James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

Mary points out that, after a free registration, you can see a streaming video of Pamela and Raoul’s talking about the same issues at the Long Now Foundation.

The summary post has moved. Find it here.

It’s a common leap when people start talking about Bananas, and how their lack of genetic diversity meant it was impossible to breed resistance to the blight that destroyed them (see more here), to then jump to condemnation of our modern, monoculture based agriculture as a fragile edifice waiting to be toppled over by the first strong breeze (disease, climate change, oil running out, whatever the disaster of the day happens to be).

Obviously I disagree. (more…)

Who knew the different between a crank pull and a crank puller would be so big.

An Asian Chestnut growing in Iowa

Apologies in advance, this entry isn’t as tightly edited as I prefer but I’m still swamped.

The American Chestnut. Once three billion chestnuts grew in the Eastern US. Reading the wikipedia page today the discovery of individual trees that have survived long enough to flower is worthy of report. The culprit, a bark fungus introduced from Asia. Asian Chestnuts can survive the infection, but American ones had never had the evolutionary pressure to develop ways to survive. Conceptually it’s the same as when people who’ve lived for many generations without exposure are exposed to smallpox, (although if it came down to it, I’d choose losing three billion trees in a second over the millions of people killed by smallpox).

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I’m going to be in SF for a big part of the day attending Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a free music festival, so I probably won’t have time to write anything too interesting today. So it’s a a day for linking to other people’s cool stuff:

• This guy created a map of every McDonalds around the country. Pretty fun, though I don’t share his despair at their frequency. I’ve done a lot of multi-day drives and the great thing about franchises is being able to pull into a place where you know the menu, and the prices for lunch or dinner even if you’ve never been in the state before. I remember getting Subway the first time I drove through Laramie, WY. The counterexample was stopping at a cool looking diner in north eastern Missouri getting stared at as we walking in the door, and feeling awkward the whole time about being the only people under fifty in the whole joint.
• California is still working on a plan to build a high speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Which would be great for traffic, the environment, and poor grad students who want to see more of the big cities before I return to my midwestern homeland. The downside is $45 billion for 800 miles (>$55 million per mile) seems like a ridiculous price tag.
• Check out the Ig nobel awards. A humorous set of reverse nobel prizes, this year awards for things such as a doctor publishing on have cracked only one set of knuckles for decades with no ill effects and a study of whether you’ll do more damage by hitting someone you don’t like with an empty or full beer bottle.

Hope ya’ll are having a good Saturday.