Recognized by the Muslims as being the most intelligent of all trees, fig trees produce one of the most nutritious fruits in the world. Some tropical primates live on a diet of more than 80% figs. In the tropics we find more than six hundred fig varieties. More than a hundred and fifty other varieties grow in Mediterranean climates the world over.
The Roman historian Aeliant tells us that in the first age of humankind the “Athenians lived on figs…” (Aeliant Hist. Var., L. 8, ch. 89).
Figs are a densely mineralized sweet fruit. They contain one of the highest concentrations of calcium of any food.
Whether they are fresh or naturally dried, figs are a great laxative. The tiny seeds in figs are not only packet! with nutrients, but they help draw out and dissolve waste, parasites, and mucus in the intestines. Figs are one of Professor Arnold Fhret’s top three mucus-dissolving foods (as referenced in The Mucusless Diet Healing System).
Dried figs are probably the healthiest choice of all dried fruits. They are the most alkaline of dried fruits and probably the most mineral-rich as well.
— How to Eat Figs —
Fresh figs should be soil and as tree-ripened as possible. If many figs are eaten unripe, they can burn the mouth and lips. Figs are a wonderful treat bv themselves and also mix well with other foods due to their high alkaline-mineral content.
Dried figs may be eaten by themselves; however, I typically liko to blend them in smoothies in order to add incredible zest and flavor. 1 also cut them up and mix them with salads.
‘…champions were in times past fed with figs.”
—Pliny, Roman naturalist
(Excerpts from the book “Eating for Beauty” by David Wolfe)
It seems to start mainly from Ancient Greece but has got as far as modern slang where it has been defined (urban dictionary) as another term for fag or faggot; used to hate on any person looking, acting, or being accused of being a homosexual. As in “Noah your such a fig.” The same source defines it as an acronym for “Female Identified Gay” A woman who identifies as a gay man and is not trans. A woman who is a gay man on the inside. Looking back at the history however there is even more:
“Gathering from the vine was like gathering figs, gathering testicles, gathering female fertility, gathering what is ripe and full of orge, gathering anger. The relation of fertility to both eras and anger allows for the metaphorical transfer of the rules of viticulture, fig gathering, heterosexuality, and homosexuality to processes of anger and punishment and makes punishment itself an analogue to sexual intercourse.
The Athenians had a number of fig-related words that could be used to insult those who misspent their erotic passions. In the Peace (1351), sukologein and sukazein are used to describe excessive homosexual intercourse. In another play Cleon is essentially accused 6f) being a homosexual rapist with a word that means “squeezing figs” (aposukazein, Kn. 259). He treats other people’s “testicles” too aggressively and too lustily. Negative forms of sexual behavior included not only “fig squeezing” (aposukazein) but also “fig gathering” (psenizein), another euphemism for homosexual contrectation.’’3 Cleon violated the norms of eras by acting too aggressively.
But how did the sycophant, who “pointed out figs,” violate the norms for standard use of the passions? According to Xenophon, the vine is supposed to point out to the farmer which fruits to pick and only those. There is therefore a right time and method for the exposure of ripe figs or of orge. There were rules against improper exposure in the sexual context. According to Henderson, the desire to “expose what should be hidden” was a fundamental part of sexual aggression. Calling attention to one’s opponent’s genitals was an act of violence, and according to Henderson, “references to testicles in Aristophanes almost always occur in threats (to rip out someone’s testicles) or in violent erotic advances (seizing the testicles in preparation for sexual contact) (e.g., Clouds 713, Birds 442).”
From the book “The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens” By Danielle S. Allen
The fig tree is the symbol of abundance, fertility, and sweetness. But how does it merit the term “super food”?
For many years the fig has been used as a coffee substitute. It is a quick and easy “pick me up” without sugar which is easy to store and carry. A no mess quick snack which boosts you instantly. The fruit contains a proteolytic enzyme that is considered an aid to digestion and is used by the pharmaceutical industry. And, because of its high alkalinity it has been mentioned as being beneficial to persons wishing to quit smoking.
Figs contain a natural humectant — a chemical that will extend freshness and moistness in baked products. A chemical found in figs, Psoralen, has been used for thousands of years to treat skin pigmentation diseases. Psoralen, which occurs naturally in figs, some other plants and fungi, is a skin sensitizer that promotes tanning in the sun.
Figs provide more fiber than any other common fruit or vegetable. The fiber in figs is both soluble and insoluble. Both types of fiber are important for good health.
Figs have nutrients especially important for today’s busy lifestyles. One quarter-cup serving of dried figs provides 5 grams of fiber — 20% of the recommended Daily Value. That serving also adds 6% of iron, 6% of calcium, and 7% of the Daily Value for potassium. And, they have no fat, no sodium, and no cholesterol. Recent research has shown that California Figs also have a high quantity of polyphenol antioxidants.
