Today I went to Central Park and I just finished reading The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail. It is mostly about a non practicing religious man who refuses to pay his taxes in a time of the Mexican American war. He went to jail for one night (his aunt bails him out, and he is set free in the morning), but during that night he reflects upon the events of his life.
The central theme of this book was the way a man should think. When I say man, I mean mankind. Many times in classes we are taught what to think, but seldom are people taught how to think. Nowadays when students watch hours of 2 minute commercials, and with our materialistic society, it is difficult to truly spend some time contemplating the real value of things. Thoreau was a naturalist (by trade) but in the book he was accused of being an atheist (YAY!) and a transcendentalist. I prefer the former, but at least transcendentalists were thinking about life a bit more than the normal Christians were. The ideas of transcendentalism came from Harvard University and the church.
Thoreau spent the night in jail for not paying his taxes during a time of war. He refused to have his tax dollars pay for rifles and bullets. This is interesting because today the U.S. government gains a lot more taxes than it did in the 1800's. I suppose it the government might listen to someone who pays taxes but is a pacifist, and requests that his specific tax dollars not go directly towards funding a war. Obama seems like the kind of guy who might understand that position. But then again this is the U.S. government we are talking about here.
But the idea is definitely interesting. If the recession got bad enough, there wouldn't be enough tax dollars to fund a war. There isn't even enough tax dollars to fund the war currently. This is interesting to me because these are American dollars. I believe a polls should be taken of the American people (possibly during the 2010 census) to ask them if they agree with their tax dollars being spent to kill off Iraqi and American soldiers in this war. I know many of the people who are actually being killed are terrorists, but some of them are actually civilians too. If the Christian majority in the U.S. were truly Christian, they would most certainly stand their ground on the idea that we shall not kill.
Of course, the Christians in our country love to bear the name "Christian" without any of the rights of responsibilities of being Christian. This is fine. I mean, as long as it is not THEIR children dying right?
Thoreau also has an interesting idea, in the middle of his novel, which intrigued me. As a naturalist, he believed that nature was the ultimate teacher. That no matter how much one could learn in a classroom, it could never be more than one could learn actually studying out in the wild. After studying Sarracenia purpurea at UVM and Harvard Forest for the last 4 years, I definately agree. The information I gained in the field definately stayed with me better than the information I learned in a classroom. However, I must admit that in the classrooms I obtained a more diverse education. While I would have preffered to take all of my classes in biology, some classes like Introduction To Fiction, Introduction to Poetry, and Creative Writing were definately worthwhile.
I read The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail in two days. It is a quick play, which does not occur in chronological order. I recommend that people read this book now, in a time of war. Overall it probably will not take most people a long time (depending on how fast you read, it will probably take you 3 hours tops). However the message is important. As long as we Americans are funding the war with our tax dollars, we are directly responsible for the war in Iraq. This makes me glad that I am currently unemployed. However I like socialist organizations, like the public library, fire department, post office, and police. I like having them around (and paying for them with my tax dollars!). So if you do have a job (so I can contribute to society), perhaps you wouldnt mind looking over my resume.
I am starved for some biological satisfaction, and I am not talking about the type of satisfaction a woman can provide. I am speaking of the type of satisfaction an orchid grower commonly feels when purchasing something they have desired, for a long time. I just read The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, and immediately afterward I twittered “Finished reading the orchid thief, amazing and disappointing at the same time, like sex.” The entire story built on the amazing potential of one plant, the ghost orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii). However the author failed to see one in bloom in real life, postulating that the idea of one in bloom was sufficient, and when one is actually seen in bloom, it may be disappointing. I disagree. The truth is always more interesting than fiction, or even our preconceived notions of an object, or a plants grandeur. And if for some reason we cannot see how great something is, perhaps we need another person’s perspective to give us a closer look.
But I want to first stress upon you what I mean when I say “biological satisfaction”. Many people reading this, who may be religious, may be asking themselves “what does he mean?” I am pretty sure atheists will have a better idea of the concept. My satisfaction lies in the ability to feel connected to the rest of the world, not as a human, but as a biological entity that shares this planet. This is difficult in NYC where there is an apparent lack of, not only green plants, but also wildlife. In an earlier blog I spoke about finding carnivorous plants in the Botanical Gardens, however this is a special location, and an exception to the rule. Many New Yorkers may argue that there are enough wild pigeons, rats, and roaches to go around, and perhaps someone as educated as me should consider advocating an extermination of wildlife in NYC. However it is difficult to feel connected to the rest of the world, as a neighbor, if you never see your neighbor.
