Bananas: Now Even Weirder Somehow

July 6, 2011
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There is calamitous news on the breakfast front, people. Breakfast is sacrosanct here at Analog Nation, so I would not throw around a word like “calamitous” lightly. Apparently I’m fine throwing around “sacrosanct,” though. At any rate, the news isn’t good.

Bananas, it seems, are not long for this world. To understand how this came about, we need a bit of agricultural history. A hundred and fifty years ago, bananas were quite different from what’s on kitchen tables today. Oh sure, chimps loved them, and their peels caused …

Wait a minute, wait, wait. Haven’t I said this before? Seriously, haven’t I said these exact same words before?

Let’s just assume for a moment that I’m not imagining the whole thing. So then, what exactly is this new story I saw? Could it be that the plight of the banana has actually managed to get worse?

Three years ago, I first heard about the bizarre genetic conundrum facing the banana industry. To wit, all bananas are genetically identical, and are therefore crazy-level susceptible to disease. Which, you’re never going to believe it, has struck. Multiple times. Unless Science(!) figures something out, our grandchildren may grow up without ever knowing what it’s like to peel a banana. Not that they’ll care, with all their video games and their phone texting, and would it kill them to say “sir” and “ma’am” now and then?

The banana situation was so fascinatingly weird that I could scarcely believe there was room for more. And yet, here we are. An international team of researchers has determined that the banana’s annihilation stems from seven thousand years of inbreeding. Seven thousand years of inbreeding! That is madness. Delicious madness, but madness nonetheless.

This team of … well, I’m not sure what you’d call them, produce archaeologists I guess, set out to map the banana’s history as far back as possible. To salvage its future, they argue, we need to fully understand its past. By the way, had I known that “produce archaeologist” was an option, I would have tried to get better grades. The team’s findings are published in the forthcoming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With any luck, the new information will help formulate a plan for saving this freakishly strange plant, which are basically a race of clones. Clones which have been inbred for seven millennia. Inbred clones which used to be bigger and much tastier, only no one remembers. And which I still eat several mornings per week, in case anyone who read the original post was wondering. And which are sacrosanct. (I should really look up what that word means.)

Operation Fluffy Midnight: Lessons Learned While Capturing Felis Catus In The Wild

June 28, 2011
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daggers-yard

CLEARANCE: Classified
OPERATIONAL CODE PHRASE: Fluffy Midnight
OBJECTIVE: Live capture of juvenile Felis catus

DOSSIER:

When Analog Nation moved into a new apartment last summer, one of the key results (along with a shorter commute, and bathroom tile from this century that can actually be cleaned) was a drastically elevated KRS. The KRS scale measures Kitten Readiness State, the degree to which an individual is mentally, emotionally and logistically prepared to get a wee baby kitten. There are five levels:

    KRS Alpha — I do not want a kitten at this time.
    KRS Beta — I wouldn’t mind a kitten, but cannot realistically accommodate one.
    KRS Charlie — Why can’t I stop browsing YouTube for kitten videos?
    KRS Delta — We need to get a kitten all up in here.
    KRS Echo — We need to get a kitten all up in here, stat.

My own KRS hovered around Charlie for about five years, ever since Roommate Bob moved to California and thoughtlessly took his cat with him. Now catless, I resolved to get one for myself, then immediately moved into an apartment that didn’t allow them. Dogs were fine. But the landlord, an ancient Saudi woman who lived on the first floor, didn’t trust cats or thought they carried a hex or something, I’m not exactly sure. Our communication consisted entirely of smiles and nods, with the occasional hand-twisty gesture that is universal sign language for “I have locked myself out of my apartment again like a dumbass.”

So the instant I set foot in this new apartment, I dialed the KRS straight to Echo. Granted, animal shelters tend to (correctly) guide new owners toward older cats, and (correctly) encourage adopting in pairs. Whatever. Analog Nation wanted a kitten. As soon as one became available, we would move ground assets into place and strike. On or about the evening of May 26th, sources delivered hard intel of just such a situation. That was when I first received word of the überlitter.

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Digital Media Will Probably Explode My Brain (and other relevant concerns)

May 26, 2011
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Digital Media Will Probably Explode My Brain (and other relevant concerns)

For some reason, I remember the first time I ever saw “Friends.” My sophomore year of college had just ended. I was sitting at a friend’s house back home, waiting while he got dressed, or argued with his parents, or cooked up heroin or something. The TV happened to be on, and here was this show I’d heard about vaguely — some sitcom that was supposed to be pretty good, finishing its first season. Hardly anyone watched TV in their dorm rooms back then. The fortunate few had one of those little VCR/TV combos, but everyone else had to drag themselves down to the common room and hope the girls weren’t watching “Melrose Place.” Whole swaths of the year would pass without glimpsing television. I’d come home and all the commercials would be different.

