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Extinct Wildflower Found In California
Del writes "A Berkeley graduate student found the pink wildflower Eriogonom truncatum, known as the Mount Diablo buckwheat. The flower hasn't been seen for 70 years and has been rediscovered on the flanks of Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County."
It's not really extinct. It can be found in California.
In a rare interview Eriogonom truncatum states "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
You keep using that word, and I don't think it means what you think it does. This flower is self-evidently not extinct.
Clue : the phrase you're looking for is "Wildflower previously thought extinct".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"When I took people out to see it, they just walked right by it," Park said. "They couldn't grok that the thing could be so small and dainty."
Oh.
There is a difference between "extinct" and "very rare".
Guess its not extinct now, is it. :)
Tired of Apathy? http://apathyonline.net
How can it be extinct if they found it growing there?
I think, therefore I am. I think?
e's just been hiding.
I'm guessing it was reaaaally small flower.
Although seeds can be viable for a really long time, maybe that is the case here?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Well this gets my vote for the best use of the word "grok" by a non computer nerd.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
He's a Berkeley grad student. It's quite obvious what he's going to do with the flower: get Amit Singh to install BSD (naturally) on it.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Then the ivory-billed woodpecker thought to also be extinct ate it.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Yeah, I know it was probably hibernation, I did RTFA of course.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
1 down, 831 to go.
Its not quite extinct...
Someone make this a geocache spot so we can stampede it into extinction once and for all!
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
You fool, John Titor brought them back on the soles of his shoes.
Wait, how far back did he go again?
Well, he _looks_ like a nerd.
I don't think so...Otis Wildflower is a frequent poster on Slashdot and is very much alive.
So what, botany nerds/geeks don't count?
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
"When I took people out to see it, they just walked right by it," Park said. "They couldn't grok that the thing could be so small and dainty."
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
It is now extinct again when scientists picked it and realised they couldn't keep it alive by putting into a glass of water.
How do we know that the original flower isn't still extinct? A new flower could have evolved back to look like the extinct flower. There is nothing in the article about testing it with a 70 year old sample.
Life evolves to fill holes in ecology. ;-)
The time scales are seldom conceivable in human terms, because they are long relative to human attention span in some cases and lifetime in others. However, in the end life always evolves to fill holes in the ecology. It's the holes that come and go. Wrap your mind around this like you did the concept of holes in electronics
Just because some particular life has evolved away (become extinct) doesn't mean that it can't come back given the right conditions. It might come back in a little bit different form. Fossil records don't show continuity of existance, only evolving form. How the hell do we puny humans know, in our quick as a wink relative to evolution of life time, that this is NOT a natural process in evolution?
Come on all you natural philosphers. What do you say?
/. Headline cannot be wrong. Get some napalm or a molotov if u have any too...
oh jeez..
for a second i was hoping to read "cut it open.. let the nice extract seep out.. and smoke it/brew it in some tea to enjoy a nice trip.."
it still shocks me to this day that the nerds have overwhelmed the druggies at UCB..
say, does RMS still smoke opium?
I imagine plants must be incredibly difficult to "declare extinct", after all - how would you show for sure that none are present in a country the size of America? Whilst plants may seem to be local to a specific area because of their preference for a certain type of soil, pH or shade, it doesn't follow that, because the ones you know about are dead, then the plant is extinct. It's too easy to rush to judgement, especially when environmentalists have an interest in declaring loudly how many species are threatened or are already extinct. After reading "A State Of Fear" recently, and whilst I haven't fallen for all of Crichtons selective misrepresentations, I suspect their motivations a bit more than I used to.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
sea turtles are laying their eggs on the East coast of USA.
concerned nature lovers are helping these turtles toward extinction by moving their eggs further from the high tide line. 'because the turtles are lazy and don't always pick a high enough spot'
i kid you not.
these nature lovers are breeding failure back into the turtle population. they are also breeding in speed because when the young turtles have a longer trip to the sea, they are more likely to be eaten by snakes, sea birds, feral dogs, feral pigs, coyotes, small childrem, etc. once they get to the sea, they better have good stamina because after that much longer run to the water they still have to elude marine prey.
After loosing at Diablo II, we all just figured that everything was extinct.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
I think you meant, "So what, botany nerds/geeks don't count, you insensive clod?"
