Ancients Manipulated Corn Genes

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

According to Ancients Manipulated Corn Genes, the grass-like teosinte plant become the domesticated maize plant when early farmers bred for useful traits — useful to humans, at any rate:

The ancestral plant of corn, teosinte, was first domesticated some 6,000 to 9,000 years ago in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico, the researchers said in this week’s issue of Science magazine. At first, teosinte was a grassy-like plant with many stems bearing small cobs with kernels sheathed in hard shells.

By cultivating plants with desirable characteristics, farmers caused teosinte to morph into an increasingly useful crop. The researchers said by 5,500 years ago the size of the kernels was larger. By 4,400 years ago, all of the gene variants found in modern corn were present in crops grown in Mexico.

The plant and its grain were so changed by the directed cultivation that it evolved into a form that could not grow in the wild and was dependent on farmers to survive from generation to generation, the study found.

The genes:

One gene changed the architecture of corn from a plant with many branches to one with a single stalk with a male tassel at the top and female cobs growing along the side.

Another genetic change softened the outer hull on the kernel. Before the change, the plant depended on animals to spread its seeds. After animals ate the corn, the tough outer shells would allow the kernels to pass unharmed through the gut.

With a softer hull, the kernels would not survive passage through the gut of an animal. As a result, the plant became dependent on farmers to spread its seeds.

Another genetic change caused the kernels to stick more tightly to the cob. And still another change modified the starch of the grain.

This final change, the authors wrote, made the corn more suitable for making tortillas, and, thus, may have been an early variant encouraged by the farmers.

Fiji Villagers Apologize for Cannibalism

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

Fiji Villagers Apologize for Cannibalism:

Villagers in a remote Fijian community staged an elaborate ceremony of apology Thursday for the relatives of a British missionary killed and eaten here 136 years ago.

The Rev. Thomas Baker and eight Fijian followers were killed and devoured by cannibals in 1867 in the village of Nabutautau, high in the hills of the South Pacific island of Viti Levu. Residents say their community has been cursed ever since.

In a mixture of ancient pagan and modern Christian rites, the villagers have staged a series of ceremonies hoping to erase the misfortunes they believe have kept them poor.

If you’re staging ceremonies to lift the curse that has left you poor, I’m betting you’ll stay poor for a long, long time.

It’s the little details that make the story — like trying to eat his boots:

The rituals — which started about a month ago — culminated Thursday with the offering of cows, specially woven mats and 30 carved sperm-whale teeth known as tabua to 10 Australian descendants of Baker.

“This is our third apology but, unlike the first two, this one is being offered physically to the family of Mr. Baker,” Ratu Filimoni Nawawabalavu, the village’s chief, told The Associated Press.

Nawawabalavu is the great-grandson of the chief responsible for cooking the missionary in an earthen oven.

Past apologies have not helped. In 1993, villagers presented the Methodist Church of Fiji with Baker’s boots — which cannibals tried unsuccessfully to cook and eat.

Why did they kill and eat the missionary?

There are differing accounts of Baker’s demise. A villager said last month the incident started when the chief borrowed Baker’s hat. Baker tried to take it back without knowing that touching a chief’s head was taboo and punishable by death.

Others say the missionary lent the chief a comb, then touched his head as he tried to retrieve it from the chief’s tight, curly hair.

Back to my original point:

Villagers believe that since 1867, either Baker’s spirit or disapproving gods have made sure that modern developments like electricity, a school, piped water supply and other essentials enjoyed by most Fijian villagers have been kept from them.

California Bison Sent to New Dakota Home

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

About 100 bison are being moved from Catalina Island to South Dakota. From California Bison Sent to New Dakota Home:

About a third of the Southern California island’s 300 bison were shipped off this week to South Dakota, where they will live on two Indian reservations.
[...]
A study released last year showed that bison severely damaged native plants by grazing, wallowing in dirt and rubbing themselves against trees to scratch or shed their thick coats. The animals also spread nonnative plants by carrying seeds in their hair.

The animals, however, are extremely popular with tourists, the lifeblood of the island economy.

How did they get on the island. Good question.

Bison have lived on Catalina Island since the 1920s, when 14 animals were brought in for a movie shoot.

The finished film, “The Vanishing American,” had no footage of bison. Still, the wooly beasts became a mainstay on Santa Catalina a few years later, after chewing gum mogul William Wrigley Jr. acquired a majority interest in the company that owned the island.

