desert tell Lawrence that it is a lost cause to go back for him, that death is assured for that person and anyone who goes after him. They say that 'it is written' that the man will die. Lawrence defies the advice and goes back for the man and brings him back close to a death by thirst himself. Later in the movie the man he saved is involved in an incident where he has shot dead a man from a rival clan. Lawrence not knowing who the culprit is, says that he will will personally execute the culprit so that the death is avenged in a way which does not leave any further room for a blood feud. He is shocked to see that it is the man he saved earlier while risking his own life. He draws the gun and shoots the man he saved, dead. The people say 'It was written then', confirming their earlier held belief that this man was doomed and had he been left to die might not have resulted in the death of another etc. I've seen many instances in which it was futile to do CPR on a person presenting clinically dead to a hospital but everyone goes through the motions for 15-30 mins. Why? Are they treating the dead person or themselves? Humans are strange in that way, but I agree that something, anything could have been done to help. Many things we do are ultimately futile. But does that mean we stop doing it? On an intellectual level it might be yes, but we lack the certainty that our actions might not in fact help. I think an event like this is sure to live in the mind of anyone who experiences it. Even if the man had personally carried the child the kilometer and the child had died in his arms on the way it would be a tremendous mental burden to take. I think one must remember that it was probably not just this isolated event alone that affected the photographer but the hundreds and thousands of images of misery and suffering that played on his mind.