The setting was a cabbage farm here in a remote stretch of Suffolk County, but Representative Rick A. Lazio and his tiny audience of local farmers had strayed beyond the topic of crops to an issue of more immediate concern.
This topic of "watersheds" crops up frequently in a weekly discussion class I am holding with eight Yale students this semester.
The technology business has become an inevitable topic of conversation, cropping up at dinner parties, where sides must be taken; in the aisles of jets descending toward the runway, where flight attendants' spouses want a job, or got a job, or are leaving a job at a big tech firm; and in Tenderloin-district delis, where proprietors ruminate on a demographic change "from hookers to tech hookers".
Nematode Resistant (Nem-R) genes are an obvious topic of interest for crop protection.
But the topic of driving kept cropping up; it is infantilizing to spend so much time waiting to be driven here and there, Saudi women say, and drivers' salaries place an enormous financial burden on many households.
Participants will learn how to select and manage appropriate crops via the topics of: varietal selection, crop nutrients, pest and disease management, as well as take a 'nuts-and-bolts' tour to discuss site selection and design considerations.
The topic of the Lib Dems crops up again, with queries about Mr Cameron's views on proportional representation (broadly sceptical) and the virtues of a hung parliament (none, just "bickering, arguing, drift and dither").Mr Cameron's predicament is ironic.
Even though one pillar of the group is to refrain from giving any opinions or engaging in external "controversies," the topic of cannabis legalization has cropped up among members, especially as American states and countries such as Canada legalize cannabis for recreational use.
Fortunatus' program will provide women from Kilosa, Tanzania with training on a number of topics, including crop production, vegetable value chains, entrepreneurship, and social mobilization around gender issues.
The topic of pushing off retirement first cropped up in the 1990s, when a generation of newly trained PhDs discovered that many baby boomers weren't retiring, which meant there weren't enough jobs in academia for aspiring new faculty.