Every Man a Demiurge

Wednesday, November 12th, 2003

Every Man a Demiurge presents an amusing take on the Matrix trilogy:

If you want to understand the Matrix trilogy, think of it as a capsule history of baby-boom rock. The original Matrix is a three-chord riff of a movie: a simple, familiar idea — “What if reality is a great big fake?” — amplified and transformed into an irresistible hook. The Matrix Reloaded is a 1970s prog-rock concept album: sprawling, pretentious, and ultimately incoherent, but brimming with ideas and virtuoso displays. And The Matrix: Revolutions is an over-the-hill pop star recycling someone else’s material — the sort of music you’d hear on a Michelob commercial, circa 1987.

Even if Revolutions weren’t already slated to be the final installment, its chilly critical and commercial reception should guarantee we won’t find ourselves awash in ads next year hyping The Matrix 4: This Time, It’s Personal.

Airpower’s Century

Wednesday, November 12th, 2003

Airpower’s Century presents an excellent interview with Walter Boyne about the history of airpower. Boyne points out that reconnaissance aircraft quickly proved their worth, and soon aircraft found a related role:

Well, the Germans had overextended themselves on two fronts, and they had to depend upon superior artillery on the Western Front to hold their line. Long-range artillery has to be precise to be effective; you have to hit what you’re aiming at, and to do this, you have to know where your shots fall. It didn’t take long for both sides to figure out that with an airplane you could bring your guns on target very quickly. So observation planes became critical, and that meant you needed fighter planes to shoot them down. Then you needed fighters to fight those fighters, so an entirely new generation of aircraft, the fighter airplane, grew out of it. They got all the glory, but they were an afterthought. They were necessary only because airborne observation had changed the nature of war.

Naturally, when we think of WWI, we think of WWI flying aces — but strategic bombing got its start in WWI:

The odd thing is that while the First World War saw almost every sort of airpower that would be used in the Second — even the cruise missile — the only things we remember are the dogfights and the aces. We think of strategic bombing — striking targets designed to destroy a whole nation’s will to fight, as opposed to simply winning a battle — as a development of World War II. But it wasn’t. The German bomber and Zeppelin raids on London during World War I were an immense campaign. It’s been almost entirely forgotten, but it made a lasting impression on both belligerents. The Zeppelins dropped more than 200 tons of bombs and killed over 500 people, while the bombers killed another 800 and wounded over 2,000. The Germans thought that this was a very small return for a large investment, so German planners stayed away from strategic bombing when they prepared for the next war. But the British, who, after all, had had the bombs fall on them, thought the campaign was a success. They believed strategic bombing would be vastly more destructive in the next war, and as a result, the British — and we Americans — eventually developed devastating strategic bombing forces. Germany never did. Moreover, Britain had a pretty good air defense system in place in time for the 1940 Blitz.

German Zeppelins dropped more than 200 tons of bombs on London. Wow.

Americans and the British both had the wrong idea about fighter planes. They thought: We’ll send fighters over to Germany, and the Germans will come up, and we’ll shoot them down. But the Germans would just sit on the ground, because the Allied fighter planes weren’t doing any harm. The only way you could get the Germans in the air was to attack a target sufficiently valuable that they had to come up and defend it. [...] Even those massive portions of the strategic bombing campaign against targets that didn’t matter, or couldn’t be destroyed — the cities, or the will of the Germans to fight — nonetheless forced the relocation of the Luftwaffe’s fighters to Germany, away from the fronts, which allowed them to be destroyed, and hugely contributed to the Allied victories on the ground.

Allied strategic bombing pulled a lot of German resources away from both (ground) fronts.

Hitler would probably have been better advised to say, “We’ll accept the damage. We won’t make the choice for anti-aircraft guns instead of anti-tank guns, because the air campaign isn’t gaining any territory and the tanks are.”The thousands of gunners, the tens of thousands of shells they required, and the 88-millimeter guns taken away from the front: All these had an immense effect, and in the west, possibly a decisive one.

Read the whole article.

Vietnam Unveils Ancient Artifacts from Excavation

Tuesday, November 11th, 2003

Vietnam Unveils Ancient Artifacts from Excavation:

Ancient terracotta dragons, phoenix statues and ceramic urns unearthed from a royal compound accidentally discovered where Vietnam’s new parliament was being built were put on display for the first time on Tuesday.

