Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Litter louts
Saw an interesting example of lack of civic consciousness yesterday. Walking over the railway bridge at Ewell West, saw a chunk of bank which had recently been cleared of scrub, some of it quite big and leaving a fair amount of chippings. This job, presumably down to our friends at Network Rail, presumably needed four or five people. One to hold the chain saw, one to watch in case something goes wrong, one free to go to the gents (or ladies as the case may be), one to drive the van and so on. But they walked away leaving an unsightly collection of newly revealed litter, which it would have taken perhaps 10 minutes to clear up. Instead of doing that they charge off in their van to the next bout of scrub destruction.
And learnt something about wheat the day before. It seems that in order for wheat to be useful, its genome requires a gene which inhibits the shattering and so scattering of the ripe ear of wheat. Not too clever from the point of view of wheat in its natural state, but very clever for the domesticated sort as it gives one time to harvest the stuff. Mutation of a single gene is all that is needed for inhibition, something that could easily happen in the wild, perhaps reducing fitness, but not fatally. Now with maize, by comparison, shattering is controlled by a number of genes rather than just one, and the story was that it is rather unlikely that the necessary mutations would happen in the wild. So we only had maize in ancient central America by virtue of a breeding program to manufacture the stuff. So rather cleverer chaps than we had thought.
The current trend is for apology. In which connection I wondered about the casuality bill for freeing the slaves in the US. It seems that there were upwards of 500,000 deaths in the civil war from a population of 30m people, including 5m black people, including 4m slaves. So, putting it very crudely, one death freed ten slaves. Now I grant that the quantities are not commensurate, but that does seem to me to amount to a considerable apology of sorts. Pity that the reconstruction bit afterwards didn't go as well - in that respect anyway - as pious Northeners or sanctimonious Europeans might have hoped - these last having carried much of the trade and made much money from it, but having eschewed it by the time in question. I also learn what one might have thought of on a good day all by oneself - that is that the proportion of black people in the US has, in the main, declined since independance, reflecting the flood of immigrants from the poor and/or cold parts of Europe. From something under 20% to something over 10%. Or, in slightly more detail, falling to just under 10% at the time of the second war but climbing slowly since up to around 12% now. This last, courtesy of a very googlessible and useful table published by the US bureau of the census.
And learnt something about wheat the day before. It seems that in order for wheat to be useful, its genome requires a gene which inhibits the shattering and so scattering of the ripe ear of wheat. Not too clever from the point of view of wheat in its natural state, but very clever for the domesticated sort as it gives one time to harvest the stuff. Mutation of a single gene is all that is needed for inhibition, something that could easily happen in the wild, perhaps reducing fitness, but not fatally. Now with maize, by comparison, shattering is controlled by a number of genes rather than just one, and the story was that it is rather unlikely that the necessary mutations would happen in the wild. So we only had maize in ancient central America by virtue of a breeding program to manufacture the stuff. So rather cleverer chaps than we had thought.
The current trend is for apology. In which connection I wondered about the casuality bill for freeing the slaves in the US. It seems that there were upwards of 500,000 deaths in the civil war from a population of 30m people, including 5m black people, including 4m slaves. So, putting it very crudely, one death freed ten slaves. Now I grant that the quantities are not commensurate, but that does seem to me to amount to a considerable apology of sorts. Pity that the reconstruction bit afterwards didn't go as well - in that respect anyway - as pious Northeners or sanctimonious Europeans might have hoped - these last having carried much of the trade and made much money from it, but having eschewed it by the time in question. I also learn what one might have thought of on a good day all by oneself - that is that the proportion of black people in the US has, in the main, declined since independance, reflecting the flood of immigrants from the poor and/or cold parts of Europe. From something under 20% to something over 10%. Or, in slightly more detail, falling to just under 10% at the time of the second war but climbing slowly since up to around 12% now. This last, courtesy of a very googlessible and useful table published by the US bureau of the census.
# posted by Jim @ 3:50 AM 
