Category: Featured

Robert weighs in on Taro:

Is anyone producing taro from seed in Hawaii? Or is this something that happens unintentionally (through “volunteers”)?
“taro is used to make the starchy food poi AND is revered as an ancestor of the Hawaiian people.”
Ancesterovores! And THAT is legal?

Jeremy comments: Not only legal, but reasonably common, put that way.

Inoculated Mind on Making breeding illegal:

[I]f “Changing the basic structure of the sacred Hawaiian taro plant” is made illegal … then they are basically legislating that natural genetic recombination, outcrossing, etc, does not change the genetic structure of taro.

Note the interesting use of the word “sacred” repeatedly when describing the ‘need’ to ‘protect’ the plant from genetic engineering. Yay for misusing religion for political purposes. The obvious counter-argument is that not allowing researchers to defend Taro against future diseases violates the sanctity of the holy plant.

Over to you, descendents of the sacred taro.

Kerry updates us on Jessica’s views on the lack of greens in Niger:

Seven months later…yikes, dunno if anybody will see this. J has been in Niger for a year now, and has more of a feel for what’s going on with the seeming lack of veggies. Will be posting on it in the next few weeks. Check out the series and pics on demi-lunes/land reclamation in the meantime. Thanks. KB

Looking forward to it!

Ola, on The lactose reflux problem:

Introgression from Neanderthals as a source of adaptive variation is a fascinating hypothesis; I like the idea that Homo sapiens have benefited from alleles from wild relatives. Recent adaptation and all the signs of positive selection in human population following the shift to agriculture based diets expose the fallacy of proponents of the Paleolithic diet … not to mention all the doctor Atkins disciples out there.

Time for a genome sweep.