I have to wonder what kind of mystical powers these ancient artifacts possess…

So how many artifacts are we talking about?

In its first international briefing at the site, the Ministry of Information and Culture displayed some of the estimated two million items that have been uncovered since excavation began in December 2002 in the capital Hanoi.

Two million artifacts? Well, they’re not all cool artifacts:

Deep wells, ornate pavilions and bases for mighty pillars were found along with the more mundane rubbish dumps and tiled drains. Some gold jewelry, decorated swords and a cannon were also retrieved along with skeletal remains from a later period.

So why haven’t we heard anything about this until now?

Access to the site has been strictly controlled, with foreign media not permitted to visit.

K-1 USA News – Sumo Star Akebono to Fight Bob Sapp

Monday, November 10th, 2003

My sumo-savvy buddy, John, clued me in to this piece of K-1 USA News:

In a press conference at the Imperial Palace Hotel, K-1 announced today that Sumo star Akebono will fight Bob Sapp on New Year’s Eve.

K-1 is Japan’s premier kickboxing promotion, and Bob Sapp is their latest star. He’s 6’7″ and 374 lbs (with defined abs) — and Akebono dwarfs him.

Akebono was born Chad Rowan in Oahu, Hawaii. In 1993 he was given the fighting name Akebono when he became the first non-Japanese to achieve the ranking of Yokozuna (Grand Champion), Sumo’s highest honor. In his nine years as a Yokozuna, Akebono amassed a sparkling record of 432 wins in 554 bouts.

Said Akebono at the press conference: “I would like to announce that I, Taro Akebono, applied for leave from the Japan Sumo Association on November 5th, and today this request has been granted. From now on, I will take up a new direction as a professional fighter in K-1. I would like to thank the Japan Sumo Association and Azuma-Seki Oyakata [Akebono's stable master] for supporting me, and also everyone in the K-1 organization.”

Akebono’s announcement garnered a phenomenal amount of interest. The press conference attracted a total of 300 media people, including Japanese national broadcasters NHK. In all a total of 23 TV cameras were focused on the 34 year-old Yokozuna, making this by far the biggest-ever K-1 press conference — two TV stations went so far as to interrupt their regular programming to carry the announcement live!

Akebono said he learned about K-1 from fighters such as Francisco Filho and Ray Sefo, and wanted to compete in K-1 to show his three children (too young to have followed his Sumo career) that their father still has his fighting spirit.

Clone Wars

Monday, November 10th, 2003

I hated both of the recent Star Wars movies — or, at least, I was sorely disappointed by them — but I’m enthralled by the new Clone Wars five-minute, animated shorts on Cartoon Network. (You can watch them on-line too.) I had a similar reaction to the toys; they were much, much cooler than the movies. (I didn’t buy any of the toys, but seeing them at Target did get me excited to see the movies.)

The Marxist and the Methodist

Monday, November 10th, 2003

In The Marxist and the Methodist, Murray Sayle reviews Jonathan Fenby’s Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost — and shares some amusing tidbits in the process:

Even in his glory days Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, durable president of the Republic of China, had his critics. American liberals derided him as “Cash-my-cheque” in acknowledgment of the monstrous corruption of his in-laws, although not of the abstemious Gimo, as his grandiose rank was usually abbreviated, himself. General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, the American chief of staff forced on him by President Roosevelt, referred to him as “The Peanut” because of his short stature and shiny bald head, and described him to a journalist as “an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son-of-a-bitch”. No respecter of persons, Vinegar Joe in the privacy of his diary called Chiang’s great rival Mouse Tongue (Patrick Hurley, boozy US ambassador to China, made it Moose Dung) and here lies the reason for the Gimo’s relative eclipse. History worships winners, and the Gimo had the bad luck to come up against Mao Tse-tung (in the old spelling), military/political commander of genius and the cruellest ruler China has ever had, at least since Emperor Chin Shi-Huang-Ti built the Great Wall (“a human life for every stone”), ordered the burning of the books and gave the country its western name.

