The banana is the world’s most popular fruit crop, with over 100 million metric tons produced annually in over 130 tropical and subtropical countries.
Edible bananas are the result of a genetic accident in nature that created the seedless fruit we enjoy today. Virtually all the bananas sold across the Western world belong to the so-called Cavendish subgroup of the species and are genetically nearly identical. These bananas are sterile and dependent on propagation via cloning, either by using suckers and cuttings taken from the underground stem or through modern tissue culture.
The familiar bright yellow Cavendish banana is ubiquitous in supermarkets and fruit bowls, but it is in imminent danger. The vast worldwide monoculture of genetically identical plants leaves the Cavendish intensely vulnerable to disease outbreaks.
-
About
- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
- professional software engineer
- enthusiast / advanced amateur photographer
- (Apple) / Mac / iOS guy
- partially omniscient, witty, tech geek
- user of "adult language" (oh my!)
- 37?!?
- rock / blues / jazz fan
- skeptic, and
- raconteur...
- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
- NAME AND PRONOUNS:
- "Paul" / "he–him–his"
- FIND ME ON:
- [Twitter],
- [Micro.blog],
- and pretty much everywhere else via [About.me]...
- PHOTO BLOG:
- LASTLY:
- But not leastly, [Fuck Facebook!]
-
News Gathering vs. Confirmation Bias
- Remember, if you do not have at least one source of news that you turn to regularly, with which you routinely disagree, then you are not practicing news gathering! You are practicing [confirmation bias].
-
Search
-
Science
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) at p.32.
-
[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
-
Subscribe
-
Top Tags
-
Most Recent Entries
- New York Times Opinion: It’s Quitting Season
- Oh God Damn It!
- Remembering the ‘Faith-based Initiative’ we call 9/11 (2021)
- Oh My Fucking God, Get The Fucking Vaccine Already, You Fucking Fucks
- Tennessee #1 for new COVID-19 cases by population, CDC says
- Nailed it
- Tennessee underreported COVID-19 hospitalizations
- There aren’t enough hours in the day
- The GOP pushed Benghazi probes for years. It’s already done with Jan. 6.
- R.I.P. Dusty Hill
-
More Recent Entries
- The GOP pushed Benghazi probes for years. It’s already done with Jan. 6.
- R.I.P. Dusty Hill
- Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI
- ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients
- Unvaccinated health workers are “unethical and appalling”
- It Might Not Be Just Such a Simple…
- Maybe You Should Just Stay Home
- Just like Richie Rich and Donald Trump – they’re just TV characters
- 7-11 is opening 500 EV charging ports by the end of 2022
- Ahhh…
- Nothing He Loved More
- A Certain Italian-American Subculture
- Reminder to white people
- Gin and Truth podcast
- First Dose of Moderna
- Call me crazy…
- The Myth of Trump’s Judicial Success
-
Etc.
- Gunga Galunga. Gunga—Gunga Lagunga.
- For another grand, I'll let you take me out to dinner.
- Sippin' on booze in the House of Blues.
- Dude! Stop saying that—it was just a party!
- It's not exactly rocket surgery.
- Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
- Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock!
- iPhone, Bitch!
- 6EQUJ5
-
Meta