I grow plants to satisfy my need to feel connected. I have been in the Bronx for only a short period of time, but in 3 short weeks, with my limited horticultural supplies, I have had some success. I mainly want to speak about my spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum). This may seem like a common house plant to anyone who knows anything about plants, but as I said earlier, the truth is always more interesting, and perhaps we need another person to bring up the subject to give us a closer look.
Me taking a closer look at my spider plant
At first glance it looks like just a regular plant, but I would ask that you look at the picture above again. If you don’t see what I see, then perhaps I am blocking your view. Here is a better angle: I must admit, even after taking a class called the Biology of Ferns at UVM, that flowering plants inspire me most. The ability of a sexual organ to look so sexy might not give you appreciation, but if your sexual organ was like this flower, you might be reconsidering your opinion (if anyone, after reading this is considering dressing their sexual organ up like a flower during “play time” I would love to hear your stories – jmejia1187@gmail.com). And all the way to the left, we see the result of vegetative propagation. The spider plant is creating small plantlets. These plantlets can be potted up once they have rooted, or placed in water to induce quicker rooting.
If this were the only baby on my spider plant, then I would have nothing to write about, but as these next pictures show, the plant has been asexually active (let the science nerds laugh at that one).I took it upon myself to clean my newly acquired spider plant; to cut off all the parasitic plantlets and set them up to root in water. If anyone is looking for cheap (50 cents a plant) spider plants let me know, I will promptly mail them to you after receiving 2 quarters. At last count I had about 26 of them. Just for the record, I placed them in bottled water containers with the tops cut off. While they may seem small and helpless, as you can see, the parent plant has greatly improved (in the sense that it is more manageable and less cluttered).
I doubt the flowers will set seed. I am uncertain as to whether this is a self-seeding species. I know the flowers have both pollen, and a stigma, but I am unable to tell if the stigma is receptive (although large amounts of plant sperm has been deposited on my finger). I tried to self the plant manually (for what it is worth).
For spider plants, self-seeding would seem un-advantageous, since they have such an uncanny ability to produce clones of themselves. It would appear to me, to be more favorable for the stigma to be receptive on the flower before the pollen is released since it would seem redundant, and a waste of energy to produce seeds when clones are so easily produced along the plants stolons. If anyone with knowledge on a spider plants sexual organs can give their input, email me at jmejia1187@gmail.com, and I will quickly feature you and your email in the next post to my blog (pictures are also appreciated). You may also email me if you’re interested in obtaining some of the baby plants I have for sale. Don’t worry, my munny is heavily guarding them. Of course, small pleasures such as a plant in flower is common to someone who grows plants. (Not to mention other pleasures common to people who grow plants for purposes other than their flower). However plants are the gifts that keep on giving.
Speaking of gifts, my girlfriend took a plant from the Alana banquet awards at the University of Vermont. While I have not been able to give her back her plant after the move, I have been able to get it to flower again (this plant flowers too easily if you ask me).
Notice it’s trumpet shape, or it’s shade of pink. These things not only bring color into my room, but also an appreciation for life that hardly anything else can give. It is something that is not often taught in science classrooms (or in religious sermons). However I believe it is important for anyone who is campaigning to reduce greenhouse emissions, save endangered species, and protect our environment. People do need to care for something other than the human race to be able to save the world. I have written previously about people who only consider humans in their pro-life arguments, but have no emotion when it comes to slitting a cow’s throat for dinner. I am not a vegetarian, but I am also not pro-life. I am pro-world, pro-wild, and anti-human influence on every living species on earth.
How should I end this? Well another picture of a flower may be nice: But I really want to end off by saying 3 things: 1. I am still looking for a job (click for resume) 2. The plant madness is addicting, I shall proceed with caution! 3. The Orchid Thief was a great story, but not on my top ten list. Read it if your wondering how something natural can inspire you.
I must first start off by saying that I do not believe in God. People who read the title will obviously become confused, however, what I will try to conduct here is a thought experiment. After the recent death of Barnes George R. Tiller, a doctor who provided late term abortions, I thought it was only appropriate to contemplate, if there were a God, what would He do?
