Flannel Shirt

Beer Appreciation Week

Get ready for Beer Appreciation Week, from February 10 to February 19. Okay, it's San Francisco Beer Appreciation Week, and it's more like ten days, but who's counting where you are?

The history of popcorn

The history of popcorn is far older than you might have guessed.

Some of the oldest known corncobs, husks, stalks and tassels, dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago were found at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two mound sites on Peru's arid northern coast. The research group, led by Tom Dillehay from Vanderbilt University and Duccio Bonavia from Peru's Academia Nacional de la Historia, also found corn microfossils: starch grains and phytoliths. Characteristics of the cobs -- the earliest ever discovered in South America -- indicate that the sites' ancient inhabitants ate corn several ways, including popcorn and flour corn. However, corn was still not an important part of their diet.

"Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte," Piperno says. "Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began. This evidence further indicates that in many areas corn arrived before pots did and that early experimentation with corn as a food was not dependent on the presence of pottery."

Understanding the subtle transformations in the characteristics of cobs and kernels that led to the hundreds of maize races known today, as well as where and when each of them developed, is a challenge. Corncobs and kernels were not well preserved in the humid tropical forests between Central and South America, including Panama -- the primary dispersal routes for the crop after it first left Mexico about 8,000 years ago.

"These new and unique races of corn may have developed quickly in South America, where there was no chance that they would continue to be pollinated by wild teosinte," Piperno says. "Because there is so little data available from other places for this time period, the wealth of morphological information about the cobs and other corn remains at this early date is very important for understanding how corn became the crop we know today."

The melted butter came later.

A dead horse still being beaten

Here.

A judge in Georgia has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court this week in a lawsuit challenging whether he is a natural-born US citizen qualified to be president.

The latest case was spawned by the so-called “birther” movement that has made claims — which have not been substantiated — that Obama was born overseas.

Although it is unclear whether a court could force a sitting president to appear in a court case, Georgia Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi has denied a motion by the president’s lawyer to quash a subpoena that requires Obama to show up.

A Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama’s name off the state’s ballot in the March presidential primary.

Aren't people embarrassed?

In mourning

Well, the spaghetti sauce was good.

And it was a good game, too. Unfortunately, the Niners lost on a couple of Kyle Williams turnovers. And Williams was returning kicks only because the Niners' regular return guy, Ted Ginn Jr., was injured.

It is what it is.

I'll be wearing my black t-shirt today. My heart is heavy.

Predictions

Who knows who's going to win the Giants-Niners game? But here are my predictions for the broadcast:

I predict that someone will slip in the mud at Candlestick today.

I predict that the Gold Rush, the Niners' cheerleaders, will smile and be perky no matter what the score or weather.

I predict that coming back from commercial breaks the Fox network will show shots of a cable car, Alcatraz and Fisherman's Wharf, as well as "the crookedest street in the world".

I predict that if there's a moment of silence at the Stick for Paterno that someone will boo.

I predict that someone will boo Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, a Giants fan, when she sings the National Anthem.
 
I predict there will be a new beer commercial where someone who drinks the wrong light beer will be threatened with the loss of his "man card". There will be hearty laughs among his buddies at the end of the commercial.

I also predict that Sam Elliot will narrate a commercial about a tough truck and mention "trannies".
I'm feeling like a regular Kreskin here.

Championship Sunday

Well, this is it. The Niners face off this afternoon against the New York football Giants. It should be a close, hard-fought game. After last week's shootout win over the Saints the Niners will be in a slugfest. Weather reports are that it'll be rainy and muddy. Lots of slipping and sliding.

I realize my mom will be rooting for the Giants while I root for the Niners. Best of luck, Mom, but I think it'll be the Niners.

My buddy Lou up in Massachusetts will be rooting for the Patriots.

Joan's teaching a class today. She'll be over for most of the game. Spaghetti for dinner.

 

Saddam's butt

Here.

British police arrested a 66-year-old man in connection with part of a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein, a buttock, was illegally brought over from Iraq after the war.

