Spirit of the Wind

Well, I haven't updated this for a hot minute.

Life goes on. I've discovered that New Hampshire has some of the worst medical care of any state I've had the pleasure I've being in. Turns out that every dental office in the state that takes Medicaid is facing a crisis because state Medicaid just started covering dental, so now random-ass places with three staff members (only one of whom is a dentist!) are getting calls from 800 people trying to set up appointments. They're booked months in advance. Meanwhile, the places that don't take Medicaid have no issues scheduling an appointment. I got lucky; I managed to get a discount for a first time visit. And with it being over a year since my last visit (I've been trying on and off to get an appointment for months), I desperately need one.

Seeing a doctor, which is apparently something you're supposed to do regularly even in your 20s, has been similarly difficult. The earliest there was, again, months away. It's all been very frustrating. Much as I love to insult California, you could at least get medical care in California.

My classes for grad school have been progressing well. I'm currently in an internship I won't discuss in a public entry. My thesis (which is about a subject I also won't discuss in a public entry) has been delayed, however. Not officially, thank the gods, but I've been so distracted by life bullshit (the aforementioned medicine, the worst case of hiccups I've ever had, multiple car repairs) that I haven't had time to work on it. I need to, because I'm currently stuck on some statistical issues I wasn't taught how to handle and they need to be handled if I'm going to analyze the data I have.

There was a local Earth First! meeting. The crowd there was a lot higher than I'd expected. You hear about the group and what happened during the Green Scare, and you see the minimal online presence they have, and you expect it to be small as a result, especially when they're meeting in a rural location. But there had to have been dozens of people there at absolute minimum.

I didn't actually get to do much before I had to leave, but I enjoyed the visit while I was there. I don't often get to hang out among other green anarchists, especially those who share my deep ecological sympathies... though these days the social ecologists seem to be trending towards deep ecology; I've seen some supporting nature worship which I'm pretty sure would have Bookchin turning in his grave.

I learned about a rather concerning field trial involving genetically engineered poplars at the event. While I've supported genetically engineered American chestnuts in an attempt to get around chestnut blight (and still do), tweaking plants to be more effective at photosynthesis is a recipe for disaster in my mind. Sure, they say the poplars won't hybridize... but sometimes you get fluke hybrids, and this all relies on no one planting male poplars that can hybridize anywhere near these GMO poplars. Might not happen for the field trial, but what about if they become commonly planted as part of a carbon drawdown scheme?

It's a shame, because I think genetic modification does actually have a lot of potential from a deep ecological point of view. Currently, we rely upon exotic monocultures of crops to produce food and many materials like fiber, dyes, and some medicines (or the precursor compounds, at least). Permaculture techniques can be somewhat more environmentally friendly, but tend to have much lower yields per acre; many still use exotic plants as well.

But though it's not a sure thing, I think that genetically modified plants could allow us to work around some of those limitations, if it was done with the intent of creating an agroecosystem that produced as many of society's needs as possible and where all the cultivated varieties were native, but also less fit in the local ecosystem than the cultivars. It's beyond me to plan out in detail how this would work, but tannins in oaks are a possible example of how. Native oaks produce relatively high yields per acre, even compared to grain, but the acorns require processing to get the tannins out. Breed (or genetically engineer) a kind with minimal tannins, and the natural selection that trait faces might make escaped populations return to the baseline rather than persist.

I'm not a geneticist or a botanist; I'm sure there are reasons why this couldn't work, but it certainly seems more worthy of investigation than these super-poplars.

Oh, and New Trek is now dead to me because, as far as I can tell, the new season of Strange New Worlds is pro-eugenics, and tries to dress it up as being inclusive and equitable by comparing transphobia to being opposed to the creation of designer babies, augmentation arms races, or, you know, eugenics. It is very, very agitating to see that in an era where liberal eugenics is surging, Star Trek is engaging in apologetics for it--and its liberal fans are just lapping it up.

Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked at this point. I think I still am a little, though.

This week's Science is a special issue literally titled "A World of Mud." It is full of news reports about mud and I find this immensely entertaining. Unfortunately I can't just link the stories.

There was a story about the bacteria (in mud) that make these structures, which I found interesting because they are very long for what are cables of single cells. They are also conductive--I don't think this will be of that much use technologically, but it may be useful and is certainly curious--and ensure the health of marine ecosystems by limiting phosphorus.

There was also an article on this project. Reading about it has reshaped the way I think about streams. It's cool to see how the wetland has started to regenerate, and to think of the degree to which it could reduce eutrophication.

They also had some articles on how mine tailing dams break and release toxic mud everywhere, and about how the red mud from mining aluminum is dangerous, but I figure most people reading this know that.