Of course there is no real way of knowing what God would do in a situation where he was confronted with people who performed, or had, an abortion. This is because God doesn't come down and speak to people personally. He has never been spotted on the corner of 42nd and 3rd handing out information on what to do about people who believe in the right to life over a person's right to choose. So there are a few ways, as an atheist, and an amateur philosopher, to hypothesize, what might be going through a hypothetical creators mind when events such as the death of Dr. Tiller occurred.
Just a small point to make, I will be focusing on a hypothetical God as outlined in the bible. The rules and demeanor I would assume for this God come from the actions of the God Yahweh in the bible. The reason I have chosen this God's views as the hypothetical God to focus on in this post is because:
1. He is the God most people are familiar with and 2.He is the God that most people think have the power to do something about he abortion issue.
One hypothesis may be that supporters of "God" are closest to him, and know his will better than anyone, so they must know what "God's Will" must be. When I see articles like the recent one in the LA Times, it is obvious this hypothesis is false. God, being all powerful, all knowing, and all loving wouldn't perpetuate the killing of babies with the killing of adults. Of course I am only talking about the God of the new testament, who commonly spoke of loving ones neighbor and turning the other cheek. The God of the old testament was worst than Hitler, killing off thousands of people and civilizations in the name of the Jewish God. Because He had promised the Jews so much land that he would commonly tell them to go into a village and kill every living thing in it.
This is seen even in the times of Moses, when he came down the mountain with the ten commandments and saw God's people worshiping a golden calf. God swiftly had his people killing each other in an attempt to purify themselves.
And when the God of the old testament wasn't telling people to kill each other, he himself was doing the killing. In the story of Noah's Ark, God plays favoritism and chooses Noah to build an Ark. After the Ark is built and all the animals are saftely upon it, God quickly starts a huge storm which kills everyone on land, who was not in the Ark, and every living creature on land who was not in the Ark.
We again see God commiting genocide in the lands of Sodom and Gomorrah. Again God plays favoritism and decides to save one person in these Villages, Lot and his family. Lot's unfortunate wife turned around to look at the destruction of the exploding city, and was transformed into a pillar of salt. Of course, Lot was one of those cool guys who don't look at explosions.
So perhaps the God of the Old Testament would kill off people because of their abortionist views, but the God of the new testament certainly wouldn't. It is also important to note that the God of the Old Testament was the same God that gave the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill. In this sense, the people doing "God's Will" and killing off these abortion clinic doctors would never be graced by God enough to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven". But of course, because there is no God, and there is no heaven, all we have are a bunch of murderers and dead bodies (not to mention the mothers that may desperately need abortions without any safe place to turn to).
Of course the God of the new testament was a cool guy. Jesus often hung around prostitutes, and murderers. He often forgave people for whatever they had done in the past and was loving to everyone. I believe that if Jesus was here he would be on the side of pro-choice. The reason is because Jesus thought there was a righteous way to live, but he also believed that whether you lived that way or not was your choice. I never heard of Jesus killing anyone because they did not believe in God. So if we want to be just like Jesus, we should all be pro-choice.
However there is another hypothesis I am neglecting. The hypothesis that God IS doing something about the pro-choice movement. He certainly hasn't come down from heaven and made any great announcements, but he has said something by NOT coming down and making a great announcement. He is basically saying that he doesn't exist or he doesn't care. In which case pro-lifer's should not shout in the streets that it is an abomination to kill a zygote.
If the only excuse you have for being against abortion is your religion, then you need to look closer at what God really wants. Do you not think that if God had something against a woman's right to choose that he would do something about it? And don't you think that if God were going to do something about it that it would be more peaceful, and loving than anything a person could come up with? Of course many religious people are extremely uncivilized so when letter's are produced that threaten people because they perpetuate the right to a woman's choice, then I can only say that this is what we have come to expect.
Of course there is another argument that does not rely upon a persons religion for why we should be against abortion. That argument is that all life is precious. That the pain a fetus (or zygote) receives when it dies is enough to stop abortion in it's tracks. Of course I have to disagree. A fetus would need a fully developed nervous system to feel pain. In the case of abortions, a date could be set on when it is thought a baby has a nervous system advanced enough to feel pain. Of course, if the argument is that living things shouldn't feel pain, then the pro-lifer's should also be strict vegetarians, as I am sure any fetus given an injection to die slowly feels far less pain than a cow does when it's throat is slit. They should also campaign for the rights of chickens to live (I am not sure at what level a young chicks nervous system is formed, but I do believe that eggs are still okay).
