Vorsprung durch Technik

Low Water Use Landscaping – AGAVE

Agaves are beautiful and formidable plants, typically sporting sharp spikes at the tips.  They are nearly always VERY low water use plants that need almost no water to survive.

Indeed I think I water mine too much, just to watch them grow!

Nigel Stewart Austin, Personal, Texas agave, gardening, summer, Texas

Third state education board vote mandates teaching students challenges to evolution

The State Board of Education this afternoon rejected efforts to continue to require Texas children to learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories including evolution. But a narrower challenge to evolutionary theory was approved.

Two motions to leave the “strengths and weaknesses” language, or similar phrasing, in place failed. It was a defeat for a group of conservative board members who have been pushing to keep the phrase, which has been part of the Texas science curriculum for all public school students since 1988.

The latest little skirmish in the culture wars.

nigels Commentary, Texas, USA creationism, darwin, evolution, intelligent design, religion, Texas

TreeFolks are offering us a free tree, in return for taking good care of it, as part of the NeighborWoods program.

Mexican White Oak

40 ft high, full sun, no bloom, drought tolerant, evergreen, fast growth, oak wilt resistant.

• Plantfiles
  There is a beautiful specimen of this tree near my home in south Austin (Texas). It is about 45 feet tall and very healthy. That particular tree is about 17 years old I am told. Based on this, I planted two in my yard in January, 2007. 13 months later they are doing just fine.
• Shademaker trees
  An underutilized, highly adaptable shade tree that will tolerate urban planting conditions.
• wildflower.org
  This species is widespread in Mexico and found in a few west Texas canyons. It is a relatively fast growing oak, and practically evergreen in Austin. It is more resistant to oak wilt and other diseases and pests than other oaks.
• Texas Forest Service
  Leathery leaves come in many different shapes and remain on twigs into winter.

Bur Oak

80ft high, acorns, deciduous, slow growing, drought resistant, state tree of Iowa.

• wikipedia.org
  Large deciduous tree growing up to 30 m (100 ft), rarely 37 m (120 ft), in height, and is one the most massive oaks with a trunk diameter of up to 3 m (10 ft). It is one of slowest-growing oaks, with growth rate of 30 cm (1 ft) per year when young. A 20-year-old tree will be about 6 m (20 ft) tall. It commonly lives to be 200 to 300 years old, and may become significantly older. The bark is a medium gray and somewhat rugged.
• grownative.org
  A slow-growing, long-lived impressive tree with the largest leaves and acorns of all the oaks. Leaves turn brown or light yellow in the fall and remain on the plant through winter. Trees are weakly pyramidal when young then develop a massive trunk and broad crown with strong branches.
• USDA Forest Service
  Bur oaks bear seed up to an age of 400 years, older than reported for any other American oak. The minimum seed-bearing age is about 35 years, and the optimum is 75 to 150 years (5,16). Good seed crops occur every 2 to 3 years, with no crops or light crops in intervening years. The acorns are disseminated by gravity, by squirrels, and to a limited extent by water.

Chinquapin Oak

90ft tall, deciduous, full sun, drought tolerant, good shade, acorns, disease and pest resistant.

• wikipedia.org
  A deciduous tree reaching 30 m tall (exceptionally up to 50 m), with a rounded crown and thin, scaly or flaky bark on the trunk. The name comes from the resemblance of the leaves to those of a chestnut or chinkapin, although they also greatly resemble the chestnut oak or swamp chestnut oak; coarsely toothed, 5-15 cm long and 4-8 cm broad.
• Texas A&M
  A good-looking medium to large shade tree suitable for use in much of Texas. Its unique saw-tooth leaves, which resemble those of the chinquapin tree found in the eastern United States, are rich green, turning yellow to bronze in the fall. It grows in the wild on well-drained bottomland soils and on limestone hills near water. It’s adaptable to a range of soils and exposures. It’s moderate to fast-growing and develops an open rounded crown as it ages.
• Texas Superstar
  Although this member of the beech family (Fagaceae) can obtain a larger size in the eastern U.S., it usually grows to be a handsome medium size shade tree in the 30′ to 50′ tall range in many of our urban or suburban Texas landscapes. Thus, chinkapin oak remains more in scale with residential plantings than some larger shade trees.

Elm

100 ft tall, deciduous, susceptible to Dutch elm disease, disease-resistant cultivars available.

• wikipedia.org
  There are approximately 30 to 40 species of elm; the ambiguity in number is a result of difficult species delimitations in elms, owing to the ease of hybridization between them and the development of local seed-sterile vegetatively-propagated microspecies in some areas, mainly in the field elm group. Rackham describes Ulmus as the most difficult critical genus in the entire British flora. Eight species are endemic to North America, and a smaller number to Europe; the greatest diversity is found in China.

Nigel Stewart Austin, Commentary, Personal, Texas Austin, Bur Oak, Chinaquapin Oak, elm, mexican white oak, Texas, trees

Austin Community Blood Center

4300 N Lamar Blvd

Austin, TX 78756

Mon – Fri: 8am – 6pm
Saturday: 8am – 3pm
Sunday: 10am – 3pm

The Blood Center experiences a drop in blood donation during the holidays as people busy themselves with shopping and travel. But the necessity of a steady supply of blood never takes a holiday. This season, each blood donor will be thanked with a FREE pint of Amy’s Ice Cream!

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas blood donation, ice cream

World Have Your Say, a daily BBC World Service radio program broadcast from Austin this week.

• Monday: Fear of Obama
• Tuesday: Capital Punishment
• Wednesday: US Military
• Thursday: Politics and Public Life
• Friday: An end to US domination?

Podcast Archive

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas, USA Austin, bbc, media, podcast, politics, radio, Texas

A very good reason to vote against McCain, as reported by the Texas Freedom Network:

Friends,

While many question Barak Hussein Obama’s “religion” as discussed in the article Arabs: Obama ‘One of Us,’ NYC Columnist Writes, the more important question is whether he has a “relationship” with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of “saving faith.”

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Call your Republican County Headquarters and offer to make “get-out-the-vote” calls before next Tuesday’s election. Call NOW, please!

Blessings,
Cathie Adams, Republican National Committeewoman for Texas

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas gop, McCain, obama, politics, religion, smear

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas, USA darwinism, evolution, McCain, obama, politics

As reported by the Austin American Statesman and Texas Freedom Network, the religous right have nominated several evolution deniers to a curriculum review panel.

“It’s simply stunning that any state board members would even consider appointing authors of an anti-evolution textbook to a panel of scientists,” she said. “Are they coming here to help write good science standards or to drum up a market for their lousy textbook?”

The textbook, Explore Evolution, is intended for secondary schools and colleges, according to its U.S. distributor, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute in Seattle.  Because of that, the State Board of Education could consider it for the state’s approved list of science textbooks in 2011.

The decisions made by the curriculum review panel may well affect what is taught to our daughter in biology class here in Texas.

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas education, evolution, science, Texas

Update: The Hurricane was a fizzer, hardly a drop of rain today.

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas summer, Texas, weather

Texas puts tight restraints on what teachers can teach about sex

Local latitude goes only so far, thanks to Texas’ appetite for federally funded abstinence programs — it leads the nation in spending for abstinence instruction— and the state’s restrictions on what teachers may tell their students about sex and contraceptives.

In the Austin Independent School District, high school teachers routinely offer pamphlets and brochures about teen pregnancy, contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases in the classroom. But their health textbooks omit information on contraceptives, which is relegated to an optional supplement.

I guess it’s one way to keep the birth rate up.

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas, USA Austin, sex education, teenage pregnancy, Texas