Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

An anonymous reader writes "So, according to a KPTV newscast, a Simpsons fan with too much time on his hands grafted a tobacco plant and a tomato plant and, ta-da: tomacco! Leaves and most likely the fruit (yes, tomato is a fruit technically) contain nicotine. Delicious AND deadly!" Simpsonschannel.com has a small news piece on the breakthrough, but in a Frink-like move, although scientists have found "nicotine in the leaves", it turns out "the lab hasn't tested if the actual tomato has nicotine in it yet, but they say it probably does."

Comments

Simpsons science is always a reality

[MyDixieWrecked]

I mean, just look at Skittlebrau!!

Astronomical?

[Ieshan]

First:
I hate to be the one to point this out, but astronomical or not, there are thousands and thousands of these bacteria in every cup of water, and the pond is a lot bigger than that.

And so is the ocean.

And they've had literally millions of years to stumble upon it.

I'm not sure what your definition of Astronomical is, but maybe you don't see what I see.

Second:
The mutations didn't all need to happen at the same time. As long as the original mutations didn't give the organism some disadvantage, there's no reason why it couldn't have spawned thousands and thousands of other organisms with the same oddity, and one of those could subsequently have evolved into the bacteria we see today. Remember, selection pressure works in both directions: unless something is being selected against, it isn't selected out of the gene pool.

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

[freeweed]

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories

Are you trolling, or just entirely ignorant of human history? The OLDEST, most WIDELY ACCEPTED theory of biological diversity is creationism.

Evolution and natural selection are very new ideas (relatively), and are still not believed by most people on the planet.

As for "how much of our biological model it predicts", well of course it does. It's specious/circular logic:

"Something complex needs intelligence to make it, therefore something intelligent made everything that is complex."

"I don't understand the origins/purpose/design of something, so it MUST have been created by something even more intelligent than myself."

scaffolding theory

[johnjay]

I know there are several other theories that explain how irreducibly complex structures could evolve through agencies other than "intelligent design". The only one I can think of at the moment is the "scaffolding" theory. According to this theory, there are intermediate elements that are developed during the evolution of the complex organ, but they are lost when the entire organ is created and the intermediate parts become redundant.

In an analogy, the intermediate pieces are the equivalent of the scaffolding that holds up an arch while the arch is under construction. When the arch is completed, the scaffolding can be removed, making it appear to people who don't understand arch-construction (but do understand physics) that the arch must have been created by magic.

I don't know anything about flagelli, so I couldn't give you an example of how there could be intermediate stepping-stones to a completed flagellum.

Also, it doesn't make the resultant complexity any less cool. It probably is even more cool because it was created by evolutionary pressure rather than intelligent design.

Solanaceae, to be precise

[cryptochrome]

The Solanaceae family also includes potatoes, chile peppers, and eggplants.

So not just tomacco on your sandwiches, but also tomatsup and a side of potacco fries. A trip to taco bell would be loaded with tobalsa, in addition to tomacco. Tomeggplant parmesan with tomacco sauce would be absolutely loaded with it.

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

[Minna Kirai]

. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex"

The rhetorical trick we see here is to slip a logical fallacy into the prelude, so it appears to be an indisputable axiom, rather than a challengable part of the argument.

In fact, those structures are not irreducibly complex. In the case of flagellum, scientists have already explained how incomplete organs were beneficial to microbes.

However, even if we do not have an explanation for how a complex structure could've evolved, that doesn't harm the theory of evolution. An inability to explain is not proof of falsehood. Just because you haven't seen a writeup walking through each and every little step of a process, doesn't mean that process can't work. (I don't think any human alive can truely understand all of the machines used for modern, daily life. Yet they carry on somehow.). In fact, given that primitive life was created so many billions of years ago in conditions that were so adverse to preserving evidence, it should be unsuprising that the precise details are unknown.

If one disgards arguments simply because one cannot personally comprehend every little detail, then creationism could be assailed with many more objections.

Re:+1 Funny

[Godeke]

This was what triggered the comment, although I admit it was poorly executed due to timing. Science is the application of a critical eye to everything, including the currently held concepts. But more than that, it proves its worth by providing predictions, and then having those predictions proven or disproved. Neither is worse than the other: a disproved theory is still progress in science.

If you are watching The Elegant Universe on PBS, you will see that the primary argument against the string theorists is that they theories they propose contain no testable (in the reasonable future) concepts. What made Einstein so amazing was he came up with the consequences for the rules of gravity and light virtually out of whole cloth in his head. But his theory made predictions: if they had proved wrong, he would be barely a footnote.

Creationists refuse to submit to the rigors of prediction and testing. If evolution predicts there should be an animal of characteristic X in the record, finding it after such a prediction helps bolster the theory. Working with fruit flys and bacteria have allowed many of the concepts of evolution to be tested, and have help refine the theory. Creationists point to a book and a failed understanding of complexity theory, with little else to stand on. That attitude, in the guise of being "scientific" infuriates me.

Re:McDonald's

[antis0c]

Now really, would it be that -bad- if most of America were addicted to salads? :)

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

[Durandal64]

But this article [breakpoint.org] raises an interesting consideration. When I was in junior high, we took a brief field trip to collect pond water to view under microscopes, and one of the most interesting things was how those little critters with the thing called a flagellum would zoom around. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex": it is made up of several parts, none of which separately would be of beneficial use to the creature employing it (in fact, such a creature would probably die off under natural selection.) The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design, which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

Intelligent design explains nothing. Please tell me how it increases the predictive capacity of any scientific theory in any way. All the intelligent design pushers do is observe something and say, "Aha! It must have been designed that way, or else it wouldn't work that way!" In other words, it's a tautology.

Furthermore, in an infinite universe, astronomical odds mean nothing. It had to happen somewhere in the universe; intelligent life just happened to happen here. Unfortunately for us, we're just as screwed when the sun burns out.

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories, mind you, much as Galileo was in favor of the theory that the Earth was flat, because it threatens to dredge up the uncomfortable unknown. But like any theory, the more evidence that is found to support it particularly to the exclusion of existing theories, the more likely it is correct. So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts. Has anybody heard anything more about this?

It's a load of horseshit. It does not add to the predictive capacity of any scientific theory and is completely circular in its logic. If human beings were intelligently designed, do you think we'd be using the same pipe for breathing and swallowing solid food, thus introducing a potential choking hazard? Or would we have blind spots in our eyes? Wouldn't our bodies be robust, meaning that any part can fail with the rest continuing on? Any flaws of this magnitude in any modern piece of technology would be considered completely unacceptable and the result of inexcusable incompetence on the part of the designer. All of the glaring flaws in the human body are easily explainable by evolutionary theory, but intelligent design is helpless to explain them without assuming that the designer is a complete retard.

Intelligent design is simply creationism in a clown suit, just like Windows 3.1 was to DOS.