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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."
From the article: "The plant grew off the tobacco roots and sucked up the nicotine, just like Tomacco on The Simpsons.
:P
What do you bet that McDonald's will start using these tomatoes to make us all addicted to their salads and burgers?
"This tates like grandma!" Love that episode.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
I mean, just look at Skittlebrau!!
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I do find it interesting that the linked site has a retraction of the "Fox News is going to sue us" story. Perhaps a slashback is in order?
Sig under construction since 1998.
Did I miss something?
Is it the 1st of April?
Surely you are pulling my leg yes?
Splicing/grafting plants together is not that hard, but I thought this could only be done with plants of the same eh..family.
I wonder where they got the plutonium to grow the crop?
If Phillip Morris starts selling tomatos, I'm not buying.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
It will be low calorie, high in vitamins and addictive. At least you get something for your nicotine poisoning.
Fight Spammers!
Everyone seems to set about making the impossible things in TV shows become a reality. Perhaps we need to start a TV show where geeks get laid by hot chicks all the time?
mogorific carpentry experiments
Start them early with Tomacco's! They'll start craving vegetables.. then just give them regular tomatoes. They'll have already made the connection that tomatoes make you feel better!
Also seems like a good way to try to quit smoking?
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
They are both nightshades.
Tomato plants can get the Tobacco Mosaic virus, too.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
yes, tomato is a fruit technically
Yes, botanically the tomato is a fruit. However, legally, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, tomatos are vegetables.
Wherein The Simpsons serves as prior art.
The article you're referencing doesn't live there anymore. It's here.
Intelligent Design explains these biological models so well because ID was created to describe them. It's basically some "scientists" way of saying "well, we don't know how it happened, it must have been done on purpose by some higher being!" - ie, basically giving up on scientific foundations and going for the easy out.
They're simply addictive! We hope to have a full line of Tomacco snack food products on the shelves as soon as we can get the pro-forma FDA approval.
-- R.J. Reynolds
Let's get this guy working on the raining donuts!
I can see the crowds at the movie theaters...
I'm still waiting for the "tobaccy and clam ice cream" for chain smoking otters.
Setting fire to tobacco leaves and breathing in the smoke gave Nicotine, an innocent bystander (in moderation), with potential for improving the brain's concentration levels, a bad name.
Bad company corrupts good character. And in the case of Nicotine, bad cigarette companies.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
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
Intelligent Design is an "accepted" theory?! I think you've been smoking too many tomacco leaves...
That creationist argument is debunked here (number 15):
"Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells."
If The Simpsons has taught us anything, and it hasn't, it's that Tomacco plants aren't a good idea.
In 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that because a tomato is eaten during the course of a meal--and not for dessert--it could be classified as a vegetable and therefore could be subjected to import tariffs like other vegetables. But it is really a fruit (a special type of fruit called a plant fruit. Like an apple.)
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.
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."
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
the tomato and tobacco are both variaties of nightshade, as is the potato.
All of these plants already contain nicotine, so of course he found them, and various other alkaloids. The only question is the concentration and where that concentration is.
You'll also find nicotine in things you might not expect, like bananas, beef, cow's milk and cottage cheese.
Eat a tomato leaf, potato leaf, or even the wrong parts of a potato and you can end up, very, very dead.
Enjoy your fries and ketchup.
KFG
I've never wanted to go out for a veggie break so bad before.
Bizarrely enough, there's actually a US Supreme Court Decision on this (Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893)). There was a tariff on fruits, but not veggies, imported from the West Indies. Plaintiff claimed that, since tomatoes are fruits, his imported tomatoes should be exempt from the tariff. The Supremes begged to differ:
... all these are vegetables, which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with or after the soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.
"Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans and peas. But in the common language of the people
"The attempt to class tomatoes with fruit is not unlike a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for this court, said: 'We do not see why they should be classified as seeds, any more than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds in the language of botany or natural history, but not in commerce nor in common parlance.'"
Hence, tomatoes are legally vegetables in the US, botany be damned.
Would ketchup packets replace nicotine patches?
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
An open plea to the Simpsons writers:
Please, more episodes about cold fusion.
Thank you.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
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
So lemme get this straight. It couldn't possibly have been a 1 in billion chance, because we've been trained that "1 in billion" means "never happens", so it must have been a guy in the sky with lightning bolts, and that's the only "sane" thing you could come up with?
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.
In this case he has grafted a tomato plant on a tobacco root.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"MT
... but with marijuana plants. Tomajuana anyone?
This is a hybrid. It was created by grafting the roots of a tobacco plant with the stem of a tomato plant. Both are in the nightshade genus, so they grafted OK. This is not a seeding, or reproducing plant. It's a single freak. Thereis no genetic engineering involved, just plain old grafting, a practice that has ben practiced safely for over 1500 years. Get a life freak!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Altria is Phillip Morris... or was, Phillip Morris International changed its name to Altria. Altria owns both Phillip Morris USA (the tobacco company), and Kraft Foods.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
btw, you're wrong.
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.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Its common knowledge that tomatos can be grafted on to a wide range of plants in the Solanum family including potatoes, tobacco, Datura, etc. In fact the Russians made a tomacco back in 1956 (See Glavinic, R., 1956 (Vegetative hybridization between tomato and tobacco). Priroda (Nature), Leningrad No. 11: 98-100. (Russian)).
Now if we only had only had slashdot back in 1956.....
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Applacco: An applacco a day keeps the cigarette away !
Cabbageacco: There's now a way to make your kids WANT to eat their cabbage soup.
Carrotabacco: It's not a problem if you overcook them !
Maybe we deserve this world ?
just need the tomeato plant.
Sig?
"Vegetable originally meant any plant, as in "the vegetable kingdom", or Twenty Questions' opening gambit, "animal, mineral, or vegetable?" And fruit meant any edible plant part. With the development of the science of botany, however, the meanings of the words have shifted. Vegetable is now used to refer to herbaceous (non-woody) food plants or their edible parts. Fruits are the reproductive parts of a plant, the ripened ovary of a flower and its contents and related parts; vegetables as well as other plants like trees can have fruits." Source.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Too bad that won't work with cannabis, despite the old urban myth that it does. Mmmm, I'd be sure to get my daily recommend dose^H^H^H^Hserving of vegetables per day.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
In general, if what you eat has seeds (or is supposed to have seeds, like bananas and certain grapes), they you are eating fruit. We eat corn and bean fruit by strict botanical definitions. "True" vegetables are when we eat the leaves, roots, stems, or flowers.
We (mankind) have done so much genetic manipulation with our crops (for milleniums, not just from Monsanto) that most would never be able to survive without our continued cultivation.
Whether we domsticated them, or they domesticated us, is debatable. From their perspective, it looks like they have enslaved the human race to do their bidding (spread their genes around the would and into the future).
In order to do something like this with marijuana you'd have to resort to genetic engineering.
. 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.
Worst... plant... ever.
Yeah... I was going to do that... with acid... had it growing in strawberries... but then I tried it and kinda... forgot how I did it... along with eight years of college...
Nicotine is most definately not good for you. It constricts blood vessels and raises blood pressure. Unless you're shooting for a heart attack I'd avoid nicotine.
Goes great with a nicotini!
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
The big problem with ID is reliance on probability as proof of existence of God. Improbable things happen on regularly, or at least improbable sequences (take lottery winners over a fairly short period (1-2 yr.) in a single state); the probability of a single sequence of lottery winners is on the order of the probabilities quoted for the development of organs such as the eye. Instead of many slightly improbably events, there are a few highly improbable ones - both situations reduce to the same thing. Ultimately, in many situations, all of the events are improbable, so an improbable event must occur. Probability (even of highly improbable events) doesn't distinguish between the existence or absence of God - either the argument becomes circular (highly improbable events are done by God) or falsifiable (how do you distinguish between improbable events facilitated by God and events not facilitated by God?). In addition, the cutoffs for "probable" events are arbitrary - again enters circularity.
Of course, this becomes irrelevant in a religious sense. If God means what science can't explain, you get the "God of the gaps" (see Wired - 2002 -article about the Vatican chief astronomer). Faith isn't determined by proof - if so, it's fact, not faith. ID is an attempt to mandate God - either to support a faith that is weak and needs proof or to force others to believe in a god of your choosing. It is not necessarily Luddite - people want power over others, power that comes from asserting absolute right, although this is destructive to the means (faith) and the ends (choice of individuals to believe and achievement of the results of that belief). I don't think the people asserting ID neceesarily want people to go back - a technologically advanced world might be OK if they could control it. The difficulty in controlling technology makes this hard to do - so they try to get rid of what they can't control, which is ultimately everything.
ID is bad science and worse theology.
You're missing the point. Evolution has no solution.
Evolution doesn't work towards an end result. That's part of what makes it so difficult to understand. Since there's no stable environment, there's no ultimate solution.
The number one flaw in the "complexity requires design" premise is that by the very premise, the designer requires a designer, who requires a designer, ad infinitum. So, either complexity has always existed, without a "first cause", which contradicts the premise, or the premise is false. Because of the self-contradiction, the former means the premise is false, and the latter of course just states it outright. Either way, the premise that complexity requires design is false.
This isn't rocket science, it's a simple logical deduction that has been well known for centuries. That people still try to use it says a lot about the state of education (or brainwashing) today.
Maybe we'll start seeing actors eating a LOT of tomatoes in TV and movies.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I say tobato
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
I can't believe no one mentioned this already (I searched the comments page.)
In a graft, which is what has been done here, you stick the stem of one plant (tomato in this case) onto the root of another (tobacco in this case). If the two plants are closely related (as are tomatoes and tobacco,) the hybrid plant will grow and survive; often, chemicals (nicotine in this case) will move in the sap from the roots to the leaves (and presumably fruit.)
This is NOT a genetic change. If you took these "tomacco" seeds and planted them, they'd grow into regular tomatoes. Making the genetic changes required for tomatoes to actually make their own nicotine (which would breed true,) is an entirely different and more complicated prospect.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Could this be used to wean people off of cigarette addictions?
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. 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.
"Tomatsup"? Please post your "D'oh!" now or we will be forced to do it for you.
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
I want my Tomeato.
Actually no. My definition is from a psychologist, whose field was the first that studied "intelligence". Because "intelligence" was such a controversial thing to define, they choose a minimal, inarguable definition so that research results could be unambiguously compared.
The Turing test is not used by many (any?) scientists yet, not even CS or AI types. And it's not intended to measure intelligence either... all it could really present is a boolean guess.
A real intelligence test is conducted by a dedicated psychologist, and has a greater range of values the scan-o-matic forms you may be used to. It's capable of measuring, supposedly, low intelligences like a dog (15 IQ) or venus flytrap (1 IQ). (And yes, there are some humans who score that low) As part of the process, the examiner will converse with the subject, thus subsuming the activities of a Turing test.
Here is a nice link about why they would be toxic: Toxicity
Nicotine is actually a poison . Before downplaying the intake of poison I would learn the facts. As for cigarettes and the diseaes they help bring on learn about how they get those little numbers on their packs before thinking you are any less exposed.
Course, you could just prove it all wrong by soaking a pack or two of cigarettes in 32oz of water and chugging it after cutting off your phone service and access to medical help.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
The bed scene, after the lovin' is done...
"Marinara sauce?"
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Next we need
popplers, Slurm, and solent cola.
TruePunk | Games
Yes, I know. It's a neurotoxin, just like Asparthame (Nutra-Sweet), only more people are affected by MSG than Asparthame.
The problem is that MSG is used in great quantities at fast food establishments and hardly at all in Chinese food (at least not anymore) -- but the Chinese food places have traditionally been the ones taking the heat for it. I know plenty of people who are unaffected by MSG that will refuse to eat at a Chinese food place without a "No MSG" policy, but they will happily go to McDonald's and wolf down some of that shit.
Of course, all "vegetables" are "technically" fruits. The notion of "vegetable" as distinct from fruit is a cultural construct. Ain't Slashdot great?
P.
but they will happily go to McDonald's and wolf down some of that shit
Wow, I was gonna call bullshit on you, but how wrong I was!
At least they admit it, but here's a list of McDonalds foods with added MSG:
Chicken McGrill
Hot 'n Spicy McChicken
Grilled Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad
Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad
Grilled Chicken California Cobb Salad
Sausage, Egg & Cheese McGriddles
Sausage McGriddles
Sausage McMuffin
Sausage Biscuit
Sausage Biscuit with Egg
Spanish Omelete Bagel
Sausage
Big Breakfast
Sausage Breakfast Burrito
The sad part is, a decent Sausage Biscuit with Egg would need no MSG at all, it's full of meaty favor, but apparently they can't help themselves.
I mean, 4 salads with MSG added?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)