I’m joking about the heroin, by the way.

So here were six people, sitting in a cafe, already on their way to becoming famous. Chandler said something Chandlerish. I chuckled. Decent cast, decent show. I wasn’t one of the viewers who got hooked, but if I happened to be flipping channels at 8:00 on a Thursday, I would watch. That was my entire relationship with it, right on up through Rachel not getting on the plane.

Which seems weird to think about now, because here’s the thing. I’m not sure I’ll ever watch a show that way again. The digital revolution may have sort of ruined my brain.

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SETI, Cutbacks, and Earth’s “Out-of-Office” Message

April 28, 2011
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“That we are the only part of the cosmos possessing what we are pleased to call mind is so earth-centred a supposition, that it recalls the other earth-centred view once so devoutly held, that our little globe was the point about which the whole company of heaven was good enough to turn. Indeed, there was much more reason to think that then, than to think this now, for there was at least the appearance of turning, whereas there is no indication that we are sole denizens of all we survey, and every inference that we are not.”

-Percival Lowell, 1895. Lowell argued that there was a system of canals on Mars, built by a long-dead species.

Lowell was also the first to theorize the existence of Pluto, which isn’t even a planet anymore, so screw that guy.

In 1924, Mars passed closer to Earth than it had in recorded history. This happened to coincide with the dawn of the radio age, which got some folks thinking. “You know what we should do,” some folks thought, “we should ask the whole world to be quiet for a few days, and listen for any radio signals that may be coming from Mars.” The result was National Radio Silence Day, organized by a friend of Percival Lowell named David Peck Todd.

(Lowell had died eight years earlier, from a stroke brought on by prolonged fantasticness — seriously, do not read the man’s Wikipedia page unless you want to feel like a lazy piece of garbage.)

For the duration of the Mars flyby, the US government shut off all high-powered radio towers for five minutes every hour, and encouraged all private broadcasters to do the same. Meanwhile, a radio receiver sat two miles in the air on a dirigible, using the quiet periods to search the sky for Martians.

They didn’t find squat, which was to be a recurring theme of the movement they had just created: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The letters are capital because of science.

The movement got an official home in 1984, with the creation of the SETI Institute. This was National Radio Silence Day writ large, with a radio telescope array instead of a single receiver, a contant vigil instead of five-minutes bursts, and the ground instead of a dirigible. For more than twenty-five years, SETI has monitored for abnormal signals, and analyzed them for indication that they came from intelligent life. If you’ve seen the movie read the book “Contact,” you get the idea.

Those twenty-five years came to an abrupt end last week, when the Institute abruptly announced that its funding had run out in a sudden, abrupt fashion. We here at Analog Nation wanted to take a few moments to address this development.

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Can You Track Me Now? Good.

April 25, 2011
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Can You Track Me Now? Good.

Fracas. That’s what this is, it’s a fracas.

A couple of programmers discovered a little file nestled within each of their computers. It seems their iPhones had been tracking location, and saving the data in an unencrypted file on their desktop machines. So they checked, and sure enough, this was happening to all iPhone users. They built a simple application that maps the data, allowing people to see for themselves what info lurked on their own hard drives. Then the Computerwebs got a hold of it, and collectively said, “Wait, what?” The story ran everywhere, blogs ranneth over with reactions, word got out that Android devices also track location, word also got out that law enforcement knew about the data and have used it for investigations, blogs ranneth over with analysis of each others’ reactions, Senator Franken wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs. The whole thing became the flashpoint for a larger debate on technology vs. privacy, John Q. Consumer vs. Corporation, Inc.

Basically, a fracas.

My phone happens to be one of Apple’s progeny, so when these details began trickling out last Wednesday, my ears perked up. Dystopian future is a shifty thing. It doesn’t happen all at once, always in itty-bitty steps that no one particularly minds all that much. I sighed and looked at the expensive gizmo on my desk the way one might look at a French bulldog who knows he’s not supposed to chew your sneakers, but who really likes to chew your sneakers, and I mean don’t you have other sneakers anyway?

As I started clicking links, I was prepared to be bummed-slash-pissed about what I found. Which I was, for a second, right up until I saw the maps that people were making with the location data from their phones. Then my reaction was somewhat more along the lines of:

Oh hey, neat! Where can I get that thing? I wanna play too!

Way to miss the point, numbnuts.

The instant I got home I grabbed the application. (Well, first I grabbed the source code by mistake, which confused the shit out of me, then I grabbed the application.) Bear in mind that I did this instead of playing Portal 2, which was just sitting there waiting to be downloaded, with its knee-high boots and plunging neckline. Nope, I spent ten minutes looking at maps.

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