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Phylloxera: The American Grape Vine Pest That Almost Ruined My Saturday Nights
Can you imagine a world without French wine? A world without the wines of Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy and Provence? A world in which French people don’t look down their nose at the wines of the rest of the world? Is such a world even possible? Well, in the late 19th century this is exactly the… Continue reading
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The Cautionary Tale of Trofim Lysenko
One day, years ago, when I was a cocksure university undergraduate, I was chatting to some Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to the door of the share house I lived in. We discussed a few things but at one point the guy I was talking to said that when it came to evolution he didn’t… Continue reading
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Quick Bite: New research shows what was on the menu 2 million years ago
The Ship of Theseus is the name given to a thought experiment first related by Plutarch around the beginning of the second century. In this story the ship Theseus rescued the children of Athens with was kept by the people of Athens and used every year in a pilgrimage to Delos. Over time, and many… Continue reading
The Science of Food 