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POPSBizarre Botany As a biology student in college I've always found plants fascinating. In most cases, size is not an advantage. At least in the aroma department. On the plus side, it does serve the plant well!
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POPSTomato: Fruit or Vegetable In fact, in 1893 the Supreme Court of the United Stated curiously decreed the tomato a vegetable, although recognizing that botanically speaking it is a fruit. This unusual declaration was based on the existence of an 1883 tariff that charged ten percent on imported vegetables, including tomatoes. A frustrated tomato importer decided to challenge the tariff, arguing that tomatoes were actually a fruit and thus should be excluded from the vegetable tariff. The Supreme Court agreed that tomatoes were botanically a fruit, but argued that they were commonly grown in kitchen gardens with vegetables and treated as vegetables in markets and American households. In other words, the United States Government wanted its tariff money—the heck with botany!
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POPSCarolus Linnaeus: obsessed with order and sex, classified the natural world 
From author's blog: "He talked about "concubines" and "hermaphrodites" and in one passage, described a flower's calyx as a curtained bridal bed "perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials. ... When the bed is so prepared it is time for the bridegroom to embrace his beloved bride and offer her his gifts." Even racier was his description of flowers with multiple stamens as having "twenty males or more in the same bed as the female." "This brought a charge of "loathsome harlotry," from Johan Siegesbeck, who ran the botanical garden in St. Petersburg and charged that "several males to one female would not be permitted in the vegetable kingdom by the Creator. Who would have thought that bluebells, lilies, and onions could be up to such immorality?" "Siegesbeck had Linnaeus' work banned in Russia as a dirty book. Linnaeus took his revenge. He named a foul-smelling and otherwise undistinguished weed Siegesbeckia after his critic
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POPSThe Myth About Boys Boys, men, emasculation, dropouts, girls achieving, women's liberation. Since the late 70's the nature of boy's socialization has chnged. Can we recover? Reading of "The Dangerous Book For Boys" might be a start, eh?
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POPSthe god in the button Clinical experiements had been done with DMT (so-called 'God molecule') in which all participants (if I remember it correctly) had the same kind of vision, as if DMT opened a door to an alternate universe. Amazing waste of time and money, the drug war....oh, wait, I forgot: Prohibition did work back in the old days.
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POPSSpace Garden On Next Shuttle Is this the first time anyone has tried this?? This should have been one of the first experiments on Soyuz, Skylab, and certainly on the ISS.
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POPSAllergy Botany Researchers "Airborne allergies affect millions of Americans. It's a fact. And the cause of all this suffering can be linked to the plants and trees around us. Researchers and sufferers are actively seeking information and relief. Tens of thousands of people depend on Pollen.com every day for up to date allergy forecasts from our web site and our Allergy Alert emails."
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POPSAustralia's Birthplace becoming industrial Wasteland Kurnell refinery, is under a flight path. Sand mining removed sand dunes that are now being replaced by residential, and industrial garbage. There is a sewerage treatment plant alongside the only road into the peninsula . Before Captain Cook (He was a Lieutenant at the time of the Botany Bay Landing) the peninsula, had been inhabited by local aboriginal clans for over 10,000 years. Kurnell is about the size of Block Island -Rhode Island, off the North East of Manhattan
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