However the pro-life movement for some reason stops at humans. It does not consider any other species right to life. This is not surprising because these are the same people who go hunting every summer. They believe (and the argument becomes a religious one again), that God gave people a special right upon this earth. This is sad, for what they do not see is the more we kill the things around us, the less likely we will be able to persist in the future.
Now, my argument seems one sided, but I am not calling pro-lifer's evil. I am not saying they are stupid or that they deserve to die. As an atheist I have strong moral standards against demeaning people, and against resorting to ad hominem attacks. Every LIVING person has the value of their mind. And because of this value, I will give a link to some pro-life advocates views on why abortion is bad.
It is my hope that you see this list, and see their hostility towards the other side.
In my opinion it is not anyone's business to dictate how individuals live their lives. Nor how they treat the lives of the parasites within them (and yes, babies are parasites in the literal sense of the word). I think this is the biggest civil rights challenge of the 21st century. Dealing with people who believe they can impose their views on others. I think the focus should come off from pro-choice and pro-life arguments. It should come off from pro-gay and anti-gay marriage arguments. It should come off from an atheists rights to be free from religion vs peoples rights to have freedom of religion. All these groups - Woman's activist groups, pro gay marriage groups, and pro atheism groups, should work together on a new and bigger campaign. Perhaps it could be called - If you don't like what's going on in my house than stop being so damn nosey, campaign. Or the freedom to live life according to your own views campaign.
In this way the only right that can be taken away from people is the right to tell other people how they should live. This would make everyone happier, even the anti-gay marriage, antiabortion, anti-atheism crowd. The only reason they get so upset is because they are out protesting in front of abortion clinics, and in front of places where gay people marry. Jesus believed in spreading the word of God, but he did not believe in hating people who had a different opinion than he did. For some reason people seem to have forgotten what the word love means. We should all be loving our neighbors no matter who they are. If they happen to be gay, and your anti gay, then try your best not to see them, or move. You have no right to protest in front of their houses, or to tell them how to live. If "protesting" behavior continues, then I would love to see homosexuals in this country set up an anti-straight campaign. If straight people have the right to tell gay people how to live, then it should go the other way around too.
Atheism is also included in the argument. Luci, who replied to one of my blog posts said "Becoming an atheist means committing social suicide; you are now being judged more than a criminal is judged." Of course I am not a criminal, I am an American. Unless some new thought crime law was enacted that I don't know about, I have no reason to believe there is a God. And people should stop judging me because of this view. We should get together sometime, atheists, homosexuals, and abortionists. We can form an organization (another name for it might be AHA, Atheists Homosexuals and Abortionists). We have power in numbers and our main goal should be that no matter what your views are, as long as they do no harm to any living person (who is already born), then you have the right to live your life free from people who believe they have the right to dictate how you live. Until such a law is enacted American soil will be in a perpetual state of unrest.
It wasn’t the normal type of thing one would find in their dresser. All of my clothes were cleaned and folded. They were in neat piles! Why? Why would someone do that?
I am not the messiest person on earth, but I don’t keep my dresser as organized as I found it a few days ago. Someone had washed my clothes, folded them AND put them away. I thought this was awkward. To do this they had to go into my dresser. I looked inside the 3rd drawer down from the top, and my zip lock bag full of condoms and lubrication was still there, in tact. I didn’t know how many I had before, but the size of the bag looked about right.
As an atheist, any intrusion into my privacy must be investigated. It may have been that my clothes were washed and whoever put them away was doing me a favor, but I knew better. My clothes, after being washed, are normally placed neatly on my bed. This type of treatment, placing them in my dresser, was done with an ulterior motive. I recently came out to my mom, as an atheist. She took it harshly but has begun treating me as a person again. As a matter of fact, on Sunday, May 30th, she invited me to go to Church with her! I was shocked that she would even ask, but as she is a Christian, it is her duty to try to spread her religion to as many non-believers as possible, even those who may be living right under her nose. It’s a meme thing.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins speaks about religion as a meme. And as a meme it needs to spread itself and culturally evolve to survive. I am not willing to become infected with this meme again. It took me long enough to get rid of it in the first place!
So I confronted her. As her son, I thought there was an explanation that I could handle, one that involved me simply telling her that I preferred to put my clothes away myself. However I was just fooling myself. If there are constants in my household, they are this: 1. My mother is an unreasonable woman 2. My mother thinks she is always right.