Here’s an interesting cast of characters — and an interesting way of introducing them:

When China’s Doctor Zhivago is filmed they will provide a rich cast of tragi-comedians. The Christian General, Feng Yuxiang, who kidnapped recruits from the countryside and baptised them with a fire hose. The Dog Meat General, Zhang Zongchang, named after his preferred summer dish, who was described as having “the physique of an elephant, the brain of a pig and the temperament of a tiger”, a type not uncommon in military history. Zhang was reputed to have a penis as long as a pile of 86 silver dollars and to have given his concubines numbers as he could not remember their names. In Manchuria an illiterate bandit, Zhang Zuolin, promoted himself Marshal and ruled an area as large as France and Germany. When his son Zhang Xueliang took the family rank Zhang became the Old Marshal and his boy the Young Marshal. Others included the Philosopher General and the Model Governor. Flavourful character parts included Dr Sun’s portly, cigar-smoking bodyguard, the London arms dealer Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen, Big-Eared Du, boss of the Shanghai underworld, the communist International agents Hendricus Sneevliet and Borodin, otherwise General Vasilii Konstantinovich Blyukher, symbols of Moscow’s catastrophic meddling in Chiang’s China.

More good “dirt”:

But Fenby has dug up new dirt on the Gimo. He already had a wife, and knew Shanghai rather better than he let on. Earlier in the 1920s he had married Cheih-ju (“pure and unblemished”) Chen, known as Jennie, a statuesque middle-class girl 19 years his junior he had courted strenuously since she was 13. A few weeks after the wedding Jennie was diagnosed as having gonorrhoea that her husband admitted having picked up in his days as a fashionable young man-about-Shanghai when he may, says Fenby, have joined Big-Eared Du’s gang. The disease, Jennie recounted in a long-lost autobiography, left them both sterile. Certainly neither she nor Meiling had children; Chiang’s only son, Chiang Ching-kuo, future president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, was born of an even earlier marriage arranged by the Chiang family. The Gimo dumped faithful Jennie and, despite his connections there gave Shanghai a wide berth and fixed his capital at Nanking, 200 miles up the Yangtze River from the raffish City by the Sea.

An amusing language bit:

Had Japan been able to add China’s resources to the Axis I might well be writing this in another language, mit some difficulty.

(That reminds me of the Hollywood screenwriting abbreviation for silence: M.O.S. — mitout sound, a term used by a powerful German-speaking producer in the early days.)

And here’s a factoid I already knew:

Gung Ho, “work together”, was the slogan of a Chinese farmers’ co-op picked up by US Marines.

Gung ho, in English, isn’t so much about teamwork as about a can-do attitude. Merriam-Webster defines it as:

Main Entry: gung ho
Pronunciation: ‘g&[ng]-’hO
Function: adjective
Etymology: Gung ho!, motto (interpreted as meaning “work together”) adopted by certain U.S. marines, from Chinese (Beijing) g?nghé, short for Zh?ngguó G?ngyè Hézuò Shè Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society
Date: 1942
: extremely or overly zealous or enthusiastic

Bigger Products Made for Bigger People

Monday, November 10th, 2003

Bigger Products Made for Bigger People reports on some disturbing products customized for larger customers:

Goliath Casket of Lynn, Ind., every month ships four or five triplewide models, 44 inches wide compared to the standard 24. In July, Goliath started offering a 52-inch-wide model and has already sold three, company vice president Julane Davis said.

Bill Fabrey and Nancy Summer founded Amplestuff, of Bearsville, N.Y., when Summer, who weighs 450 pounds, told Fabrey that she couldn’t find a sponge to reach certain parts of her body. Fabrey, an engineer, came up with Sponge on a Stick. The company has built an entire line of products with heavier people in mind, including seat belt extenders, higher-limit scales and extra-large towels.

Children Wait Patiently For Heavily Fortified Tree House To Be Attacked

Sunday, November 9th, 2003

It’s funny because it’s true. Children Wait Patiently For Heavily Fortified Tree House To Be Attacked:

For the third uneventful day in a row, members of the Poison Ninjas Club awaited the invasion of their tree house, sources in the backyard of 1740 Sumac Road reported Monday.

“We spent all day Saturday making dirt bombs and dragging buckets of pine cones up into the tree house,” said 10-year-old club president Carrie Williams, her eyes trained on the southern border of the lawn. “When the enemy attacks, we’ll be ready. Actually, we’ve been ready for, like, three whole days.”

After standing guard throughout the weekend, Williams and her fellow Poison Ninjas left the tree unsupervised while they attended school on Monday. The Ninjas reconvened at the tree house after school and found their supplies undisturbed and no evidence of nefarious activity near the tree. Disappointed, they took up arms once again and began to stare out at the lawn in search of some sign of a threat.

