Burra Maluca

It depends what sort of question it is.

If you look at the first post on the first page of this thread it will guide you to the right place.

bruce Fine wrote:there are things that moderators here like very much and some things they don't like at all. I got all my apples taken away because I posted something they didn't like at all and I still don't understand it. I was not offensive or anything like that. just saying its allways good to be like Ringo---Peace and love man.

In general, the volunteer staff don't like it very much if you post that they are ignorant and short sighted just because you get reined in for pushing the boundaries of the 'be nice' rule and generally shit stirring and making work for them. I don't have the time and energy to deal with stuff like that any more, and on the occasions I do stick my nose in and see other staff burning out the same way I do, it hurts to read claims like that when pretty much anyone would find what you wrote offensive. If you really did preach love and peace instead of being snide and manipulative behind the scenes then maybe the staff would have more time for you. If I had been the one to see what you were up to I'd have probably just banned you as my tolerance to such behaviour is negligible these days having been exposed to too much of it over the years.

Michael's post on the other hand would be fine posted in the cider press when he has enough apples.

Looks political to me, so it can't be posted outside the cider press.

And you haven't earned enough apples to post there yet.

Available from amazon.com

A complex look at California Native ecological practices as a model for environmental sustainability and conservation.

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.

M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.

English Breakfast Tea

"Black Tea" - that's foreign, not English. In England it's just 'Tea'.

"Black" means "without milk".

Also, every Englishman has their own tea ritual, and it doesn't automatically include silver teapots or sugar lumps. That's only for posh people and social climbers.  

For me, a mug of just under a half pint capacity, an Earl Grey teabag shared between the two of us, and served white. ie with milk.

Sometimes Typhoo (because you only get an 'oooh' with Typhoo'), in which case you can dunk ginger biscuits in them.

If any so-called Englishman raises an eyebrow at you, they are attempting to gain points to enable them to climb socially. To counteract this you do indeed allow your little finger to poke out (this implies that you were raised drinking out of bone-china tea-cups, not the mugs which you have more recently adopted) and peer disdainfully at them, whilst offering them a ginger nut. The truly higher echelons of society would never attempt to put you down and are far more accepting than the social climbers.  If you provide the eyebrow-raisers with enough rope to hang themselves with they are likely to make some disparaging remark which you can then ignore, sighing oh-so-gently as you do so, and comment about the strange weather we've been having recently to allow them to disentangle themselves from the embarrassing predicament they have dug themselves into. While you continue your own tea-ritual and eat the rest of the ginger nuts.

Rich Tea biscuits have also become fairly ubiquitous as dunking fodder, following the 'A Drink is Too Wet Without One' TV campaign. They do, however, require a different dunking technique to a proper ginger nut, which is basically too hard to eat without dunking.

One more point, if a social climber serves you tea in a bone china cup and saucer it's likely to test your social standing. If you believe this to be the case, the only appropriate response in my opinion is to take a sip, recoil as though it has been served at too high a temperature, tip some tea into the saucer, swirl it around and then drink from the saucer. Ideally whilst throwing your host an "And I dare you to have the balls to do the same!" look. Their response to this will indicate how English they truly are.

bump