Language

the supercoca news scam and taxonomy

Submitted September 8, 2004 - 5:23 pm by Judith Gips
thanks to Al, and to Jeremy, for throwing a little kryptonite at this scam.

I'm still a real amateur at ethnobotany compared with our coleague Bigwood, bless him, (some of the readers know me through my interest in ethnomedicine) but I'm also sometimes a science teacher...would someone tell these eedjits who wrote this silliness the difference between creating a new "Strain" and creating a new "Species?"  a "Strain" might be the difference between your DNA and mine, dear readers, especially if, say, one of us is of Scandinavian descent and one of us is Native American.  a species...well, there are no other living primates in the genus Homo - all us hominids are one species, f'better or worse - but it's approximately the difference between a house beagle or any other domestic dog, Canis familaris, and the American coyote, Canis latrans. you can't breed two species one with another and get anythng but sterile hybrids such as that beloved bastard child of the Holy Ass and the wayward horse, the Blessed Mule.

if these Colombian jungle cats, or coyotes, can create "new species" they are way way advanced in the 21st century Frankenplantkraft, and should be recruited by Monsanto (makers of Roundup Ultra and all that crap)and anyone else in the copporate chemical world who would also like a little super-good blow around. also, since the plant is called E. coca, if this is a new species is isn't "coca" anymore!  damn, even my special-ed science students learn THAT much taxonomy if they want to pass!

keep rakin' it...Middle Aged Mutant Schoolteacher in CAlifornia

Reply

Our Policy on Comment Submissions: Co-publishers of Narco News (which includes The Narcosphere and The Field) may post comments without moderation. All co-publishers comment under their real name, have contributed resources or volunteer labor to this project, have filled out this application and agreed to some simple guidelines about commenting.

Narco News has recently opened its comments section for submissions to moderated comments (that’s this box, here) by everybody else. More than 95 percent of all submitted comments are typically approved, because they are on-topic, coherent, don’t spread false claims or rumors, don’t gratuitously insult other commenters, and don’t engage in commerce, spam or otherwise hijack the thread. Narco News reserves the right to reject any comment for any reason, so, especially if you choose to comment anonymously, the burden is on you to make your comment interesting and relevant. That said, as you can see, hundreds of comments are approved each week here. Good luck in your comment submission!

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options

User login