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Nature's Puzzle

Millions of years ago, nature ran into a new problem. In its bag of tricks which allows a given species to carve out a niche on this planet, a new one emerged. In addition to size, strength, agility, instinct, vision, hearing and smell, new elements were added to this palette - elements that included intellect, reasoning and invention.

And so Nature's great puzzle came into being - a puzzle that has kept man perplexed for millennia. How does nature allow such an ability to evolve for survival purposes, and what is the true fertilizer for this ability? The answer to the latter part of the question is interest. Yes, nature had to make things interesting. Otherwise, a sentient being would never care enough to continue to thrive. As for the former, all of us are lucky enough to live in a time when nature is still figuring this part of the question out.

Have you ever seen an interested fish?  How long can you hold a dog's interest?  When you see a cat stalking its prey or playing with a toy for minutes at a time, is this really interest?

Human beings on the other hand have done amazing things - both good and bad - because of interest.

Banned Tomatoes

I am beginning to realize how ingenious Procacci Brothers have been in naming their tomatoes "UglyRipe".  It is a smart marketing move that hits the problem head-on.

Banned Tomatoes Part II

I received the following canned reply from Leah Busick [leah@floridatomatoes.org] at the Florida Tomato Committee.  If in fact 70% are making the grade for export, then this is encouraging.  However, 30% is still a lot of tomatoes to be excluded on looks alone.  (I wonder if I would make the grade for a Florida export!)

She also blames poor tasting tomatoes on "improper handling".  Ms. Busick - I've kept my perfectly red, perfectly round Florida tomatoes out of the refrigerator, and they still taste like bland, grainy, wet sawdust.

Banned Tomatoes

It's hard to believe that this sort of thing could happen in the U.S. , but the Florida Tomato Committee has banned the shipment of the most delicious tomatoes available out of state.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article about this subject.

An excerpt from the UglyRipe web site:  "UglyRipe"™ is the Registered Brand Name for the Procacci, Gargiulo, Santa Sweets heirloom variety beefstake style tomato. Heirloom means that the variety at least 40 -50 years old, is open-pollinated and has been preserved and kept true to its purest form. Heirlooms are not hybrid tomatoes which are grown for commercial purposes and tend to lose both flavor and color after several generations of breeding.

In the beginning...

2005 is about to begin, and so is this weblog.  I'm finally figuring out which thoughts that occupy my brain are worth sharing.

I'm beginning to find a lot of good technical help in web logs, so I'll publish some helpful stuff here, in addition to thoughts on Sales Engineering and political rants of course.