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think it's a given that the "insensitive clod" part is implied. ;)
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
Dodo birds not actually extinct just on 330 year vacation...............(nice thought isn't it) Seriously though it is kind of interesting that 2 "extinct" species have been rediscovered in the last couple of months
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
the Berkeley graduate student's girlfriend was flattered with the flower her boyfriend gave her.
Looks like the doomsday guys need to do a rethink, Maybe we aren't so badly placed after all.
Moreover I feel just like petrol was nothing till the automotives came , the lowly sand or dirty effluents may yet make our day and we may yet have regions of the earth flourishing suddenly as did the arab countries.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
What luck! Imagine finding thought to be extinct Mount Diablo buckwheat on the slopes of Mount Diablo? That's got to be one for the record books!
Be sure to adorn yourself with, for example, some nonextinct wildflowers known as Mount Diable Buckwheat in your hair.
When you travel to the metropolitan Bay Area, typically you will encounter some nonviolent people attempting to change the world through peaceful coexistence and overpriced real estate.
To ensure your acceptance, decorate yourself with several varieties of attractive vascular plants.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
An excited grad student accidently steps on the flower
IANAB[otanist], but doesn't it seem like if you're going to go looking for a flower called Mt. Diablo buckwheat, wouldn't you kind of expect to find it somewhere around Mt. Diablo? Is this seriously the first time anyone's looked there?
I think it's a given that the "insensitive clod" part is implied.
Should that not be: I think it's a given that the "insensitive clod" part is implied, you insensitive clod. Oh, wait.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Hey, I'm raising my kids to be geeks. Oh, they like computers, that goes without saying. But I'm teaching them to like biology too. Instead of teaching them to react with fear and revulsion when they see I spider, I have them look closely and count the number of pairs of eyes they can find. Once we found a daring jumping spider (Phidippus audax) in our garden. This spider is really cool. It's very active because it chases it's prey, leaping on it and killing it with it's chelicerae (fangs), which are a shiny metallic green. One of my entomologist geek friends (who likes other arthopods too), tells me they make good pets.
Nature is cool, and I don't want them to miss out. But I also have an ulterior motive. Informatics was a great field to work in in the late 20th century. It still is. But the most exciting field in this century is going to be biology and its applications.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sid: "Oh look! A dandelion!" [munch, gulp]
Frank: "Carl, he ruined our salad!..."
Carl: "Take it easy Frank. Let 'im get some distance first...."
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
It's part of the name of the flower.
RTFA
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
What I say is "Slashdot responses are all computer-generated, except mine". Time after time a common thread appears in consecutive posts. In this case, the post before also talks about re-evolution.
I think a random subject generator isn't quite working properly.
From now on, I'm going to note these occurrences with a subject of "quincunx", a word that sounds outstandingly profane, but actually isn't.
Ydco co
I find it amazing that, of all the places that Mount Diablo Buckwheat should turn up, it'd be on the slopes of Mount Diablo.
It's funny nobody thought of looking there before...
I wish I could introduce some of these grasses to my lawn...
weeds? meet grasses..
Berkeley-grads are not what they used to be.
Today, it's all about "GET $$$ QUICK"; see FuckedGoogle for reference.
It's all fagots like Larry Page: no drugs, no moral, no penis
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please tell us more facts about the future.
Sure, no problem. Here's a couple:
You still aren't going to be able to buy a flying car. You will, however, be able to invest in a company which intends to build one.
Some time between 2015 to 2025, expect the cadre of kids now in pre-school to adopt a musical style that current fans of rap will find incomprehensible and offsensive.
Perhaps they can be used to ensure that our kids don't have to work at all...
Well, by the standards of my grandparents and even my parents, what I do hardly counts as work, because it doesn't involve the daily risk of death and dismemberment and is not brutally punishing on my body. I expect that by my grandchildren's time, work will look like hanging around in coffee shop and chatting.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
you'd figure 'mount diablo' would be a good place to start looking for an extinct flower called 'Mount Diablo buckwheat'
It certainly does not look like a bee, more like a wasp.
I saw some of those flowers behind my house the other day when I was taking my pet Dodo for a walk.
Extinction is the history of the earth. If a species is unsuitable for it's environment it dies out and is replaced by something else. Contrary to popular belief, no species has a right to exist.
