Now, with extra flounder-DNA action!!!!
About 2′ in spots
The corn is a bit shorter close to the drive, where the deer have been eating it.
A few years ago I had the warped idea of doing a GMO of my own. I don’t have a dog in the “War On Drugs” fight other than that I hate to see government have more to spend money and shoot people over. But I realized that it’s within the reach of an individual to make a significant difference using GMO techniques: roundup-ready coca plants, cold-hardy coca plants, cold-hardy papaver somniferium, and roundup-ready marijuana. I asked a friend who works in biotech patents about the feasibility and he said it’s probably within the reach of a dedicated amateur in a decade, or a professional in 2 years, and you’d need about $100k in gear. Then he said, “It’d be interesting to see what would happen – you’d have a perfect trifecta of badness coming after you: the DEA, the central american drug cartels, and Monsanto. You’d better hope the DEA caught you first.”
As Sun Tzu says, defeat your opponent’s strategy.
By the way, I bet that if someone was selling GMO pot, suddenly nobody’d mind, “hey, give me a hit of that flounder-weed!”
Oh sweet, succulent flounder-weed!
What makes you think some grad student hasn’t already done that? You don’t need 100k on equipment if your PI already has a fully stocked lab. I, for one, never, ever knew any grad students in E&E or Genetics or Biochem & Structural Bio that collaborated in bringing all sorts of plant specimen back from all the major continents. And then cross bred them. For Science’s sake. Or something.
But I understand the tetraploid shit was awesome.
Wow, your corn is looking good! Mine is being eaten alive by grasshoppers. Billions and billions of them. :-(
Not so interested in Round-up Ready Pot but the idea of Round-up Ready Hemp sure does make me think. I really wish our governor were not so anti-hemp; in my state we are not allowed to grow it at all, even though in many states one can, with the proper license of course, as an “experimental” crop. (Do you really need the experiments? People have been growing this stuff for a very long time.) I’m interested in growing it for fiber.
I’ve also wondered if GMOs could be made to be drought-tolerant. Or maybe we could somehow cross them with bindweed and you’d never need to plant again…
Raucous Indignation@#1:
What makes you think some grad student hasn’t already done that?
Uh, uh, uh, I dunno!!!
I guess it is kind of obvious. I was trying to find a grad student with a lab to do a similar (but not drug-related) but of gene-engineering. Not even illegal. I need to figure out where the blacknet geneticists hang out.
kestrel@#2:
Mine is being eaten alive by grasshoppers. Billions and billions of them.
Have you been pissing off Yahweh again? What did you do this time? Let his people go, already!
Hemp fiber!? How exciting! Could you grow flax instead? What are you doing with the fibers?
@Marcus: **slaps self in forehead** OF COURSE. It’s that Yahweh… AGAIN… and according to what I hear it’s American and teh gays – AGAIN. Why didn’t I realize that…
I grow flax on a very tiny scale. Used to also raise sheep and fiber goats. Made tons of stuff, taught many many people to spin, weave and knit… But we have fairly marginal land and I’ve always thought that hemp would do well here. I understand that you have to keep your equipment VERY sharp. As far as usage, I’d be looking to sell for clothing and possibly pulp making (for paper). It seems like it could be a good use of the land and a good project for “retirement” (whatever that is).
kestrel@#5:
Cops are trying to simplify their targetting problem by restricting things that may resemble the evil, hated, weed. Sun Tzu dictates some obvious ways to defeat that strategy.