So much goodness wrapped in one fig? For sure it earns the term “super food”!
“Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!”
Immediately the tree withered.” – Matthew 21:18-22
The excerpt is well known, the explanation less so. Most religious researchers believe that Jesus was crucified probably on the 6th of April, 30 A.D. Which means that when he met the above mentioned fig tree it was not meant to be in fruit anyway as it was long before summer. However fig trees at that time produce taqsh, small hard, almond sized knobs on the plant which poor peasants were often forced to eat for lack of anything better. If the tree has no such fig precursors it means that it will not bear fruit this season. Jesus was not cursing the fig tree but simply announcing what any person who lived in those times would know. After a long day walking, Jesus perhaps hoped to have a small snack, was disappointed, and thus pronounced the tree barren.
Google searches for “fig tree” are also, as expected seasonal. From March through until September people are more interested in it either because they want to plant a fig tree, or take care of a fig tree. A modern day Jesus could see the following pattern of seasonality in Google searches:
That green line is the amount of searches (U.S.) for “fig tree”. Every year they spike from March to September. But what is that blue line which follows them so closely? It is the google searches for “brake caliper”! In fact the correlation is extremely high at r=0.9069. Similar in seasonality, yet not so exact in volume are searches for “paint code”, “oil filter”, “valve adjustment”, “oil drain” and “gear oil”. It seems that as Americans come out of winter they have two things in mind: fixing their car and tending to their fig trees!
Here is the full excerpt from the book “Hard Sayings of the Bible”, (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce, Manfred Brauch)
“The problem is most satisfactorily cleared up in a discussion called “The Barren Fig Tree” published many years ago by W. M. Christie, a Church of Scotland minister in Palestine under the British mandatory regime. He pointed out first the time of year at which the incident is said to have occurred (if, as is probable, Jesus was crucified on April 6th, A.D. 30, the incident occurred during the first days of April). “Now,” wrote Christie, “the facts connected with the fig tree are these. Toward the end of March the leaves begin to appear, and in about a week the foliage coating is complete. Coincident with [this], and sometimes even before, there appears quite a crop of small knobs, not the real figs, but a kind of early forerunner. They grow to the size of green almonds, in which condition they are eaten by peasants and others when hungry.
When they come to their own indefinite maturity they drop off.” These precursors of the true fig are called taqsh in
Palestinian Arabic. Their appearance is a harbinger of the fully formed appearance of the true fig some six weeks later.
So, as Mark says, the time for figs had not yet come. But if the leaves appear without any taqsh, that is a sign that
there will be no figs. Since Jesus found “nothing but leaves”—leaves without any taqsh—he knew that “it was an ab-
solutely hopeless, fruidess fig tree” and said as much. But if that is the true explanation of his words, why should anyone trouble to record the incident as though it had some special significance? Because it did have some special significance. As recorded by Mark, it is an acted parable with the same lesson as the spoken parable of the fruitess fig tree in Luke 13:6-9.
In that spoken parable a landowner came three years in succession expecting fruit from a fig tree on his property, and when year by year it proved to be fruidess, he told the man in charge of his vineyard to cut it down because it was using up the ground to no good purpose. In both the acted parable and the spoken parable it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fig tree represents the city of Jerusalem, unresponsive to Jesus as he came to it with the message of God, and thereby incurring destruction. Elsewhere Luke records how Jesus wept over the city’s blindness to its true well-being and foretold its ruin “because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Lk 19:41-44 RSV). It is because the incident of the cursing of the fig tree was seen to convey the same lesson that Mark, followed by Matthew, recorded it.”
Traditionally, foods which look like certain human body parts are considered good for you in general, but more specifically good for the body parts they resemble. In general this notion is completely false of course. Just because figs look like balls there is no reason they should be good for males in particular. Don’t forget that testicles are also colloquially called “nuts” more often than “figs”. However the urban dictionary actually defines figs as testicles in one popular usage. As in “she kicked him in the figs”.
Aztecs called the avocado “testicle trees” and they actually had a point. They are packed with folates which statistically correlate to higher sperm production. Figs are high in magnesium and zinc which help maintain high testosterone levels. This isn’t proven to affect testicle size or shape, though it is possibly beneficial to their health and reproductive capability.
Figs are of course not the only thing in this shape. Pears and certain nuts are almost identical as are a lot of other naturally occuring items around us. So call them what you like, figs are great for the health of ….all of you!
“We know by looking into the eyes of the hungry in the streets of our cities…” The man is a writer. A blogger. A tweeter. But surely not the material of a finance minister. Maybe this whole thing is just a scheme on his part so he can sell more books. Maybe he wants to charge as much as Bill Clinton for speeches as soon as resigns. (It shouldn’t be too long the way he is behaving so far!)