It would only concern me if key species that humans depend on were dying out.
Deleted
Hey man, like does that mean the flower children are back at Haite-Ashbury? can i like get one for my hair ? groovy... Cause i like got to get back to the garden....
Now you know why Turing requires a "telepathy proof room", for his test.
The state of California has mounted a campaign to eradicate the Mount Diablo buckwheat, a flower recently rediscovered after being thought extinct for decades. Lab tests on the flower indicate that it causes cancer in the state of California.
In related news, while trying to rejuvenate his image Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged to "Terminate" the cancer causing flower. Later that same day famed California channeler and psychic Lorraine Howard held a news conference during which she channeled the flower and responded to the governor in devilish voice saying, "I'll be back."
I smurf everything and everything I smurf is perfect.
I'd say thats a bigger discovery.. a fly that looks like a bee!
A bit late for that:
Bee Fly
You can tell it looks like a bee because it's fat and fuzzy, unlike the insect in the flower picture, but here's one that looks like a wasp:
Wasp Fly
Sorry, but science has already been there and done that.
KFG
Actually some flys look like this, so they can scare birds and other attackers. For us, humans, it does not look like a bee or a wasp.
Eriogonom truncatum has left the building
...but it got better
I can just see the wheels turning in the mind of Creationists about this. The flower previously believed to be extinct as well as the recent story of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker which had been thought to be extinct for some fifty years will now be used as evidence of creationism over evolution. After all, those creatures were gone weren't they? Indeed, they will argue, man does not know everything and this is evidence of god's hand in ways that are incomprehensible to science. Or something like that. I'm sure the creationist line about this will be more mind befuddling - but interesting and entertaining.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
It has Diablo and buckwheat in the name! The right will petition to have it renamed "Heavenly Buckwheat", and the left will petition to have it renamed "Mount Diablo Disadvantaged Minority Youth Flower".
Eriogonom = what the fuck does that mean.
Use the Google, Mr. Hydrocephalic.
Every hit on "Eriogonom truncatum" tells you what it is.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Extinct practice of electing actors to be politicians found in California.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"When I took people out to see it, they just walked right by it," Park said. "They couldn't grok that the thing could be so small and dainty." ... I got myself thinking that line one some *other* situation... kinda embarrassing.
It is a fly. It looks like a bee to have its natural predators think it's a bee, and thus leave it alone. And it seems to work pretty well...
Too bad he didn't kill it, now it will own the whole damn mountain, they'll block off all the trails just to protect it and any cousins it might or might not have there.
A thought to be extinct dodo bird was spotted less than a mile away from the sighting of the Mount Diablo Buckwheat. The crazy bird was followed to the area where the rare wildflower was seen, and inadvertantly trampled it. In a further attempt to escape its tracker, the dodo ran out into a highway and was flattened by a semi-truck bound for San Bernadino.
when the guy ripped it away, and sent it to grandma who loves pink flowers...
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
Now the entire area will be blocked off and set aside as a sanctuary.
Evoflunky: "This is the ONLY place on Earth where this flower is known to exist!"
Bystander: "Yes, but just yesterday you thought it was extinct. Why effect all of these people and businesses when it may very well exist elsewhere."
Evoflunky: "Tell you what, you find it somewhere else and we can open this area back up! See you in, oh 70 years. Next question?"
I feel a "Troll" mod coming...wait for it...wait for it!
The bacteria in my keyboard plaque was thought to be extinct when my girlfriend wiped it down with chemical cleaners against my will. However, continued discoloration amoungst the keys shows definate proof that the fingerous bacteria is still hanging on and could possibly even be around in the year 2050.
First the activist scientists said the woodpecker was extinct. But then someone discovered it was a lie. Now the activist scientists say that flowers were extinct, and here this young fella found some.
When will activist people stop believing the activist scientist and judges understand that the oil business stops terrorists through its expanded strategerically sound methods?
AAAHH is that a C or an E? mf
Jeez
PS: WTF is this "prove you are a human" sh1t? Why can't we make the robots prove they are capable of posting slashdot quality comments??
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
Hey, only two thing ever came out of U.C. Berkeley. LSD and BSD. Do I have to draw you a picture?!?!