I asked, “Did you go through my dresser?” I expected her to deny the claim outright, but she didn’t!
“Yes.” Such a simple reply! What was she hiding? I asked her what she was looking for, to bypass her excuse (which was that she was putting my clothes away).
“Drugs. You graduated from college, and I know college students do drugs.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Other than the fact that I do not do drugs, nor have I shown a tendency to act like a drug addict does, I had nothing to say. I could try to tell her to respect my privacy, but this would only incite unnecessary arguments. I could tell her I am not a drug addict, but her preconceived notions need more than a statement from me to disprove them. I can tell her that not all college student’s do drugs, but when the majority of the student body at UVM has at least tried marijuana, this would of course be a lie, and an unwinnable argument with my mother. I could have reminded her that I already graduated and thus no longer fall under the category of “college student”, but this would only lead her to believe that I was a full on pot head at UVM. There was nothing to say, or do.
Let’s suppose I do drugs. So what? Alcohol puts people in more danger than marijuana does, and more people die from smoking Nicotine cigarettes every year than from smoking marijuana. I am all for legalizing marijuana not only for medicinal use, but also for recreational use. If it is legalized, it could be taxed! Then the government could make money off of it, like alcohol and cigarettes. Plus, many people who smoke marijuana, and are in need of jobs, might be willing to actually go out and get a job farming the stuff. Along with marijuana, hemp can be grown to create clothing and other products. Hemp should be grown to replace the disease ridden and labor intensive cotton anyway. And lastly, if the government legalized marijuana, they would have every right to dictate quality standards, like they do with food and alcohol. In this case the marijuana that will be produced would be much safer. Along with emptying some of the prisons (people that had cases of possession of large amounts of marijuana) and decriminalizing the sale and possession of marijuana (except against minors), law enforcement will be improved by putting the focus back on violent crimes! These are my views on marijuana, but I cannot stress enough, I DO NOT SMOKE WEED!
But what evidence brought her to the conclusion that I did drugs? I thought about it for a few hours (not about doing drugs, but about her conclusion), while I was pacing in my room, upset. It suddenly came to me. Her boyfriend Eddie smokes cigarettes. That is something I have never done, not only because it is addicting, but because it could kill you! Why don’t people who smoke cigarettes get the same rep as people who smoke weed? I am not advocating that people who smoke cigarettes are bad people, but in my mothers eyes people who smoke weed are low-lives. I disagree with her assessment. Many famous stars do drugs (and we often see them in the news when they overdose). I am not saying doing hardcore drugs is a good thing, but I do believe that everyone, no matter what type of lifestyle they live, can fall into addictive habits with drugs. Anyway, back to mom’s boyfriend, Eddie. Earlier in the week, he pulled one out (a cigarette), but needed a lighter. I pulled out my lighter for him. This was probably the moment mom suspected me of doing drugs.
That only leaves one question. What is a recent college graduate like me doing with a lighter in my pocket, if I don’t smoke? The answer lies in the oil (and in the fact that I just came back from Vermont).
I love fragrance oils. You can ask my roommate from UVM, Jonathan Castillo. I have a fragrance oil burner in my room, and I purchased the lighters because I was always using it (and tired of asking my neighbors for a light). That is the only reason. I know, it sounds fishy, but if you can have a look at how many tea lights I have, or at my apparatus for burning the oil, then you will know I am being honest.
1.Candle Goes Here 2.Oil Goes Here I actually ran out of oil recently, and need to go to one of those female hygiene stores, like bed bath and beyond, or Bath and Body Works, to buy more. I do not like buying the plug in oils because I find them difficult to clean, and they are not as effective. Plus they use electricity and take up the socket in the wall, which can be used for any one of my many electronic devices. I also have two bags of tea lights, which I still need to use, plus the porcelain oil burner, which will go to waste if I don’t use it!
1.Tea Lights 2. Oil Burning Apparatus
As for my candles and my lighter, I am putting them to good use. Have you ever read by the candlelight before? Currently I am reading the Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.
But my honest answer to her would have taken to long to explain. She would have yelled at me somewhere along the line. She probably would have changed the argument on me, saying: as my mother she had a right to do it. Or stating that because I was living under her roof, she had the right to investigate if she thought I was doing drugs. Of course, I am not hiding anything; I just didn’t want my mom to see my stash of condoms and lubricant. It is a matter of privacy. In all honesty she probably only saw the condoms, but if she did see the lubricant, then she probably thinks I am gay. It is okay, this is what I have come to expect from religious people: a tendency to change the argument to one they can win, or to speak louder than the person they are arguing against to claim later that they won the argument. I just stood quiet. I let her win. She can have this one. I still don’t have a place to stay besides her house.