No, Greeks are not poor. By any measure. This is a complete and blatant lie. Greeks are fat, lazy and spoilt by politicians like Mr Varoufakis. It is pretty amazing that an educated economist is not afraid to lie like this. Does he not know how to measure poverty? No, Mr Yanis (with one “n” because you are a brand, not a normal person), poverty is not measured by the unemployment rate. Lazy people might well be unemployed, in a country like Greece where many jobs are “not good enough” for many Greeks anymore. People working the black economy state themselves as unemployed. Even businessmen lately I have been talking to, after seeing the tax situation, are declaring themselves unemployed in the hope of a better treatment from the erratic State. Unemployment is the result of incompetent governments afraid to make much needed changes, not austerity per se.
And Mr Varoufakis is just making it worse. His month of antics has cost us dearly. Not only in capital flight, not only in missed opportunities, not only has he made us the laughing stock of Europe but – worse of all – he has instigated the worse kind of nationalism possible in this situation. He has made Greeks proud to be the laughing stock of Europe. With a logic similar to our childish prime minister, cheap tricks and no ties, he has blatantly disregarded all protocol, lazily refused to do the work necessary and cheaply accused the media or other European leaders for his own lack of skills. This government has known for a long time they would be in Brussels for this negotiation yet it didn’t prepare anything at all. It got the whole world looking at us ….and deciding that Greeks are indeed lazy and cantankerous, unstable immature children; all about pomp and words, not deeds.
Germans know very well that Greeks are not poor. They know that Greeks own their own houses, most also own a country home in those wonderful places others come on to holiday. Many also own a third or fourth plot of land or house at a village or an apartment they rent out in the center of town. They know that while they cycle to work or take public transport, Greeks lavishly drive themselves around everywhere. Greeks don’t buy used things. Any way you look at our lifestyles they are richer than most other Europeans. Greeks still spend big time on many retail luxuries which other Europeans have outruled a long time ago. In fact, Mr Varoufakis would have a pretty hard time as an economist, finding an indicator of “Greek poverty”. Which is probably why he uses vague statements about “too much austerity”. Too much for who? With what end result in mind? In a country with a disproportionate number of pensioners, does he have the balls to deal with real problems like that or will we sit around wrangling about minimum wage and other publicity stunts?
We all know what needs to be done. The problem is not the size of the debt. Even if you wrote it all off tomorrow, Greece is in trouble. Those “structural changes” everyone goes on about are very far away. Not because Mr Varoufakis doesn’t know what needs to be done. Everyone knows what needs to be done. Everyone outside of Greece that is. Because most Greeks are still waiting for handouts. Our huge civil service voted for SYRIZA hoping they would repeat the old PASOK trick of lending money and giving it away. Like little children, most Greeks think austerity is just a bad dream. SYRIZA gave them a campaign of “hope” but they might as well called it a campaign of “wild dreams”.
Well only 1/4 of Greeks voted for SYRIZA. They claim “democratic mandate” but they don’t have anything of the sort. There are a lot of us who know that our country needs probably 20-30 years of slow and painful change before the next generation emerges truly globalised and ready for the way the world really works, not expecting handouts from anyone. It is change which has to happen inside us first and foremost. No IMF, or Troika, or whatever word for it Mr Varoufaki chooses for foreign help, can change that.
You are no messiah Mr Varoufaki. You are a liar. Enjoy the limelight while you have it.
-We have to get more loans just to pay the interest! We will never manage to pay it off!
So what do you propose?
-Write all the debt off so we can recover.
But that would mean other Europeans having to pay for it.
-Yes, but you are all richer than us. We have very very high unemployment.
You do, eh? Are those unemployed looking for work?
-Of course they are!
So why are the cafeterias full of young people paying three times the price of a coffee in other European cities?
-That’s not typical. There are really poor people in Greece in other areas.
Oh really? Can you show me one indicator that supports the idea that Greeks are poor?
-We don’t need indicators. People are dying on the streets.
More than they are dying in other European cities? This is inaccurate. You have the least deaths of homeless people or elderly people. They are living better than others.
-Because we care! We have extended families.
No, because half the population lives with handouts from the Public Sector. Either pensions you receive much earlier than other Europeans, or civil servant positions which are ridiculous…
-We work more than other Europeans!
Well, it must be pretty unproductive work, because your country keeps needing more money.
-Not our fault. All our governments are sold out to the Americans and to Europe. They suck our blood and get richer as we get poor.
Well, why are you allowing your government to make fools of you in Brussels now, demanding ridiculous things in the most rude way possible?
-They are heroes! Someone had to stand up to the bloody Germans!
Germans have less than 50% home ownership. Greeks are above 90%.
-That is simply a different culture.
