#1183 Plantman

The chief difference between plants and animals is that plants make their own energy from the sun. They do this with photosynthesis, using little cellular factories called chloroplasts filled with green chlorophyll. This is why plants are green. These workhorses convert sunlight into food for the plant. And ultimately into food for us.
Scientists recently discovered a plant/animal hybrid, a sea slug that can do the same thing. Apparently, all it needs to do is eat a few chloroplast-filled algae, swipe some of their DNA, and voila, the sea slug can now make its own energy for the rest of its life.
It need never eat again. Nor hunt for food. Which, you know, is a great idea when you move as slowly as a slug. There’s not that much prey you can bring down in a high speed chase.
But think of the possibilities. Genetically engineer this into people. How different the world would be if we no longer had to grow and kill food.
All the massive environment-killing agriculture that’s bleeding the soil of nutrients. All the colossal chemical factories spewing out noxious chemicals into the atmosphere as they make products to spread noxious poisons into the ground to either add fertilizer or kill insects.
All the trucks on the road burning fossil fuels to deliver pesticide- laced produce to the massive supermarkets where we drive our individual carbon-footprinting cars to pick them up in plastic bags that will stay in the landfills for the next 12 generations.
All the factory-farmed chicken and slaughterhouse cattle and squealing butchered pigs. All of that gone.
And all our youth, their moral values ruined as they’ve got one less chore to do around the house. Yes, no more dishes.
And the only price to pay is that we’d have to be careful to wear colors that go with our new green skin.
Manplant, Plantman, only one thing left for science to do. Since we still wouldn’t spend a lot of time outdoors, scientists would need to modify the chloroplasts to derive energy from not just the sun, but the radiation from our TVs. Then Plantman will find his true vegetile destiny.
Couch potato.
America, ya gotta love it.

#1182 Scary Tech

There are things that scare me about modern technology. Like when you open up an email and a warning at the top says, “Some pictures have been blocked to protect your privacy. Click here to load pictures.”
I get this even when I get one of those “What’s New with Comcast” updates. Isn’t it a little unsettling that opening up a picture could make it easier for an outside person to identify your computer? What is it in the code that allows that kind of thing? When they create the picture are they putting in a cookie, which then deposits itself in your computer like an ingested roundworm?
Pictures and cookies are supposed to be innocuous and trouble-free things. Mild amusement. Pleasant pastimes. Simple joys. Not nefarious dark threats to your welfare. Isolate him! Interrogate him! Destroy his computer memory! Give him a cookie!
I don’t know how they do it. I suppose that’s why it scares me all the more. Ignorance can be scary. We are a nation with all kinds of clever computer destroyers and technically ignorant people like me.
Some even more ignorant. I saw a product the other day, which was obviously a generic iPod. The label on the product said it was a “Digital MP3 Player”. I’m no tech-whiz, but aren’t all MP3 players Digital? Is their an analog MP3?
Yeah, dude, you just gotta listen to my MP3 8-Track. It’s almost as good as the warm scratchy sound from my MP3 vinyl LP.
Or, Hey check out my visual TV!
Speaking of technologically scary, here’s something even more so. I was driving by an old radio station yesterday. It’s not “on the air,” but it still receives and transmits radio waves from and to other locations. The florescent light tubes on the outside of the station were glowing faintly.
I happen to know they were turned off.
But the radio waves swirling invisibly in and around the station are causing the molecules of gas in the florescent tubes to glow. I’m glad I never worked at that station. At least without my foil hat.
The consequences could have been ugly.
I think I’ll block that picture...from my mind.
America, ya gotta love it.

#1181 Senior Security

The other day I was driving down the road and I found myself behind an older person. He had gray hair, with a thin spot over the crown and those car-door ears sported by all septuagenarians. He was also driving the classic large senior sedan favored by only two groups of people. The Ford Crown Victoria.
Within seconds another Crown Victoria approached from the other direction. It too, was piloted by a superannuated individual. Except on the side of his Crown Victoria, it announced he was from the other group of people as well. He was a member of the Senior Patrol.
And I thought, how convenient it is for our senior patrollers. They don’t have to get used to driving a new car, they can just switch Crown Vics.
I’ve always wondered about the senior patrol thing though. Is there a sophomore patrol? Does the senior patrol make Christmas stops at all the rest homes like the regulars do for the schools? Do they use their tasers for de-fib paddles?
And are they more jaded with criminals because they’ve seen it all before? If so, I bet they’d make good security people at the airports.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the security fallout from the underwear bomber and how they’re talking about sending us through full body scanners. In one sense, that’s pretty creepy. They assure us the scanners don’t render an anatomically perfect image, it’s more like a soft focus sort of thing.
Great, so we’d all look like Vaseline-coated lens-adjusted Playboy Playmates?
One possible good thing is we’ll keep more prudes off the airplanes. And for any fanatics whose moral or religious compass points them towards full body covering, this could be a good thing.
If the rest of us still object, I suggest one or both of two things. Use seniors, or have the people manning or womanning the full-body scanners be Doctors. We’ve gotten used to stripping down at Group Health. They see naked people all the time and could care less.
Perfect! Seniors and MDs at the airport scanners.
Ho hum. Been there, done that.
Seen a million of ‘em, by crackey
America, ya gotta love it.