Two things from CBC radio today - 1. Ag Canada will be conducting research in Saskatchewan this season with vinegar spray for pre-seed burn-off. Tom Wolf of Ag Canada was interviewed on a general interest show - he is looking at concentrations of 5-10-20%; said that, at applications of hundreds of litres per hectare, farmers would have to make the vinegar themselves for it to be economical. Unfortunately, no trace of this research project at the Ag Canada site.
2. The story of Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel prize for his work on N fixation, was presented by playwright Vern Thiessen (Einstein's Gift is the play about Haber). What I found interesting from the BD/spiritual farming point of view was that Haber changed his religion from Jewish to Christian to further his career; he was instrumental in developing the large scale use of nitrogen fertilizers; his work with fertilizers led to his development of chlorine gas as a weapon (used on Canadian soldiers in WWI at Ypres) - then he changed back to Jewish faith, was killed by Nazis and his work was further used to develop Cyklon gas. It wasn't just the interweaving of chemical weapons and chemical fertilizers that was interesting, but the spiritual confusion I expect he may have gone through with the religion changes. I'm not saying that you have to be confused to change religions - but wonder if Haber was suffering spiritually from his work, or did his work emerge from a spiritual wasteland? Haven't read/seen the play, but Thiessen seems to regard Haber as a tragic hero, heroic for helping to feed people by increasing soil fertility. I wonder if Steiner knew Haber and what he might have had to say about the man. __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/
