Mutants! Mutants in our Garden! The Horror!

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Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Date Taken: May 2010

We have mutant clover growing in the garden that is our front yard.

Well, most people wouldn’t call them “mutant.” Mutant generally carries a negative overtone thanks to the strong fear of mutation due to radiation or genetic modification that cropped up this last century.

Four-leaf clovers, on the other hand, are largely viewed as lucky. Which still doesn’t change the fact that they are mutations of three-leaf clovers.

Add in the fact that mutations actually can cause good effects rather than bad, and the situation gets even more convoluted. No one would look at a four-leaf clover and say “oh no, it’s a mutation, burn it, burn it!”, but a large number of people are saying that sort of thing about genetically engineered food, which is also a potentially helpful mutation.

Now, I’m not saying that genetically engineered food is 100% safe, but then, non-genetically engineered food isn’t 100% safe. A lot of people forget that we’ve been doing genetic engineering on our food for millenia. Corn wasn’t always as kernel-icious as it is now, it came from teosinte, which had barely any kernels at all, and certainly wasn’t yellow. But about 5000 years ago, people in Mexico started domesticating it, breeding together plants that had unusual traits that they wanted to encourage. After millenia of breeding, they ended up with modern corn.

And genetic engineering is, at the heart of it, little but centuries of breeding condensed into one generation.

Now, there are extra problems from skipping that time. You do get side mutations that can cause issues, many of which would have been worked out over those centuries. But even with that time, breeding isn’t perfect. I mean, just look at the more unusual breeds of dog. Pugs and other snub-nosed dogs all have major breathing issues, all because their ancestor’s breeders decided that dogs with shoved-in-noses were cute. Just about all the purebred lines have health issues related to their breeding, especially the popular breeds. Here’s a rather good, if lengthy, article on the subject.

Really, whether you’re going the slow route of breeding or the faster route of genetic engineering, you’re going to end up with problems. In nature, such problems would get weeded out if they’re bad enough to affect the life cycles of the species, but human-based evolution tends to pamper certain strains, even if they would not normally be competitive, just so we can have that larger strawberry or adorable corgi.

Certain mutations, after all, are quite acceptable. Like that of the four-leaf clover. It may not be the best use of resources for the clover plant to grow an extra leaf, but it does delight in its rarity. Only about 1 in 10,000 clovers have extra leaves, so finding that patch where the genetic and environmental conditions are right for such a mutation is special.

We’ve got such a patch in our front yard, growing as weeds in the garden, peeking through the rocks around my mother’s pond. Only about 1 in 100 is special, but that’s 100 times the normal rate, so there’s something about this spot that’s mutative.

I still take delight every time I spot that fourth leaf when I look at the patches of clover in the garden, even with it being more common. Special things are a joy, after all.  They should be exclaimed over.

  

Glory Fading into the Past

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Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: August, 2010

I took a walk one day in August, when the summer flowers were blooming strong. I passed many a house, their yards filled with blooms. And I brought my camera with me.

This morning glory is fading, reaching the end of its time. It has done its job, bloomed strong and bright for some time. But it still must fade, and let its vine grow stronger without having to support such a display.

There is beauty in such fading.

Speaking of fading, my memory seems to have done so late Monday night. I originally posted this on Tuesday, you see, as my brain, in its infinite wisdom, was convinced that I needed to post a Close-up picture for that day. If you’ve checked out my About page, you’ll see that nope, it was a Landscape day. I realized it before the day was over and put in a new post, but still, this was the post that was up for most of the day.

Ah well, it was an overly short post anyway. And this helps me build a buffer.

My brain does odd memory tricks like that (I should write a post about how I forgot about my first job for many years), so it may happen again, alas. I should take out my brain and scrub it, except then I’d start acting brainwashed…

  

The Museum of the American Indian, Glowing in the Sunset

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Location Taken: Washington DC
Time Taken: October 2008

To continue off of the picture from yesterday, this one was only taken a few minutes later, when I had reached my destination. You can see this building in the picture from yesterday. That’s the back of it, this is the front.

As for what it is, it is the National Museum of the American Indian. It’s one of the newest museums on the National Mall, having only opened in 2004. I was doing a temporary job down in Alexandria, VA in the fall of 2008, and one day, instead of just taking the train home as usual, I took it to the station near the National Mall and walked to this museum. I had never visited it, after all, and was curious.

Somehow, I both rather like and rather dislike this museum, all at once.

On the like side, it does a very good job with its exhibits, being full of history and quite balanced between all aspects of Native American history, it’s very aesthetically interesting, with a large open area by the entrance for events, with balconies looking over for people to watch, and there’s a fabulous show that you should catch if you visit (assuming they haven’t changed it out). They have a special round video room where they can project both on the ceiling and on the four screens arrayed around a “rock” in the center (which is also a screen of sorts). The viewers sit on seats around the edges of the room, and they use all those screens very well, creating a marvelously immersive experience. I don’t really remember the video that well, but I remember the room quite well.

On the dislike side, the place felt, well, empty. There were exhibits a plenty, and a fairly typical crowd for a museum on a workday evening (fairly sparse, but not overly so), but still, there was something empty about it. The exhibits were almost all fully enclosed into their own rooms, with fairly plain hallways connecting them. This made them feel disparate, and tough to mentally connect with one another. The large open area, while making my artistic side happy with its curves and dome and oculus, was largely white, which made it feel untouchable and unwelcoming. The place needs color and connections, with one exhibit spilling into another so the museum goer can wander somewhat randomly from one interesting area to another, lost in the realm of knowledge.

Cheaper food in the cafeteria wouldn’t hurt, either. It was tasty and well-researched, pretty much all Native American recipes, but man was it overpriced.

  

The Nation’s Capital, its Capitol, and its drivers.

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Location Taken: Washington DC
Date Taken: October 2008

Washington DC is at once special and not special to me. I grew up (and still live) right about 20 miles from all the fancy tourist attractions and museums in the heart of the city. And I’ve very rarely visited there.

For me, Washington DC isn’t the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, all the wonderful touristy goodness that brings people to visit. It’s the ever-crowded beltway, the one way streets, the sheer awkwardness of the area. It’s not a pleasant area to drive in. And that’s what most of my visits have been. Driving.

Oh sure, I’d be driving to somewhere, say an art theater showing an anime movie I want to see (I’ve seen a lot of Ghibli films in the theater, but I was very glad when they got popular enough to hit a closer theater). But it’s the driving I remember.

Some of that may be because of my awesome mapping abilities (I’ve been called a “Living GPS”), and how I just naturally remember the roads I’ve been on. Mainly, though, it’s the aggravation. Driving in Maryland is unpleasant enough. We’ve got a melting pot here, with people coming in from all over the world to live, work, and drive. And they bring their own cultural driving habits with them, which, if you’ve seen any videos of driving, you know that there’s a lot of places that have very… disparate… rules. Add in the fact that this is a very rich area, which means it’s full of people who are very busy (and usually workaholic) and thus distracted in a multitude of ways (cell phones, running late, self-important, etc.), and you learn to expect people to do stupid things. I’ve had a number of close calls, and I’m a pretty predictable driver. That’s the best thing to be, really. Predictable. That way the idiot drivers are right when they assume you’ll just keep on doing what you’re doing when they pass within a foot of your car at top speeds in order to gain five more feet (and no turn signal, of course).

Still, it’s not good for my nerves to drive in DC. They get all frayed and frazzled, and then I have to pat them back down again so they don’t catch on things.

Every so often, though, I head down there to be a bit touristy. Most of my visits were school trips. It is somewhat nice to be able to head to the National Gallery of Art with your high school art class as a day trip. It did make all those knowledge competitions that schools like telling their students about that strongly advertised, as a major reward, that the top teams would go to *gasp* Washington DC! *ungasp* a wee bit silly.

Still, even adding in those school trips, I’ve only been to the museums and the like in DC, what, less than ten times? And that’s with living 20 miles away for nearly two decades. It’s really not that special to me, thanks to being too irritating to get to. And yet, I still head there every five years or so, just to see what I can see. I’ve been thinking I should visit the United States Botanic Garden to see (and photograph) their plants…

  

Gotta Talk to a Computer Person Again… Hello, Self?

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Time Drawn: April 2012 (Today!)

I was having minor computer problems this morning (and last night), so let’s talk about computers!

I’m the techie in my immediate family. You know the type, the person who you turn to for free computer repair if your computer’s spontaneously turned into tapioca or something. The one who gets a desperate look in their face when you say “You know, my computer’s been acting up lately”. The one who actually knows how to access settings files you hadn’t a clue existed on your computer. That one.

Mind you, most of the family techie’s fixing techniques involve two things: restarting the computer and Googling the problem to find what virus is wrapping its tentacles around your internet. Really. In families with people with absolutely no clue about electronics, add in “Check to see if it’s plugged in”.

The first tactic was the one that worked for my computer issues. My internet had spontaneously decided it was too good for its job and packed up to go to Florida or something. Which meant I could no longer play Minecraft in the Multiplayer server I’ve been playing in, and I couldn’t even watch videos or anything. Truly a tragedy.

So I restarted the computer. This usually fixes things when my internet starts yearning for Florida, which it does every few weeks for no discernible reason. But, alas, this was one of the times it did not work after restart (happens every six months or so). A second restart also did not produce happy-internet-times.

So I gave my computer a time-out.

Seriously.

I turned it off, unplugged it, and let it just sit overnight.

I don’t know why it works, but it does. It gives the errant electrons a chance to settle down or something. When I restarted the computer this morning, blessed internet poured forth once again.

Of course, the power supply fan was whining far too loudly. Irritatingly loudly.

So I restarted it again. That solved that problem. It’s amazing how powerful just turning off the computer and turning it on again is.

Oh, and the art above is a doodle of my desk area, minus 90% of the clutter (I’m messy, and I didn’t feel like drawing it). Yup, it’s a desktop computer. I can’t stand using laptops (I hate being that close to the screen), and unlike laptops, it’s pretty easy to build a desktop computer yourself.

Yes, I built my computer, from disparate parts ordered online. I told you I was the family techie. It does make it even more irritating when you go through troubleshooting programs that end with “Well, I can’t figure out this problem. Contact the person who runs the network/sold the computer/administers your system.” Then I have to talk to myself, and things get confusing.

And yes, my walls are purple. I like purple. I didn’t draw in the mauve texture I added when I was 10 or so, though. It’s too complex.

And that’s my current Minecraft world I’m playing in on the screen. That’s my house. Yes, it is a pyramid. Terrible, isn’t it.