So I know that I haven't posted in a while, but I lead a pretty boring life. And for my first post I figured I would catch up on the reading I've done since I left Armenia.
First, I recently finished The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. I really enjoyed this book. Just looking at it from a novel standpoint (history aside) it had everything I want in a book. It was one of those books that makes you wonder what you would do in an impossible situation. Actually, I thought of Gandhi a lot while reading it. If Gandhi were born an Armenian, he would have allowed the Turks to march him into the desert to starve, fighting back wouldn't be an option. The villagers around Musa Dagh are posed with the options of going up the mountain and fighting back against the Turks, or accepting the Turks orders and marching into the Syrian desert and dying. throughout the book I found myself wondering who was better off.
Today I finished The Botany of Desire, which I enjoyed, however some of it really made my eyes glaze over. Here are the highlights from each chapter:
I never realized how genetically different an apple seed is compared to the plant it came from. The whole story of Johnny Appleseed was pretty interesting also. While it is a true story, most people don't realize that he was planting apples not to eat, but to turn into cider. Cam and I once accidentally left a bottle of white wine in the freezer, and if you've ever done this you've noticed that the water in the wine freezes while the alcohol stays. It caused us to wonder if anyone ever tried this technique to make hard alcohol, and as it turns out they have. Johnny Appleseed was known for his applejack, a liquor made by freezing cider. I also never realized how potentially dangerous the domestication of the apple tree has been for it. Because of the genetic differences between seed and tree, the chinese invented a grafting process hundreds of years ago that insures the same genes in the next tree. This means that the apple tree hasn't really been allowed to evolve with the microorganisms that attack it, and we must keep creating pesticides and herbicides to defend the tree.
The tulip chapter wasn't that interesting.
The Marijuana chapter was the one I was most excited about, but outside of the recent history of the plant, I found it to be pretty boring. The hand the U.S. government has inadvertently played in the development of a more potent drug is really rather astounding. In the sixties most of the marijuana smoked in the states came from mexico and was of species Cannabis sativa. This was a fairly mild drug, but once the government started cracking down on the import of it, people started to looked elsewhere. What they found was a distant relative, local to central asia: Cannabis indica. This was a more potent plant, but it had some qualities that were less desired. It was brought to the states and people began growing it outdoors, however in the 70's the government started cracking down on outdoor farms. This forced people indoors, which turned out to really improve the potency of the plant as farmers realized they could force the plant to flower relatively quickly by regulating the amount of light the plants got, and loading the soil with nutrients. Cross breeding the two strains also improved the pla
nt, so smokers could get the best of both worlds. Otherwise this chapter was more of a discussion about what being high is and so on......
The chapter about the potatoes was by far the most interesting. Michael Pollan started the chapter by talking about the NewLeaf potatoes he was growing in his garden. These are potatoes that scientists have added a gene to. A gene that is found in a bacterium in the soil, which produces a toxin that kills the colorado potato beetle. This really interests me for a couple of reasons, but one of them is this: In lab on wednesday I got to induce mutations into the genome of E. coli using UV light. Having done that, I somewhat realize what an inexact science gene technology is. How can scientists garentee that the gene is put in the right spot?
"He explained that there are two ways of splicing foreign genes into a plant: by infecting it with agrobacterium, a pathogen whose modus operandi is to break into a plant cell's nucleus and replace its DNA with some of its own, or by shooting it with a gene gun."
The first way is a technique that was once (and may still be) considered the next huge step in the our fight against disease. However, after a number of unsuccessful trials gene therapy has taken a back seat in the medical world (or so I think). The second technique just seems way to CRAZY to imagine (although given the opportunity to play with a gene gun?! and act like god does sound like a hell of a lot of fun!) Its this uncertainty that just scares me. I know I don't know much about the science behind inserting an unknown gene into a different organism, but it doesn't sound like many people know the consequences. But if you are worried about having eaten any of these plants, don't. You probably already have!
What a trip! Three seasons of 24, 1 season of Dead Like Me, 1 season of Curb Your Enthusiasam, and not to mention the stories of Saleem Sanai, Edgar Sawtelle, and Gabriel Bagradian. So here is what I learned:
You know for someone who finds sundays to be more about watching football than worshipping, I sure have found myself visiting a lot of churches and monestaries throughout my traveling life. Catholic churches in Taos, NM; Buddhist and Hindu monestaries throughout northern India (not to mention the Taj Mahal), Greek monestaries in Greece and Turkey, and of course most recently Armenian and Georgian monestaries in the Caucauses. I must say they all do it right. I mean I can't think of a better way to contemplate the origins of the earth than in a place where you can see it in all its glory. If you asked my to pick a favorite I would be hard pressed. The colorfulness of the Buddhist prayer flags and prayer wheels; the intricacies of the Hindu gods; the amazing ability of the Greeks, Georgians, and Armenians to use the landscape to enhance the awe of there monestaries. They all really impress me. Now if you asked me if I was going to be a monk and had to live in one, then I would have to say probably Meteora (really only because if I got bored I could go down to the little city there and get one of those crapes. I could eat one of those every day for the rest of my life). Today we went to see another Armenian church. Khor Virap is not far outside of Yerevan, and extremely close to Mt. Ararat. Mom, Gagik, and I spent the morning there, and then we went and had a good lunch. Its been a good day!
Our first good view of Mt. Ararat! (well the first time I had a camera handy anyway).