... some other species of buckwheat EVOLVED into this recently.
Last fall, during my backpacking through the area, I groked at some of the wild things growing there. I dropped a packet of seeds I had taken along as part of my "back to nature" diet, but I could not see them. I just could not grok that they had gone missing. Now that I see these newly discovered weed flowers, I just can't grok that they might be from the birdseed in my diet. What a grokking thought! as I was hurrying to get away from those pesky "Yellojacket-like" stinging flies.
uh, 40 years before I was born?
still cool, I think I'll twist one up and take a drive up there, snap off some photos (you know where I'll post them)
do you have shinyfeet?
They've had plant turn up that were extinct for eons after turning over swampland to build a building where the seeds were sitting preseved in a peat bog.
There is a pretty famous case of this where there were seeds in a canoe found in a peat bog and they were able to recover a 1000 year old extinct lotus from.
What i dislike is when environmentalists say something is extinct but what they really mean is that its regionally extinct which to me is alot less worrysome also because it doesnt meantion how large the region is. I mean monarch butterflies are regionally extinct from my desk but not from the greater environment around the building.
I really wonder how many blue butterflies (that all look the same) in california are considered endangered? it seems like theres a different one for every piece of the coastline.
Offtopic but pretty interesting, there are so many levels to nature and many things just need the right environmental conditions to make their debut. There is a fungus that lives beneath the soil in oregon, one of the largest living organisms but it only lives the subterranean part of its lifecycle. If the climate were to warm up in oregon, oregon would erupt with mushrooms.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Off topic but:
Jumping spiders do in fact make great pets. Their eyesight is sharp enough they seem to be watching you when you move around, and jumping spiders are quite ferocious for their size, making feeding a matter of getting small crickets (or houseflies depending on the size of the spider)
Depending on what part of the nation you live in you could possibly also find wolf spiders (Lycosa spp., I think) which get a bit larger if your kids want something more visible. Or you could get them a tarantula...
</spider enthusiast>
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Come back to me when someone's figured out if you can smoke it.
unable to resolve function slashdot.sig(), aborting...
I think alien picnickers had the wildflower seeds their sandwich rolls, and lost some.
I also have it on good authority, for example, that the genetic material for dinosaurs is safe and sound on the mothership. Lets hope the next picnic doesn't involve escaped raptors that were meant for the BBQ!
Prove this isn't so.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Please give us an example of a past mass extinction in which the dominant species on earth continued to be so after the extinction occurred. You can define "dominant" fairly loosely and still not find such an event in world history. (If you'd like to get as far as "sharks and turtles are the dominant forms of life on earth," or "bacteria rule the earth," then I guess you'll find this looming new mass extinction reassuring...)
The completely obvious point that heads-in-the-sand "it doesn't concern me" types refuse to hear, despite every environmentalist for the last 30 years making it, is that there is a massive danger to human beings in a drastic reduction of biodiversity. It threatens us, as a species.
Earth will come through it. Earth has sustained life at much higher temperatures than at present, for example. That doesn't mean global warming wouldn't radically destabilize human civilization. It's a question of whether we would live through those changes. It's self-interest.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Maybe it could simply be that they were never really extinct in the first place, just very rare and lost? Your example in your post where you attempt in a very bad way to bash creationism makes just as much sense as the babble a few posts up about these being different entities that evolved to look exactly like the other flowers/birds.
Both are statements from people who don't know what they're talking about but like to push an agenda even if it doesn't make sense. Except here on reactionary slashdot, any crazy idea will get modded up as long as it has the word "evolution" in it.
Y'know, I've been keeping my eye out for one with the idea of making it a pet.
The thing is, I don't want to buy cases of crickets. Will they take some kind of human food or animal feed, like shimp pellets? Or can I just catch a bug or two a week and drop it in the tank? Will they take dead food, so I can store some for the winter?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't mean to be alarmist but does this seem like the dead are coming back to life? First an extinct woodpecker is found alive, now a wildflower? What's next? A bunch of "Old West" heroes from Springfield?
I knew the world was in bad shape, but I didn't know it was this bad. Now if I could find where I left my Soul cube, BFG and chainsaw, (gotta love the chainsaw), I'd be all set.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
And delicious (burp).
