Puna ballot

[Nicolas Ward]

On 12/1/06, Fran Poodry <fpoodry at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> puna  n.  A variety of cotton grown in Peru, which because of its level of
> gossypol is usually grown without insecticides.

Since it's the sort of unusual word that one wouldn't encounter often
outside of agriculture, "gossypol" had stuck in my head somewhere. I
was surprised to encounter it the other day in a short article in
Scientific American, that someone has genetically engineered a
gossypol-free variety of cotton that would be, among other things, an
edible high-fiber crop for human consumption. Since gossypol is toxic,
they're making very sure that it's actually gone.

--Nick

-- 
Nicolas Ward
617.230.9279

ultranurd at gmail.com
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nward/

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo."
-- Enoch Root, The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson