Sunday, November 23, 2008
Nonews
Franklin been missing for the last couple of days. Is it the weather - woke up to snow this morning - or is it our complete failure to provide refreshments? Failure to respond to his making calves' eyes at the refridgerator?
However, there is some news about the aspidistra, that is to say the one that started its life as a bit broken off from one in Cambridge. Not quite sure what the gardeners' term for doing this is. Not a cutting which I believe to be a matter for shoots not roots, and not a divide as the division was not symetrical. The root as a whole was not being divided into roughly equal parts. Be that as it may, our bit prospered and eventually became too big. Occasionally flowered. Probably pot bound. So the BH decided that something had to be done. But rather than retire it altogether, she broke off another bit and started again, this being a few weeks ago. The thing has now responded by coming into flower, something which it had not done for ages. So we have one large green bud about to open and one small. Sessile purple flower to come - if that is the right botanical term for flowers without stems which sit on the ground.
On showing the thing to FIL, he started to warble a song about having the largest aspidistra in the world. He tells us it was made popular by someone called Gracie Fields. I had placed it in the thirties but Mr G knows all about it and places it in the fifities. Must be getting old as I thought it rather good to be able to have some fun with a song about an aspidistra - rather than the sort of drug and gun laden stuff which seems to be the staple diet of rappers. Perhaps in the same way that FIL&MIL used to like Morecame and Wise, which at the time I thought rather silly.
Interested to read about a peice of windpipe being grown from a stem cell. Now I can see how you might grow some cells in some friendly medium in a petri dish. I can see how you might grow an entire person on a slab of sow's peritoneum in a bottle in the way of 'Brave New World' - although not quite sure why Huxley lighted upon peritoneum as the right stuff on which to grow eggs. Perhaps eggs will grow on any old peritoneum; it does not need to be peritoneum from some particular part of the body? Hence the possibility of ectopic pregnancies. But it seems to me that growing an organ in a bottle is more tricky. I had thought that the development of organs was very much mediated by the environment in which they were growing. Then there is the question of connecting the thing up. If one is talking about something complicated like a heart, one has to grow all those connecting pipes in vaccuo - or in bottle - then join them all up to the corresponding pipes in the receiving body. The joining up might be tricky but it is the pipe in vaccuo which I am having trouble with. Growing the end of a pipe; the end of a pipe to nowhere. And what about the nerves? Do the nerves in the receiving body simply colonise the unpopulated organ, without any need for wiring up by hand. Maybe the DT will reveal all in due course, when further diversion from gloom and doom is needed.
However, there is some news about the aspidistra, that is to say the one that started its life as a bit broken off from one in Cambridge. Not quite sure what the gardeners' term for doing this is. Not a cutting which I believe to be a matter for shoots not roots, and not a divide as the division was not symetrical. The root as a whole was not being divided into roughly equal parts. Be that as it may, our bit prospered and eventually became too big. Occasionally flowered. Probably pot bound. So the BH decided that something had to be done. But rather than retire it altogether, she broke off another bit and started again, this being a few weeks ago. The thing has now responded by coming into flower, something which it had not done for ages. So we have one large green bud about to open and one small. Sessile purple flower to come - if that is the right botanical term for flowers without stems which sit on the ground.
On showing the thing to FIL, he started to warble a song about having the largest aspidistra in the world. He tells us it was made popular by someone called Gracie Fields. I had placed it in the thirties but Mr G knows all about it and places it in the fifities. Must be getting old as I thought it rather good to be able to have some fun with a song about an aspidistra - rather than the sort of drug and gun laden stuff which seems to be the staple diet of rappers. Perhaps in the same way that FIL&MIL used to like Morecame and Wise, which at the time I thought rather silly.
Interested to read about a peice of windpipe being grown from a stem cell. Now I can see how you might grow some cells in some friendly medium in a petri dish. I can see how you might grow an entire person on a slab of sow's peritoneum in a bottle in the way of 'Brave New World' - although not quite sure why Huxley lighted upon peritoneum as the right stuff on which to grow eggs. Perhaps eggs will grow on any old peritoneum; it does not need to be peritoneum from some particular part of the body? Hence the possibility of ectopic pregnancies. But it seems to me that growing an organ in a bottle is more tricky. I had thought that the development of organs was very much mediated by the environment in which they were growing. Then there is the question of connecting the thing up. If one is talking about something complicated like a heart, one has to grow all those connecting pipes in vaccuo - or in bottle - then join them all up to the corresponding pipes in the receiving body. The joining up might be tricky but it is the pipe in vaccuo which I am having trouble with. Growing the end of a pipe; the end of a pipe to nowhere. And what about the nerves? Do the nerves in the receiving body simply colonise the unpopulated organ, without any need for wiring up by hand. Maybe the DT will reveal all in due course, when further diversion from gloom and doom is needed.
# posted by Jim @ 12:21 AM 