If there are any Geeks out there intrested in all things plant like and informatics then they might be intrested in the permaculture.info project. Were hoping to build a community driven online database of plants and their relationships, together with a host of related information and features. Theres been quite a lot of interesting ideas floating around with visual representation of data, distributed events and link systems. Theres a good few chalanges ahead especially in the relms of knowledege representation. Email me or see the website for details.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
You still aren't going to be able to buy a flying car. You will, however, be able to invest in a company which intends to build one.
Don't be so sure about that. The most recent EAA newsletter had a blurb that the boys over at Monster Garage will be having a go at it.
I expect that by my grandchildren's time, work will look like hanging around in coffee shop and chatting.
As opposed to standing around a water cooler chatting? The jobs with risk of death and dismemberment are still around. And they're still brutally punishing to the body. But they're either done in China or by illegal Mexicans, so nobody here seems to care much.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
When I was a student studying Fish and Wildlfe Management, I had a summer job with the local Conservation Authority. One of my tasks was to perform a bio-inventory of a wetland they owned. One day I found a plant which was listed as rare in Ontario. I actually phoned the people who were responsible for maintaining the list, only to be told it was now upgraded to common. Seems they had been doing a lot of surveys of wetlands recently and were finding this plant more often than they expected. It was this lovely little orchid: http://cedarcreek.umn.edu/plants/newslides/11899.j pg (Ramshead Ladyslipper - Cypripedium arietinum).
Now, I am a major geek, well sort of...but I have a strong love of nature, and I do not find the two conflicting, in fact I like to call myself a technopagan - although I really only fit in with the last line as it is defined here on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopaganism
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Scientists and Environmentalists tend see other species as finite and place their "rules" on the creatures exsistence, and habitats. It's almost like the forget about the Darwin factor, that the planet is always changing and it's species will accomodate.
Why the guilty feeling when a species becomes extinct? Did this flower play such a unique roll in the ecosystem? One so unique that no other flower can do what it does?
Wildlife management is quite the lucritave business. I don't think we should be playing God when it comes to preserving a species.
Protect some of their habitat, and let them decide their exsistence.
Another fine example of humans intervening is with the Loggerhead Sea Turtles. Every night May-October, people walk the beaches and raid nests to collect eggs, raise them in captivity, and release them in the ocean. What about the gene pool? Only the strongest survive. That's the planet's way to control disease and bad genes, by the weak dying off or getting eaten.
Set up the preserves, and let the plants and animals figure it out. Species that acclimate to human existance will work it out, others will die off, others will live in Wildlife Refuges...quit messing with nature.
Many pet stores sell crickets. I buy about a dozen per week for my gecko so that I don't have to deal with an entire case of crickets.
Are there any plans to submit seeds for preservation?
Planet Ark
And how his herbalism skill has reached 298 points.
But the most exciting field in this century is going to be biology and its applications.
I would say that one of the most exciting fields in this century is actually going to be Bioinformatics (disclaimer: I'm currently getting a degree in bioinformatics). It's not enough any more for someone to have a degree in Biology. It's much more useful if you have a degree in Biology and some programming skills. Most fields in Biology have so much information to go through (like DNA or protein sequences) that it's becoming almost a necessity to have the ability to write programs to do what you want.
Story here
Living as I do at the base of Mt. Diablo, I hope this discovery doesn't result in a stupid knee-jerk reaction such as banning hiking and mt. biking on the mountain (which is a state park) in order to "preserve" this weed.
Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much! It just so happens that this flower here is only MOSTLY extinct. There's a big difference between mostly extinct and all extinct. Mostly extinct is slightly alive. With all extinct, well, with all extinct there's usually only one thing you can do: go through its genome and look for spare genes.
Extinct: you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
(With apologies to gowen.)
Extinct Wildflower Found In California
Not exitinct now is it?
They don't need feeding often. Twice a week should do fine, and remove whatever's left (Some spiders will leave a bolus of exoskeleton in their enclosure after feeding)
Dead food...possibly. My smallest tarantula (which is about the size of a young jumping spider) will take crickets that have had their head crushed, as well as dismembered cricket legs (the big jumping ones)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
"Please give us an example of a past mass extinction in which the dominant species on earth continued to be so after the extinction occurred."
Your premise is weak. Give me an example of a past life form on earth which was conscious and able to manipulate it's environment to the extent that we can.