As a graduate of the University of Vermont's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Biological Science program, I find myself at a need to learn more about biology. However, this is difficult in Soundview, New York. After graduating I decided to re-explore what got me interested in the first place, carnivorous plants.
While attending Christopher Columbus high school in the Bronx, I read Peter D'Amato's book – The Savage Garden, which was mainly about cultivating carnivorous plants. Through this book I learned about the common genera, and some of the representative species of each. Overall I would have to say the sundews (Drosera) are my favorite, mainly because of the the way they glisten. It almost seems like a mean trick, to be so beautiful, yet so deadly.
The book in general was a good read, and for a high school student it was very interesting. The best part was the authors non-technical descriptions of most plants. While the book would have been much larger had he gone over every species (the Utricularia section would have killed me), it contained just enough information and representative species (and pictures) to understand what the author was talking about. D'Amato also focused heavily on cultivation techniques, and at the time I was growing sundews and venus flytraps, so this was particularly important for me.
During my college years, I didn't read many books on carnivorous plants, but while working with Nicholas James Gotelli and Aaron Ellison, I dove foot first into the primary literature. Specifically, the literature concerning the northern pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea. I enjoyed Ellison and Gotelli's work on carnivorous plants, especially the review paper they wrote for Darwin's 150th anniversary for the origin of species. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it. It is available here as a pdf: Download
But since my college days are over, I needed something to fill my need to learn. I quickly looked into what books I had neglected to read over the four years I spent in college (because I was so busy reading textbooks) and one in particular caught my eye. It was a book given to me by Aaron Ellison at the end of the summer of 2008, when I worked under his guidance at the Harvard Forest Research Facility. It was Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada, by Schnell. This book was particularly interesting to me as a recent graduate because it focused on the information Schnell obtained from the primary literature and from personal experience growing, and photographing the plants in the wild. This book had all the species of carnivorous plants which can be found in the United States, including all the species of Sarracenia, Drosera, Darlingtionia, Dionaea, Utricularia, and a final section on some plants which may be carnivorous although their carnivorous nature has not been proven beyond doubt.
I am glad to have read Schnell's book after graduating from UVM. Reading it before college would have been a mistake since I was unfamiliar with the primary literature and with many of the technical terms used in the book. He also provided very helpful maps, which for me was very useful. I don't know if the ranges represented in the maps are still accurate today, but it would be interesting to see a website where someone could put in their location and obtain directions to the closest areas to view and photograph carnivorous plants. I know something like this would be easy to develop, but difficult to maintain because carnivorous plant habitats are quickly disappearing. There is also the fact that once people start figuring out where these sites are, they might cause local extinctions to occur more rapidly.
I am in a good area (New York City) because many species of carnivorous plants actually grow in New York! Many species of Sarracenia can actually be found in the New York Botanical gardens which is located in the Bronx. I know that is cheating, but in my opinion, it is a lot easier to find these plants in the Botanical Gardens then to go bogging.
So, to a person new to the wonders of carnivorous plants, which book should you read? Schnell's or D'Amato's? How do they stack up against each other?
Again, the only thing I can offer is my opinion. I belive D'Amato's book was more of a joy to read. It focused on many more interesting plants from around the world, and actually listed some cultivars which growers may be interested in. The section on Sarracenia hybrids was also more in depth than Schnell's, however, to be fair Schnell tried to focus mainly on natural popualtions. The Utricularia section in Schnell's book was a bit lacking, but again, he was confined to the species which could only be found in the United States, where D'Amato had his pick from the hundreds of species found around the world. However, if your going on a roadtrip throughout the United States and are looking to stop and go hunting for carnivorous plants, Schnell's book is the only guide you need. Overall both men did wonderful jobs, and both books were very informative.
Speaking of jobs, I am still looking for one. If you are in New York and have a position available here is my resume: Click This Link!
Today I went to Central Park and I just finished reading The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail. It is mostly about a non practicing religious man who refuses to pay his taxes in a time of the Mexican American war. He went to jail for one night (his aunt bails him out, and he is set free in the morning), but during that night he reflects upon the events of his life.
