[ExI] Fwd: identification

Sun Jan 1 20:31:26 UTC 2017

I am into a book on seeds, and apparently there are numerous seed saver
programs around the world, which is a great thing.  Big companies don't
want us planting just any old seeds; they want us to use hybrids only
available from them.  Genetic diversity is being preserved.

Are there stockpiles of human genetic diversity?  Other animals?

Now - are there technology programs comparable?  What if few survive.  They
could rebuild, but where would they get their tech info?  People like me
would not have the slightest idea how to go about building a battery, much
less a computer chip.  A lot of technology progress, I am told, is based on
what the final

There needs to be a Youtube kind of thing where the average person can
follow instructions and learn how to mine iron, make a battery, and ma
n
y thousands of other things.

 b
ill w

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 12:05 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

The fear of a new virus or microbe resistant to everything has replaced
nuclear winter as the number 1 risk of humanity’s extinction, or rather
civilization.  Good chance it would not be both resistant and pan-species.
We could imagine human-specific highly immune microbes, but we always have
the defense of isolation.  Something like that could wipe out cities but
not all of humanity.  Were that to occur, we can imagine pockets of
humanity surviving and continuing our existence as a species, perhaps with
some retrograde technology.  But in that scenario, consider that nearly all
modern technology is only a few hundred years old.  We could recover and
repopulate if 98% of humanity perishes.  Might be a couple centuries
setback, which is a hiccup in the big picture.

spike

*From:* William Flynn Wallace [mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com]
*Sent:* Sunday, January 01, 2017 9:02 AM
*To:* spike <spike66 at att.net>
*Subject:* Re: identification

I just used a little gadget to equalize the temperature on a pancake cooker
that spanned two burners.  I wonder how long it will be before we have a
gadget that you can point that will tell you what species of bacteria or
virus you have?

Something like that will be a real challenge.  There's probably more
species of microbes than all the rest of the world's creatures put
together, and some of them are mutating fairly often as we try to kill them
with weapons that are, more and more often, failing but causing more
mutations.

I don't like dystopic fiction much, since I think some of it, not the
nuclear winter thing, but the totally resistant microbes causing lethal
infection, is pretty likely and worry me.

I would dump virtually unlimited money into microbe research.  To give an
example of just how primitive we are now, in the not too far future we will
be pointing at a current practice of using maggots to clean a wound as
laughably ignorant and atavistic.

Just musing - no need for a reply

bill w

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 10:00 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

Thanks BillW!

For birds the thing works pretty well, but the task itself isn’t all that
difficult: there are only a few hundred bird species flapping about at any
given time at most, and only a couple dozen common ones for any given place
and time.  Might depend on how you break it down.  I know there are many
different species of hummingbird, but I don’t intend to go that deeply into
it.  Plant species are difficult because so many different species and
varieties have been brought in, and insect species ride along.  We have a
mild climate so everything grows and flies here.

I really want to make this go for the genealogy stuff tho.  I have over
100k names in my databse now.

Happy new year!

spike

*From:* William Flynn Wallace [mailto:foozler83 at gmail.com]
*Sent:* Saturday, December 31, 2016 4:06 PM
*To:* spike <spike66 at att.net>
*Subject:* identification

Previous experience:  tried to identify a tree.  Went to the library and
got a book that had pictures of leaves and bark.  Still uncertain so I went
to the biology department and showed my pal the book and the leaves from
that tree and still we goofed.

Now all we do is take a picture, upload it, and bingo.  What will we do
with all the free time left over after saving so much using the internet?
It is just totally amazing.

I saw the iTunes app.  Android has apps for insect and plant identification
also.  Don't know if they are any better than uploading an image to Google
Images.

Happy New Year to you and your bride and son!

bill w
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