Deleted
Wanna bet that someone will discover oil under this stupid flower? And, it will be the largest discovery of oil known to man. Boy, wouldn't that be a fun fight to watch?
I expect that by my grandchildren's time, work will look like hanging around in coffee shop and chatting.
Those jobs already exist. They're called "government jobs".
The sad thing is that most slashdotters are willing to pay higher taxes so that more "jobs" like that can be created. Remember, government employees don't have to produce anything.
Here's to untrammeled oil exploration in Alaska and deforestation of Brazil. All the facile talk of species extinction is really overblown, as this example proves. Here's to Cheney energy policy!
No, first post is correct. Flying cars have been techincally possible for years and years. But the real reason you won't be able to buy a flying car is that the US government can't have us flying all over the place willy nilly going over borders, flying over the whitehouse, the pentagon, or area 56. It is way too uncontrolled for the people who like to control things.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
This flower is among a number of animals that have been 'rediscovered' from extinction in the past few weeks. The funny thing is that if they are legally declared extinct under the endangered species act, they hae no protection under the act.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
Mount Diablo buckwheat....rediscovered on the flanks of Mount Diablo.
Those names sure seem familar. Wounder why no one thought to look there for so long.
Not to mention the fact that people can barely drive the cars that don't fly.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Two days after the location of the thought-to-be-extinct flower was announced, all specimens were trampled to death by vacationing city dwellers.
Don't be so sure this is actually the once-thought-extinct flower they say it is, because fact-checking doesn't seem to be this article-writer's strong point: notice that the caption on the picture of what is clearly a bee sitting on the flower says that it is "a fly".
Of course, that may be the rare and once-thought-extinct beefly, who mimicks bees the same way a viceroy butterfly mimics monarch butterflies...
I have rediscovered the beefly! Hooray for me!
Some time between 2015 to 2025, expect the cadre of kids now in pre-school to adopt a musical style that current fans of rap will find incomprehensible and offsensive.
That is one of the funniest things i've read on slashdot in a while. I guess this means that Country and Western Music makes a comeback, huh?
Instead of teaching them to react with fear and revulsion when they see I spider, I have them look closely and count the number of pairs of eyes they can find... and then squash it.
I hope you don't teach your kids how to write. Your usage of "it's" and "its" is inconsistent. I let you look more closely and figure out which is correct in which context.
Don't touch it! It's the Devil weed, I tell you.
Just look where it grows...
Monsanto might already have a patent on that seed, and almost definitely on backing up seeds.
I hope you don't teach your kids how to write.
No, I let they're teechrs due that. I due however try to teech them not to be obnokshus prigs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
but does it run linux?
Come on all you natural philosphers. What do you say?
The best words on this issue have already been spoken. Charles Williams Beebe says:
"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived though its first material expression be destroyed. A vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer, but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and earth must pass before such a one can be again."
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
But Diablo only drops Buckwheat maybe 1 in 500 times when you kill him.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Funny that you should mention that. I'm currently being drawn into that field by my job. The problem is that funding for practical applications of bioinformatics are limited to what in my opinion are overly narrow fields. What this amounts to is that well-heeled orgnizations can afford to buy/build/extend LIMS systems to have all kinds of interesting capabilities. We're talking people doing gene sequencing and the like.
What the world really needs is more technology to support the kind of research this guy does. Field research, environmental monitoring, and public health surveillance. It's nice that biotech companies can sequence genes faster, but this whole range of field bioinformatics applications potentially has widepread economic and human welfare impacts. The genes will be there to be sequenced tommorow, but averting an epidemic outbreak, or saving a species from extinction... these are one time opportunities.
Guess which kind of applications I work in?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you would just RTA, you'd realize that this extinct plant that isn't extinct is "a unique part of our heritage".
Just think of that. Amazing, huh? I know that I, for one, feel my heritage is *much* more complete now.
Hey, I like wildflowers. I'm always glad to find out something isn't extinct, so long as the something isn't a mosquito, or killer bee, or fire ants, all of which could vanish tomorrow and I would dance on their grave. But I also tend not to lose sleep over a lot of this stuff.
At the same time, I do wonder... as these guys tramp across Mt. Diablo looking for extinct species, how many more species are they dooming with those big feet?
