In the previous post I sketched some little dishes and bean counters for a progressive rummy game, Telefunken. Don't know how it got the name in Bolivia, telefunken is German for television, right? Anyway we were talking about how luck vs skill works out. I've been lucky at cards always and when we play Telefunken I joke that the scorekeeper, usually me, is the luckiest player. I never cheat. I think cheating ruins the point of having rules so ruins the game.
But back to luck. We played for years in Bolivia when we were there the first time. Jennie and Larry were toddlers. Our bean counters in Bolivia were the Jequirity bean. We were told the were poisonous but I thought maybe like poinsettia plants so OK if we didn't eat them. I was talking about them on wetcanvas so looked up a photo of them. They were so pretty to use in little wooden bowls for our counters. Every one of us had the beans at our houses and on a shelf or in a drawer with the cards.
This was in Wikipedia
The toxin abrin is a dimer consisting of two protein subunits, termed A and B. The B chain facilitates abrin's entry into a cell by bonding to certain transport proteins on cell membranes, which then transport the toxin into the cell. Once inside the cell, the A chain prevents protein synthesis by inactivating the 26S subunit of the ribosome. One molecule of abrin will inactivate up to 1,500 ribosomes per second.
Symptoms are identical to those of ricin, except abrin is more toxic by almost two orders of magnitude; the fatal dose of abrin is approximately 1/75 that of the fatal dose of ricin (though the abrin in ingested seeds may be absorbed much more slowly than the ricin in Ricinus communis even if the seeds are chewed and the coat penetrated, allowing time for successful rescue efforts in at least some cases.[8]) Abrin has an LD50 of only 0.56 μg/kg in mice, and Kingsbury lists a toxic dose in humans at 0.00015% body weight, or approximately 0.1 mg for a 150 lb human.[9] Ingesting intact seeds may result in no clinical findings, as they can pass undigested through the gastrointestinal tract because of their hard shell.[10]
Luckily they have the protective shell and none of us ever ingested them and died. I was thinking of how Larry used to eat the little round dog food, he could have tried the beans. Yikes!
I also carried them around from 1974 to our other postings and brought the beans back to the other house here in Bastrop and continued using them when we played cards. Cole and Christy, our grandchildren, were young here. Amazing that no one was sick in all those years. I call that very lucky at cards!
Today I sketched out on the porch on my iPad with the app, Brushes, and my Apple Pencil. It was cloudy and cool, almost cold after our 100+ degree weather. It was 61 degrees F. this morning with a high of 75 predicted for today. Can't get too comfortable as it will be back in the 90s for tomorrow. Some places got 2 or 3 inches of rain. It went all around and mostly west of us. We got .07 inch of rain here.
For Scavenger Hunt 647
Number 3, primary color - red and Number 4, secondary color - green.
6 comments:
You were all lucky with those beans. A cousin of mine ended up in the hospital when he was young. He stuck beans up his nose. Don't know if these were toxic that way. They are a very pretty color and I'm sure made a nice decoration. lol
Joan, we were very lucky. Other beans seem to be toxic when raw, but not to the extent of these red and black ones. Poor cousin of yours. Ouch! They were very pretty. I had little wooden bowls, one lady had little pewter ones. Looked nice. Evil grin.
WE bought necklaces made from those beans while in Ecuador.
Bag Blog, uh oh... Con cuidado....
Cool sketch, Mom.
Joanna posted:
Cool sketch, Mom.
I didn't post for some reason. Thanks, Joanna. Digital is interesting, always takes me longer than a regular sketch.
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