The scientists who starved to death surrounded by food
amusingplanet.com
amusingplanet.com
1. In statistics max likelihood method was developed and used to great effect and continues to this day, was developed by Fisher[1]
2. Norman Borlaug saved India and Pakistan from famine in the midst of literally a war that is worthy of a movie[2].
[1] https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1030037906 [2] https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/green-giant-6389547
It seems that uneducated people who can afford $19 avocados are the only ones who we listen to these days when it comes to feeding the planet.
For me, this line sums up the dedication of the founder of this seed bank. He traveled extensively and worked tirelessly.
It bothers me that this whole thing is news to me.
This means that in a post-apocaliptic scenery you coulnd't just go to a museum and eat safely a butterfly collection or an herbarium, not matter how hungry you are. Would be also really silly to save uncoated valuable seeds in the fortress of solitude when the first human finding it would need to consume the seeds just to stay alive and be able to return home with the seeds. If not done yet, we should probably store an alternative source of food and fat in the same place to be eaten by the future scouts before allowing them to enter in the real collection.
I’m personally a big fan of the “Extra History” youtube channel that has quite a lot of those inspiring little nuggets of history that people seem to have forgotten. And “Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History” for a deep dive into different historical eras.
I’m hoping that future teachers would just recommend or even assign listening to / watching additional sources like those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
I keep being surprised how true it is that the victors get to write the history books. Churchill killed a third as many people as Hitler did but people generally seem to be OK with that.
1. The UK had a coalition government and a war cabinet of 9 not a dictatorship by Churchill, so "directly responsible" is pure hyperbole.
2. Burma fell in 42 from which point Bengal lost previous regular rice imports and was now on the front line with the Japanese.
3. Many of the Indian states under their respective Maharajas applied trade restrictions with Bengal after the fall of Burma, through 42 starting with Punjab. That significantly heightened food shortages and profiteering. It was the inability to internally import rice that was perhaps the largest single factor.
4. Bengal was inundated with half a million refugees fleeing Burma.
5. At that point in the war there was little could be done to prevent Japanese attacks in the Bay of Bengal. The War Cabinet did indeed decline Mountbatten's requests for shipping food due to expected losses.
6. A series of natural disasters in the region, including extensive crop disease and a cyclone that killed 15,000 and spread the disease spores widely.
Churchill personally could have prevented all that, at the height of the war?
Now had you pointed at Bengal's governor, who made some questionable decisions during the crisis, I think you'd have had more of a case.
“Over the course of the blockade 18 employees of the bread factory died at work”
There was another incident, a case study in the early 70s, where a very obese man went on a full fast under researcher supervision and lost all his excess weight in a year or so.
https://pmj.bmj.com/content/postgradmedj/49/569/203.full.pdf
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o5ndh/iama_guy_who_w...
He does agree with you though, says he stopped feeling hungry after a few weeks.
It sounds like the guy in your link was just straight-up starving himself at home, which seems like a much worse idea. It's an interesting story, though, so thanks for sharing it!
Also 37-48 days between bowel movements O_O
Mental and cognitive states while slowly starving: not that good
Malnutrition is a slow process. It doesn’t feel very intense.
I’m basically starving while surrounded by food, like these people. What keeps me from eating it is that it causes greater pain to eat than not to.
https://medium.com/thecodex/martyrs-for-botany-part-2-48bce2...
The guy who basically set up the seed vault was killed by his own people he was trying to help. Very depressing.
Looks like the UK's 'Millenium Seed Bank' is the world's largest wild-plant repository. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Seed_Bank_Partnersh...