And the most likely agent to do so is ourselves, because we, as a species, both have the capacity to alter our environment and also fail to recognize the consequences of doing so.
I forget what 8 was for.
From the article: "They couldn't grok that the thing could be so small and dainty." I can't "grok" that you would ever consider using that word seriously. What is it about some accidemic types that seem to think using Grok makes them sound more intelligent? Personally if someone uses that phrase their credibility goes to something like .001 in my book. It's from science fiction for goodness sake!
Makes me wonder if that was a prepared statement...
I actually talked my 6 year old son into tasting a carpenter ant.
We were both curious what it would taste like, but I didn't have the guts to do it myself. God I'm glad my wife doesn't read slashdot.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Mt. Diable has been slashdotted. I went there after reading about it here and cars were backed up for miles and access notices were everywhere making the flowers unaccessable. I did a Google search and someone was kind enough to post a mirror for the flowers here: mttp:\\mt.tassahara
... And they found some extinct grass on Catalina Island which is 26 miles off the coast of SoCal.
... Jenny McCune, an ecologist with the Catalina Island Conservancy, found the grass - California Dissanthelium - while doing research near the Airport-in-the ... ]
California Dissanthelium
If U ask me, I have been pulling these weeds out of my lawn for years.
[Grass species long thought extinct found on Catalina
OCRegister (subscription), CA - 5 hours ago
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
How do we know that it was ever extinct? As far as I know, plants can't just appear. It must have never been extinct, making this an even lamer story.
native americans?
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/0 5/images/buckwheat_fly.jpg
What kind of fly is that?!
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Sounds like a great place for a condo development. Imagine the thousands of people that could admire this little weed from their balconys.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It could be the first instance of physically slashdotting something.
-tom
Ants come in several flavours, which vary by species and probably by what they're eating too.
... well, there are ants that smell like rotting socks, and I imagine they taste much the same. You'll have to check those out for yourself. :)
The best ones are mildly sweet with a hint of acidity. These are good raw or fried. Ordinary "big brown ants" (common throughout the American midwest) are of this type. The main problem is that by the time you've collected enough ants for a meal, you've starved to death.
The worst
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What kind of salad dressing goes well with Eriogonom truncatum?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I once ate an ant, I was bout 10 years old, that was a greyish colour, 3mm long. Very bitter, one of the most bitter things I had ever eaten, especially in such a small quantity.
Today, on the slopes of Mt. Diablo, several of what could only be described as "nerds" with pdas were seen picking the rare flower, muttering something about "Commanders" and "Tacos" whilst arguing about "Firing foxes..."
Not to mention that google can lead to articles with much more information as a whole. Granted the writing style on that one is a tad dry with a little bit of jargon, but hey. Hmm... linked page also has some fairly big pictures, so I'd better coralize the link before it goes down.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I've never seen a grey ant. Are you sure it wasn't a termite?
:)
The more-acidic ants (without any sweetness) aren't any good unless fried, which takes the sting out of 'em.
The ants in SoCal are all kindof icky tasting, which is a shame because finally I'm somewhere there are enough ants to make a meal
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Some time between 2015 to 2025, expect the cadre of kids now in pre-school to adopt a musical style that current fans of rap will find incomprehensible and offsensive.
...and everyone else will still be listening to Mozart and Led Zeppelin. ;-)
Before someone gets a Big Gulp, climbs into his hummer, and crushes the thing
God made this flower, so we should call it Mount Kawukum buckwheat instead.
Perhaps they can be used to ensure that our kids don't have to work at all...
Well, by the standards of my grandparents and even my parents, what I do hardly counts as work, because it doesn't involve the daily risk of death and dismemberment and is not brutally punishing on my body.
It may be easier in a number of days, but we will always have ambitious, competitive, or bored workaholics.
Mount Diablo is a small mountain a little south of where the Sacramento River empties into the San Francisco Bay. The article hints at it, but in terms of flora, the Mount Diablo region is very unusual in the variety of plants it has. It mixes plants from the northern coastal mountain ranges with those from southern coastal mountains and has a few alpine meadow holdovers from the last ice age.
Obviously the being reponsible for Intelligent Design had the foresight to backup this flower. Restore only took 70 years... sounds like where I work.
Shouldn't the title read:
Formerly Extinct Wildflower found
The flower hasn't been seen for 70 years...
Thats likely becouse no one has bothered to look in that time. No one goes to Fresno either.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Agreed...but jumping spiders are probably a bit too agile and quick to be kept in a container even such as an aquarium. Perhaps if you were keeping them only for a few days for observation, then maybe, but for longer than that, I'd suggest any of the funnel weaving species (or the wolf spiders you mention) that you'd find in your basement first. They're already aclimatized to your indoor temperature, and they're used to living long periods without food.
Orb weavers (the spiral web weavers) are best kept outdoors, but they tend to have fairly permanent homes that you can feed and observe every day in the same spot.
Non-existant building found in imaginary city
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Gee. Give you an example of another life form on earth that could farm and wear clothes and that went extinct.
Do you have to wait for an example? How about just populations of people?
Easter Island.
Rome (they deforested and created smog burning iron ore out of mines to keep their expansionist war machine going. It is thought that the lead lining of their water pipes lead to widespread retardation and emotional instability--especially in their leaders).
New Zealand. Indigenous people are gone--clear enough?
There are quite a few islands on our side of the atlantic that were wiped out, either by war or disease. When the Spanish invaded the Aztecs, only one in 25 people survived--merely due to not being adapted to European disease like Cholera.
About 90% of the Flu epidemics come from China. Why? Because they fertilize with human waste. The run-off goes into ponds where they raise fish. The birds and pigs that also live on the farms are part of this mini-ecosystem. Suffice to say, that in epidemiology, that if a bacterium, pest or virus has another ecosystem to rely on, then the transmission vehicle (like people) are cannon fodder. Another example is Malaria that wipes out millions, because its environment is Misquitoes--which are undamaged by it.
There have been a few books on this subject of humans wiping themselves out because either by Religious doctrine or an out of touch leadership (in fact, it is almost always the case of rulers who are separated from the plight of the people, that you find the biggest issues of environmental disaster). I don't really have the time to look them all up. Suffice to say, that if you want, you can find a lot of examples of whole societies and races of people vanishing due to either over-exploiting their environment or to transforming their natural environment too quickly, thus producing crossover diseases (like avian flu).
So, either we listen to a few whiney Environmentalists and tree huggers and spend about 1% of GDP on pollution regulation and things like the CDC. Use conservation and education to compete in the global marketplace. Winner--everyone.
Or we do it the NeoCon way. Let the dice fall where they may. Spend 10% of GDP to dominate and bomb other countries and take their resources. Support tyrants around the world so that they can give contracts to US companys to clear cut forests for hamburgers. Risks; nuclear armageddon or eco-failure. Upside; A few people get 10 mile-long yachts instead of merely 300 ft yachts.
Soon, you won't get propaganda about there being "no global warming". You will get propaganda about the "benefits of global warming". Just wait. A few purchased scientists to spread FUD are not going to be able to cover up a cascading ice field in Antarctica.
Gee. I think I'll side with the more "conservative" approach and not risk destroying the planet.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
100% sure it was an ant. I remember thinking "that's an ant, but its grey, so what does it taste like?"
Perhaps it had dust on it, or perhaps it was an old ant; I was in Greece at the time, so maybe it got sunburnt?
That has got to be nice, your Phd thesis depends on you going on hikes in California. I guess that's only a little better than hacking at code 10 hours a day.
Already has. One of my work clients sells earplugs - I should ask them for a couple. :)
I expect that by my grandchildren's time, work will look like hanging around in coffee shop and chatting.
*sigh* Why couldn't I have been born in the future?
Nature having backups. Made me laugh; thanks
Nothing like a little redundancy.
I wonder if eating it will let me spit bouncing fireballs?
Or maybe Greece just has really weird ants!
:)
In other odd things to eat, roasted grasshopper legs taste a lot like frog.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
We've already really done a number on most of the fish species we eat, just through the magic of the government subsidizing fishing and keeping fishermen in business when the number of fish in the water would have long made in unprofitable.
You were. Just ask your grandparents*.
* If alive. Otherwise, ask oldest living relative.
Why are you calling him "hydrocephalic"? Hydrocephaly does not necessarily cause lowered IQ. Maybe you meant "anencephalic".