Saving the world…one mad scientist at a time

I recently listened to the March 28 2009 episode of Quirks and Quarks from the CBC. It was Nine-and-a-half Technologies to Save the World. Very interesting, very sci-fi.

The second one really hit home for me, being a vegetarian. In vitro meat. If you hate biology (that’s silly, how could you!), in vitro means within the glass in Latin, aka in a petri dish in a lab. Yup, that’s right, they can grow meat in a dish from stem cells. Tastes like meat, looks like (ground) meat (we’re not talking T-bones here). Some links about it here and here.

You’re thinking, EW, right? So did I. Then I though about how we get meat now. A barn, stacked ceiling high with cages that go row upon row to maximize the amount of chickens in one barn. Chickens that may or may not have enough room to turn around in the cage. They’re being pumped full of antibiotics to stop them from getting sick in conditions that should cause a massive outbreak of something every 5 minutes. EW. How is that natural?

So, ok, why does that make in vitro better? Well, the main issue brought up by Jason Matheny from John Hopkins University (the one interviewed on Quirks and Quarks) was health. You can make this meat low in bad fats and high in good fats, like omega-3s, helping to reduce things like heart disease. It would also benefit the environment, producing less greenhouse gases, using less farm land, and you wouldn’t be ingesting all the antibiotics and drugs you do now. meat_tube_080422_mn Plus it removes any question of ethical treatment of animals.

Now this isn’t about to appear on your supermarket shelf or anything tomorrow. Right now it’s pretty costly and can’t be made in large batches effectively. But they’re working on it!

Just think about it. Would you eat in vitro meat?

Ignoramus is a fun word, use it in a sentence today!

My friend Deirdre sent me this article from the BBC by George Meyer. Loved it!

Too lazy to click on the link? *sigh*DO IT!

Some people see ‘environmentalists’ as looking down their noses at you as you pass with your disposable coffee cup or idling your engine while you wait for someone (please, please, please just turn it off! it’s like nails down a chalkboard). Which some of them are. I’ve done it too. But we need everyone to jump on to the ‘save the planet’ wagon. We need to extend the olive branch to hummer drivers everywhere.

So if you consider yourself an ‘environmentalist’, stop preaching and instead lovingly plant the thought of organic vegetables into the minds of your friends. Hummer drivers, chat to your hippie friends about small changes you can make without having to move to a commune in Vermont. Bridge the gaps!

Basically that’s what this article is about, you have to read it, it’s hilarious. I love the ending:

“If you are not currently choking a panda, welcome aboard!”

Zai Jain!

The Bund in Shanghai

Yes, I’m very creative. Zai jain is how you say good-bye in Chinese.

I’m in Australia now. Made it to the warm! Whew. But since I’ve only been here a little this post is actually about China.

When should I plan my trip to China you ask? Well, if you go this time of year (i.e. winter) you don’t have to fight with hoards of tourists at the popular site. This was fantastic. However. There is no central heating (mind you this only applies to Shanghai and surrounding areas. I’m sure other places in China are also like this but I heard Beijing has central heating and the south of China isn’t even as cold, but this post is about my limited Shanghai visit). It’s not too bad; you can bundle up when you’re outside. Long johns recommended. But when you get back and go indoors and it’s just as cold inside, it can really break your spirit. But if you come in the summer it’s tourist city, most of them from China. Sounds like crazy time!

We enjoyed the aquarium, but felt it was a bit pricey for China and not really any better than Vancouver’s. Although this one had penguins…I want one!!! Other sites in Shanghai worth seeing are the Yu Yuan gardens. Surrounded by huge market, with multiple starbucks (boo,in the middle is a beautiful garden full of rockeries, which are everywhere in China and are awesome. And the other great thing we saw in Shanghai was the fake market. Too much fun! Vendors vying for your attention everywhere, trying to sell you watches, scarves and purses. Go just for the fun of bartering, but skip it if you’re on a tight budget…it’s so much fun you’ll keep buying haha.

The main rockery in the Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai

Great deals on Moon-units!

This is something that’s bugged me ever since I saw a seminar about tesing how mice behave in space during my undergrad.

The proposed budget for NASA for 2009 is almost 20 billion dollars (at least that’s the gist I got from the budget pdf, it was a little confusing). That’s a lot of dollars. Now some of that is used for good things like satellite monitoring of the earth and watching for Armageddon-esc meteors, but….

We’re spending a big chunk this money to do things like look for remains of microbes that once lived on Mars, decide if Pluto is a planet, etc. Did you know that just recently we discovered a fungus that naturally makes diesel fuel? Here’s the article in the journal Microbiology and here’s a news article if you don’t have access to the journal through a subscription or university. Guess where it was found? The rainforest. (sounds of chainsaws in the background)

So we use all this money to explore space, yet so many places on earth are left unexplored, poorly understood and extremely mismanaged. Medicinal, practical, and valuable species are found all the time, plus things that are just as interesting (more interesting to) as things on Mars. So maybe, just maybe it would be a good idea to use some of that space money to learn about our own planet and try to save it. Otherwise, we’re going to need to use that space budget to set up colonies on the moon and Mars once this planet has had enough of us.

And we all know what a pain moving is. I’d much rather just stay here.