Germans share car rides, prefer buying used clothes, have price differentiation in their product lines because they shop around for price.
-Well that’s just miserable! We Greeks don’t bother with rubbish like that.
My point is, Germans and other Europeans try to save their money. If they don’t have enough money, they go to the movies on a Monday afternoon when it is cheaper, they split their restaurant bills based on what they ate.
-What an awful idea! In Greece we don’t scimp like that! We order plenty food and then fight over who will pay the bill.
This is not a political statement. A lot of friends and business associates are calling me these days and I thought I should put together the kind of reassuring statement our government is not. From a communications point of view the country is in chaos. Nobody is controlling the agenda and -though improved – Greeks are still passionate political beings. Social media doesn’t help.
There are two, equally ridiculous, conflicting conspiracy theories. One is that SYRIZA is a pawn of Putin. They are expecting the Russians or the Chinese to bail us out. The far right is also on their payroll. It is a plan to ruin Europe. Funnily enough that is the target of the Americans too! In the other conspiracy theory, the previous government was ordered to step down by the US and the new one is secretly working with the Americans now….in order to ruin Europe!
All this would simply be foder for the Facebook village idiot to rant about were it not for the fact that the new government is indeed the perfect tool for anyone wanting to control the Euro. The unflappable Merkel has overseen six bail outs so far quite successfully. She is treating us like a patient wise old aunt, waiting until we run out of money before she gets involved. Greece however is the country in her EuroFamily that produces such extreme stock market reactions. Greece is the “heart”of Europe, it is a symbol. It seems to swing out of the spotlight and then back in again. One crazy statement from Greece (with the appropriate amount of international media attention) and currencies around the world bounce up or down.
Our politicians don’t help. The current government is naive, disorganised and bold. That is a dangerous combination. Our finance minister, much like our prime minister, seems to show a blatant disregard for most institutions. This isn’t just about bright shirts or the lack of ties. The new government is walking an equally erratic line within its borders when attacking the church or taking back promises it made to civil servants. Alexis Tsipras could say “we will dig a trench and float off into the Mediterranean until we get to Cuba”and nobody would bat an eyelid. We all know he will change his mind the next day.
So don’t worry about Greece. It is best to treat us like the village idiot. With patience, humour and the persistence we need. All hopes of a miracle solution, whether inside the country or internationally, are simply confusing matters. This country needs to work hard for many years to become competitive in the global economy. There are many of us who understand this, unfortunately none of them make it to government. In the meantime, Greeks will do what Greeks do best since ancient times: from Persians to Philip of Macedonia, the first world war or Byzantium, we are always making conspiracy theories about how “foreign powers”are trying to destroy us…
The Imitation Game was not as good a film as it was made out to be. Maybe if you know nothing about Turing or the history around it all, or if you enjoy watching whodunnit TV shows. Some people summarized it as “the story of how a closet gay shortened the war by two years”. Well that is a terrible summary. Probably because the film isn’t sure where to focus. What is much more interesting is that thanks to his invention, the computer, we can quite accurately guess how many gay men in the U.S. are in the closet looking at Google searches.
In the film, the only part I found interesting (but the film just glossed over in a video clip like quick series of shots with music) was after they broke the Enigma code. They had to use some of the intelligence, but not so much that the Nazis figured out they were eavesdropping. If they saved every ship from Uboat attacks, the Germans would know they knew how Enigma worked and change the whole coding system thus rendering it uncrackable again. They had to calculate the impact of every Nazi move on the war effort and decide where they could pass on vital information to the Allies to make a difference. Only just enough of a difference though…
In that sense, Google is much much worse than Hitler and the entire Nazi empire. They own the global search market. They know what we want better than us because not only do they have our individual searches, but the technology to evaluate it too. And how much do they tell us? They statistically jiggle, hide, mix up, muddle and do everything they can so we can’t reverse engineer what they know. Which is a lot. Google knows what we are looking for. Google knows what we are thinking. It is the closest to an omniscient being we have ever had. Even without their impressive number crunching technology, just looking at the raw data of searches in a country or particular region would spark a million new business ideas in the head of even the most ignorant person.
I am pretty serious when I say that I would willingly cut off a finger in exchange for access to Google big data. It really would be the closest to playing God I can imagine. Surely way beyond any previous homo sapiens could even imagine.
So when Apple posts “record profits” I just smile. Google could easily make ten times as much. But then everyone would start asking questions. When Google chooses certain cities for ultra fast access, how are they choosing? Should we all be focusing on those cities? When Google buys a company, what do they know that we don’t? Exactly like Turing’s team in World War II, Google is carefully giving away only just so much so we can’t reverse engineer what they are up to.
Unfortunately my finger is still on my hand and I am none the wiser though…
Figs are a densely mineralized sweet fruit. They contain one of the highest concentrations of calcium of any food.
