Association Of Catholic Bloggers

(Drought conditions in Minnesota. (July 6, 2021)) My part of Stearns County, Minnesota, had moderate drought back in mid-June. This week's map promoted us to severe drought. Maybe the map's drought data included the 38 hundredths of an inch we got on Tuesday. But I doubt it. More at A Catholic Citizen in America — Annual average temperatures, 1895-2016; trends — and a silly suggestion: linking Starbucks and global warming. (Nota bene — It's a joke!)

A few groceries have been offering delicacies like elk steaks for decades, at least. But the odds are that hunters aren't supplying your grocery's meat department with wild game. That's not surprising, or shouldn't be. I'll be talking about an indoor Florida fish farm, wild rasberries, chickens, and why genetically modified foods don't fill me with fear and foreboding. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

He woke, heart racing, breathless, wet with sweat, in the starlit time before dawn. He shuddered when something touched his arm. It was his wife. "Again?" she asked, rolling her belly onto him. Soon she would bear his first child. "Again," he gasped. He waited until his breath came more easily. "The same thing. It was awful." She waited. He would talk soon. Perhaps then he would sleep. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I live on Earth, so caring about what happens here makes sense. I've talked about enlightened self-interest, Yeats, Ehrlich, and getting a grip, before. Often, actually. ( February 17, 2017 ; January 20, 2017 ; September 16, 2016 ; August 12, 2016 ) A news item about scientists finding a particular sort of pesticide in America's drinking water got my attention. So did what they said about it: which made sense. Whether or not this becomes a hot news item, like the "Flint Water Crisis," depends partly on how badly editors need something to angst over. My opinion. What happened in Flint, Michigan, was real enough. There's a pretty good Wikipedia page on it. Briefly, Flint's drinking water was okay until the city started drawing from the Flint River instead of Lake Huron and the Detroit River. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Something's killing Europe's olive trees: a bacterium that's probably spread by insects. Scientists don't know how to stop the disease, not yet. Other scientists analyzed the Ginkgo genome. What they found helps explain the tree's remarkable endurance. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

'Genetics news' caught my eye this week. DNA from barley that's been sitting in a cave for six millennia is helping scientists learn about agriculture's origins. A fits-in-your-hand Biomolecule Sequencer is at the International Space Station. If it works, folks up there won't have to send samples down for analysis. Finally, the world's first farmers were an unexpectedly diverse lot.... ...Science? In a "religion" blog??... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .