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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?
I mean, just look at Skittlebrau!!
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I wonder where they got the plutonium to grow the crop?
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.
Let's get this guy working on the raining donuts!
I can see the crowds at the movie theaters...
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."
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.
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.
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.
MT
... but with marijuana plants. Tomajuana anyone?
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."
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.
I've seen that in health-nut sites & rags, but as biologists classify things, there is a very large family Solanaceae, which has genus Nicotiana (including those bad Nicotiana Tabacum species), and genus Solanum, which includes over 1400 species including the beloved spud & tomatoes. So really not too closely related.....I suspect many health nuts were dropping too much LSD in the 60's instead of paying attention in biology class.
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.
marko123 sez: "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."
A bad name is right.
When the Taino people discovered and rescued that lost Italian guy, Columbus, he saw that they took these dried leaves, rolled them up into a tube, lit them on fire, and breathed in the smoke through their nose. When he asked them what they called that, they replied "tobago".
Tobago is Taino for "tube". It started with a misunderstanding, and that continues to this day.
The original residents of North America have always considered tobacco to be a medicinal plant, to the point of being considered sacred. Science is now finding that nicotine is beneficial to several disorders. Furthermore, there's something in tobacco (other than nicotine) that prevents Parkinson's in two-thirds to three-quarters of people who use it. And yes, that's adjusted for mortality/comorbidity.
As with anything, it's a matter of using it appropriately, or bad things happen.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Worst... plant... ever.
Nothing is provable without a URL.
Ah, that proves nothing.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Try hops.
It was reported by Warmke and Davidson (1944) that hop scions grafted onto Cannabis stocks produced cannabinoid resins and this led to interest in the technique as a means of producing such material while avoiding legal restrictions.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
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.
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)