The right word for CoP is FERMENTATION

No I'm not flipped out.. I just noticed a great analogy that I'm going to explain.

Today I was reading a post on com-prac posted by my friend Pete Bond:

"I agree with Fred that they can be seeded but then there's no gurantee that what emerges is what is envisaged by the seeder (no guarantee that a successful attempt to cultivate a CoP will lead to the success of the 'host-sponsor')"

I read it and as I did a big fat "NO" resonated in my head.

Mind you, 95% of my thinking is intuition, so my thoughts don't come with an explanation, unless I decide to find it. Thus, I started thinking it over while I was doing other things. The "no" became deeper and deeper, but no explanation was emerging.

I looked at my watch and remembered it was about time for me to strain my kefir. For the ones of you that aren't familiar with it, kefir is a fermented milk. In order to make the "real one", you need kefir grains.

Looking at my grains, I had the feeling that I was near the explanation of my "no" to Pete's post. My heart was beating fast, meaning a solution was close.

Back typing now and reading some stuff in my emailbox, mumbling. All of a sudden, I get thinking of kefir again. Namely, I think about the grains.

Kefir grains are composed of a polysaccharides that hosts 4 bacteria genuses in a symbiotic relationship: Lactobacilli, Streptococci-Lactococci, Acetobacter and Yeasts. Some individual genuses may be or not be there, it's not important. What's important is the "family" they belong to, and the quantitative relationship among families. My heart is beating faster. A solution is very close.

Here it is!

Like with Kefir, one can not "make" the grains, but it does not mean that kefir can not be replicated! You have to detect the "grains" and put them in the right medium (did I say nucleation of a CoP?) and you have to use special precautions to preserve their aliveness (did I say facilitation). After which you WILL obtain kefir, everytime, even if it will have different thickness, flavour, tanginess and even if you might like it more or less depending on the batch. It will still be kefir.

We think we can't reproduce a CoP because we don't know what the equivalent of the kefir grain is and which kind of facilitation it requires. That doesn't mean we can't produce CoPs. It does mean we didn't understand (yet) WHAT the equivalent of the grains is.

To come to a conclusion, only a person (or a group of persons) that has seen the pattern (consciously or unconsciously) can reproduce it.

And here we get into Jostein Gaarder's world ;;)