But can they mope and write bad poetry? (Thinking plants)

I once put a passage from Aldous Huxley’s Jesting Pilate in front of an associate who suffers a bizarre malady afflicting his objectivity. Now, obectivity, while important, isn’t the biggest deal in the world; people are subject to all manner of quirks about their outlooks. But it’s a particular object of pride for him. To wit, he doesn’t like religion because faith isn’t objective.

But when it comes to vegetarianism, he is completely bent. People who eat meat are akin to those who rape and kill children, by his “objective” logic, and when one dangles the excerpt from Huxley, or a passage from Douglas Adams in front of him, he goes into this long explanation of how plants don’t have a central nervous system, don’t feel pain, and are thus exempt from the moral considerations of the torture involved in killing and eating an animal.

So, yes, I think of him every time I come across one of these stories in the news. The latest comes from the BBC, and is no surprise to me insofar as I expected something along these lines. Not being a botanist, however, I could only guess at what the data would look like:

Plants are able to “remember” and “react” to information contained in light, according to researchers.

Plants, scientists say, transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.

These “electro-chemical signals” are carried by cells that act as “nerves” of the plants.

In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.

And the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.

This showed, they said, that the plant “remembered” the information encoded in light.

“We shone the light only on the bottom of the plant and we observed changes in the upper part,” explained Professor Stanislaw Karpinski from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, who led this research.

He presented the findings at the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.

“And the changes proceeded when the light was off… This was a complete surprise.”

In previous work, Professor Karpinski found that chemical signals could be passed throughout whole plants – allowing them to respond to and survive changes and stresses in their environment.

But in this new study, he and his colleagues discovered that when light stimulated a chemical reaction in one leaf cell, this caused a “cascade” of events and that this was immediately signalled to the rest of the plant by via specific type of cell called a “bundle sheath cell”.

The scientists measured the electrical signals from these cells, which are present in every leaf. They likened the discovery to finding the plants’ “nervous system”.

Why I’ll back the Dutch in the World Cup final

Spain is the obvious favorite in today’s World Cup final, and I don’t need a psychic octopus to tell me that. I saw the match against Germany, which was all the convincing I need. Ball-handling, passing … it makes me wonder what the American team was even doing in the tournament.

Then again, I owe the Dutch an apology. I had a chance to watch their thrilling match against Brazil, but didn’t for the same reason that, well, apparently some of the Dutch expressed. Or, as Mark Steel noted:

“Are you hopeful?” I asked Josef. “Yes,” he said, “I am hopeful we’ll keep it to less than 5-0.”

So, yeah, I owe an apology for skipping that one. Who knew? Apparently, not even Josef suspected.

And while I have a masochistic side that prefers to cheer on underdogs in many circumstances, Steel also made the case, indirectly, why the Dutch really need this one more than Spain:

The Dutch, it seems, watch their team in the West End of London, not in one bar but in the general area ….

…. The reason is the Dutch aren’t brought together in London by where they live, but where they work. Several thousand are employed by the banks and companies whose offices are around there, so they flock to the chain pubs of Soho; the places into which endless research has been poured to make it impossible to create any atmosphere at all. The muzak, the bouncers, staff wandering around with ear-pieces; this all makes it less exciting than watching a match in a branch of World of Leather.

And for the quarter-final against Brazil this wasn’t helped by the sullen nature of the fans. As the game approached they ordered their burgers, and sat in small groups with no sense of being collective, which took some effort as they were all in orange, and when the team appeared one man clapped on his own, which was probably Arjen Robben’s dad. A few of them sang along with the national anthem, but either this was extremely half-hearted, or the Dutch anthem goes “buuur phew ffffff baaa I give up” ….

…. Maybe they’d have been jollier if they’d lived up to their stereotype, by announcing, “If there is a ball in our goal then this should not make us worry, instead just relax, maybe have a little massage and maybe some sex and this is good and we can hope for an equaliser.” Or they could reserve one screen for porn with expert comments provided by Mick McCarthy.

Outstandingly moderate was Dan, tall, slender and in an immaculate suit, the picture of someone young and in the city, except he was wearing an orange tie. “I see you’ve gone a bit wild with the tie,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “I think that it helps to support the team if I wear this tie.”

Dan was a management consultant in Covent Garden, and added: “This afternoon I have many things to do but I decided I should leave them until later, which is not really correct but I think I must watch the game.”

I mean, really, as an American, I know people who don’t care about the game in general that will take time off work to watch the American team try its hardest to not embarrass itself. And a Seattle tavern at nine in the morning was a fine time to witness these folks finally understanding why fútbol is the world’s game as Team USA scraped by Algeria, only to lose a few days later to Ghana, whereupon they promptly forgot what they had learned.

It does seem a strange contrast to stereotype, though, getting wild with the tie. The American view of the Dutch is either tulips and windmills, or Amsterdam. The idea of a bunch of bank employees feeling guilty for supporting their home country in a soccer tournament just isn’t part of that package. But for Dan, Josef, and all of the Dutch soccer fans in London’s West End, I’m going to back their team against Spain. If for no other reason, I might suggest the Dutch need this one more than the Spaniards, and so I raise my glass, wish them luck, and wonder how things got to the point that we have a freakin’ octopus picking winners in the tournament.