He was held on suspicion of breaching the 2003 Iraq Sanctions Order, which bans dealing in “illegally removed Iraqi cultural property”, including items of archaeological, historical, cultural, or religious importance.

Derbyshire Police in northern central England said the unnamed man has been released on bail pending further inquiries.

 

Tears have jaws

This story is amazing.

There are little thingies in tears called lysozymes which have antiseptic qualities. Scientists have figured out how they work.

A disease-fighting protein in our teardrops has been tethered to a tiny transistor, enabling UC Irvine scientists to discover exactly how it destroys dangerous bacteria. The research could prove critical to long-term work aimed at diagnosing cancers and other illnesses in their very early stages.

Ever since Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming found that human tears contain antiseptic proteins called lysozymes about a century ago, scientists have tried to solve the mystery of how they could relentlessly wipe out far larger bacteria. It turns out that lysozymes have jaws that latch on and chomp through rows of cell walls like someone hungrily devouring an ear of corn, according to findings that will be published Jan. 20 in the journal Science.

"Those jaws chew apart the walls of the bacteria that are trying to get into your eyes and infect them," said molecular biologist and chemistry professor Gregory Weiss, who co-led the project with associate professor of physics & astronomy Philip Collins.

The researchers decoded the protein's behavior by building one of the world's smallest transistors -- 25 times smaller than similar circuitry in laptop computers or smartphones. Individual lysozymes were glued to the live wire, and their eating activities were monitored.

"Our circuits are molecule-sized microphones," Collins said. "It's just like a stethoscope listening to your heart, except we're listening to a single molecule of protein."

It took years for the UCI scientists to assemble the transistor and attach single-molecule teardrop proteins. The scientists hope the same novel technology can be used to detect cancerous molecules. It could take a decade to figure out but would be well worth it, said Weiss, who lost his father to lung cancer.

"If we can detect single molecules associated with cancer, then that means we'd be able to detect it very, very early," Weiss said. "That would be very exciting, because we know that if we treat cancer early, it will be much more successful, patients will be cured much faster, and costs will be much less."

Music Friday: Soundtracks to imaginary movies

I've got to get back to my screenplay about a band that made a punk rock tour of California in 1980. I've even got some songs to fit in various scenes.

Of course, I'm not the only one. There was a song by Mountain back in the sixties even called Theme For An Imaginary Western, written by Jack Bruce, bassist for The Cream. From time to time I've written music for imaginary movies, like "The Love Theme from Clownkiller Jones" and "Love Propels Me (Love Theme from 'Barband')".  A couple of  long back stories I'll spare you here.

Grace Slick's first solo album was a soundtrack to an imaginary movie, "Manhole".  I'll try to be delicate and not go any further with what she was singing about. But if you were a Jefferson Airplane fan, you might find Manhole interesting.

And some not-so-nice kitties

Apparently, before cats there were catlike creatures who were some pretty bad dudes. They were called nimravids and barbourofelids.

These mammal groups lived millions of years before cats came to be, and had knife-like canines along with well-built arm bones, said Julie Meachen, a paleontologist at the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, North Carolina.

This killer combination arose repeatedly in different saber-toothed predators over time, presumably because it gave them an advantage when catching and killing prey, Meachen found.

"This is a nice demonstration that selection usually operates on suites of traits to generate solutions to environmental challenges," said Saran Twombly, program director in NSF's Directorate for Biological Sciences, which funds NESCent.

"In this case, the key to being an efficient predator integrated canines and forelimbs across different groups of felids and led to the development of different combinations of these traits," said Twombly. "It was the combination, rather than any single trait, that allowed a diverse group of organisms to thrive as predators."

The long, thin teeth of saber-toothed cats look formidable, but they're fragile compared with those of felines today.

"Cats now have canines that are short and round in cross-section, so they can withstand forces in all directions," Meachen said.

"That comes in handy for hunting -- their teeth are better able to withstand the stress and strain of struggling prey without breaking."

In contrast, the elongated canines of saber-toothed cats were flattened side-to-side and were more oval, which made them more vulnerable to fracture.