Tag Archives: nuclear bombs

Day 25 — lethal + prejudice

Lethal Prejudice (today’s two-worder grab) sounds like the title of a terrible Jean Claude van Damme action movie. It’s not. But it is a shape poem (or indeed, an anti-shape poem) about the world’s most lethal mushroom. A relatively easy choice when Anzac/war etc + mushrooms turned up very few hits.

The Poetic Factoid poem was one of the very few minor fun facts I discovered & even so, is barely more than prose broken into couplets (not my finest work) but I spent waaaaay too long on the proper poem.

[Disclaimer: Another block of catch up poems, all written on the correct day (Saturday) but unable to get online in time.]

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Case Study: Nucula flammagenitus      #7: The Most Lethal Mushroom in the World

[ Click to enlarge image ]

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Day 25 Factoid — WWII Was A Key Factor in Making this Mushroom Popular 

Pleurotus Prejudice 

i.
put-upon, food-scarce, & desperate — the failing third reich was forced
to cultivate what was previously considered a mediocre second choice crop

ii.
the easy ability of oyster mushrooms to thrive on diverse substrates 
(wood & agricultural waste) made them a vital sustainable food source

iii.
following the war they were recognised for their subtle, savoury flavour 
became high culinary artefacts & started sprouting in posh shops everywhere 

Day 29 — 6% deflection + water bombing

Today’s poem is a mixture of quotation, paraphrase, & commentary on something one inactivist denier actually said. Presumably, with a straight face. A straight cold callous inhuman face.

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wet feet

should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet actually do 
what the scientists threaten — & slip off into the sea  
— is it really be the end-of-the-world calamity they contend

even if the sea rose 6 metres — it would only reclaim 
about 42,000 square kilometres of coastline
where roughly about 400 million people currently live

that sounds quite a lot of people — but hardly 
all humanity — less than 6% of world population
which is to say — 94% of us need not fear — inundation 

after all — it’s simply an equivalent number of people 
to the entire population of the US & UK — combined
a mere drop in the ocean — you might wryly remark

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Day 30 — TIL i learnt we’re bombing the ocean

hot water

year after year 
we’re setting 
ocean heat records 

last year alone
they absorbed 
eight Hiroshima 

atomic bombs 
detonating 
every second 

of every day

— nearly seven
hundred
thousand
every day

— five million
a week

— a Quarter.
Of a. Billion.
Bomb’s. Worth.
Every. Year.

* 480 a minute / 28 800 an hour / 691 200 a day / 4 838 400 a week / 251 596 800 a year