Bug: A necessary correction

Recently I received a comment regarding a post from March about the comic strip Bug. Now, maybe there’s something wrong with my reading comprehension, or perhaps I ought to be embarrassed for not making certain things clear. However, the comment can be read in such a manner to suggest that its author thinks I have something to do with Adam Huber’s wonderful ‘toon. And to that possibility, I must offer a necessary correction: No, I don’t have a damn thing to do with the strip, except to read it and laugh my ass off.

And maybe I ought to be embarrassed for wasting the blogosphere in such a typical manner, though I’m sure it beats becoming a fanboy and making a pilgrimage to Mr. Huber’s home to scream with girlish delight every time I see a shadow pass the window.

Anyway, ’nuff said. I passed the compliment along to the Bug website, and in the meantime, maybe Mr. Huber won’t kill me if I post another, especially with the disclaimer that no, I did not draw this. But I do sympathize with the sentiment, if that counts for anything.

Click the link to read the thing full-size at the Bug website. And yes, keep ’em coming, indeed, Adam.

Hell, or, A Conversation with Brooks and Collins

I have a new vision of Hell, which is sitting around the “conversation pit” getting stoned with New York Times columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins. Apparently, the two get together and talk about issues for the newspaper’s Opinionator blog every Wednesday. To borrow a phrase from Supreme Court Nominee and current Solicitor General Elena Kagan, I wish they wouldn’t.

This week, the Dullard Duo took on one of the vital economic questions of the times: Deficit reduction or job creation?

Gail Collins: David, I was very interested in your column attacking the idea of a second stimulus. In fact, I was so interested that I almost put down my copy of this week’s New York Magazine, which has a big profile of you and your “charming, levelheaded optimism.” I agree totally with that assessment, although I part company with the author when it comes to your suits, which are certainly not shapeless.

The article also says that because of your book deadlines, you are only getting four hours of sleep a night. So I feel terrible asking you to converse about anything, let alone the economy.

David Brooks: My suits are absolutely shapeless. They are sartorial cumulus clouds. Given my body, shapeless is the best option, believe me. Other than that, I thought the profiler was admirably gentle and forgiving.

I’d like to say things could only get better from there, but … yeah. I’d also like to say it would be enlightening to hear an actual recording of this conversation in order to pick up some of the nuance, but, again … er … yeah.

Gutter politics

The back story: RNC Chairman Michael Steele criticized President Obama for engaging a land war in Afghanistan. (Where is Wallace Shawn when you need him?) The DNC, through spokesman Brad Woodhouse, responded with a press release saying that “Steele bets against our troops, roots for failure”.

Thus prefaced, read on. Glenn Greenwald explains:

As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes, and I couldn’t agree more: “this is Karl Rove’s playbook. I don’t care how often Republicans do it — this blog is not on board with this kind of thing from either party.” Indeed, at The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol revealingly echoed the DNC, demanding that Steele resign for his “affront” to the soliders. Ironically, there was just a vote on war funding last night in the House, and numerous Democrats — 93 of them on a mild anti-war measure and 22 on a stronger one — voted to end the war in Afghanistan, many arguing exactly what Steele just said about the futility of the war. Do the DNC’s Rovian insults mean that these anti-war Democrats are also guilty of wanting to “walk away from the fight against Al Qaeda,” “undermin[ing] the morale of our troops,” and “betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan”?

Replicating the worst of the GOP rhetoric is unfortunately not limited to the DNC. Over on the front page of Daily Kos, Barbara Morrill ends her post about Steele’s comments this way: “What the family and friends of those who died or those who are still fighting there today think is, of course, another story.” A couple of months ago, Jonathan Alter and Keith Olbermann both suggested that criticisms of Obama weaken the U.S. and thus help Al Qaeda. Last October, both the DNC and some progressive groups accused Steele respectively of “siding with the terrorists” and being “downright unpatriotic” because he questioned whether Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was merited.

I understand and even accept the need to use the other side’s rhetoric against them, though once you start doing that, you forever forfeit the ability to complain when it’s used against you. More to the point: the 2006 and 2008 elections proved that this “against-the-Troops/cut-and-run” rhetoric is now as ineffective as it is ugly. That’s why the GOP lost so overwhelmingly in those elections while relying on those smears; why would the DNC want to copy such ineffective tactics?

No, really. It’s come to this. Read the whole thing. Or, if you really can’t be bothered, and absolutely need the capsule, here you go:

When the DNC, a front page Daily Kos writer and Bill Kristol all join together to smear someone with common language for opposing a war, it’s clear that something toxic is taking place. By all means, the ludicrous hypocrisy and illogic of Steele’s attempt to place all blame on the Democrats for this war should be screamed from the mountaintops . . . but equating war opposition with disrespect to the Troops or cowardice is destructive and stupid no matter who is doing it.

Yes, ’tis true that Michael Steele is exactly the sort of disgrace who can only ever speak truth as a clodhopping political ruse, but there is no reason for respectable society to dwell in the gutter with him.

(Image credit: Apologies to Jimmy Margulies.)