Americans Demand Increased Governmental Protection From Selves

Sunday, November 9th, 2003

I love The Onion. Americans Demand Increased Governmental Protection From Selves:

Alarmed by the unhealthy choices they make every day, more and more Americans are calling on the government to enact legislation that will protect them from their own behavior.

“The government is finally starting to take some responsibility for the effect my behavior has on others,” said New York City resident Alec Haverchuk, 44, who is prohibited by law from smoking in restaurants and bars. “But we have a long way to go. I can still light up on city streets and in the privacy of my own home. I mean, legislators acknowledge that my cigarette smoke could give others cancer, but don’t they care about me, too?”

“It’s not just about Americans eating too many fries or cracking their skulls open when they fall off their bicycles,” said Los Angeles resident Rebecca Burnie, 26. “It’s a financial issue, too. I spend all my money on trendy clothes and a nightlife that I can’t afford. I’m $23,000 in debt, but the credit-card companies keep letting me spend. It’s obscene that the government allows those companies to allow me to do this to myself. Why do I pay my taxes?”
[...]
“The fact is, personal responsibility doesn’t work,” Nathansen said. “Take a good look at the way others around you are living, and I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s time for the American people to demand that someone force them to do something about it.”

The World of Tomorrow

Sunday, November 9th, 2003

Harry Knowles, on his Ain’t It Cool News site, describes The World of Tomorrow as a must-see deco sci-fi masterpiece with giant robots. That caught my attention. One of his readers caught a few unfinished minutes of it in New York, and “apparently it was shot entirely against blue screen on digital video by a first time director.” Interesting. Here are some more in-depth comments:

And, even in rough form, it looks fantastic.

Like “Down With Love” was a 60s-style movie shot like a 60s movie, World looks almost exactly like a 1930s sci-fi flick. The fact that the backgrounds and other elements look hand-drawn actually adds rather than detracts from the appeal. This could be the first example of a movie in which the stiff and artificial look that the blue screen creates actually improves the overall effect. It reminded me of an Alan Moore comic come to life (Giant robots walking down the streets of Art Deco Manhattan? Awesome)

Since I’d seen and heard nothing about it, I looked it up on Yahoo! Movies and found out some technical details:

The Los Angeles Times has revealed that Kerry Cornan is a CalArts graduate, and his software is a CGI program that allows him to shoot his entire movie against blue screens, and fill in the backgrounds later with images he’s been working on for years, which are mostly already done. What this allows Conran to do, which is what is so revolutionary, is to have an already existing 3-D storyboard of every scene, with stick figures in place where the actors are supposed to be. Now, all he has to do is stick in his cast, and he’s basically done, it sounds like.

Martial arts expert kills two raiders

Sunday, November 9th, 2003

This is real life, not a movie. From Martial arts expert kills two raiders:

A Chinese martial arts expert was in custody yesterday after turning the tables on four burglars armed with knives, killing two of them and seriously wounding a third.

The 28-year-old man, known as “the doctor” for his practice of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, managed to seize one of the two knives carried by his assailants and saw off the entire group with the ferocity of his reaction.

Magistrates in the central Italian town of Empoli are now seeking to establish whether his self-defence constituted an excessive use of force.

The butchery, worthy of a Quentin Tarantino film, began shortly before midnight on Friday when the four men knocked at the apartment of a Chinese hairdresser in the centre of Empoli.

The hairdresser, her assistant and “the doctor”, who operated from the same premises, were reportedly overpowered and tied up before the group, all thought to be in their 20s and 30s, ransacked the apartment.

Disappointed by their meagre booty, the attackers allegedly threatened to rape the two women unless they told them where the rest of their money was hidden.

At this point the doctor managed to free himself, seize a knife from one of the aggressors and deliver a series of lethal stab wounds.

Investigators found the body of one man, who had been stabbed in the heart, sprawled on the staircase and another man bleeding to death in the street from a wound to his leg. A third man is recovering in hospital from a punctured lung.

The doctor was found crouching in the entrance to the building with cuts to his shoulder, face and hands.

Investigators are trying to determine whether he inflicted the injuries while defending himself inside the apartment, or hunted down the burglars after they had fled.

Govermentium

Saturday, November 8th, 2003

Silly, but I saw it on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, and it’s amusing in its own way:

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named ‘Governmentium’. Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as ‘Critical Morass’. You will know it when you see it.