Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Aug. 23, 2010
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Science marches -- er, oozes -- on [DONALD DUCK UPDATE: A few weeks ago, fully cognizant of how important duck news is to our readership, we reported on the June 27th arrest of Donald Norman Duck, of Massillon, Ohio, who hit a car in a Little Caesar’s drive through. He was subsequently charged with driving while intoxicated and with two misdemeanors. Now we learn that, according to an August 10 report on “The Smoking Gun” website: “While visiting Epcot Center in Florida, a Pennsylvania woman alleges that a Disney employee dressed as Donald Duck grabbed her breast and molested her after she sought an autograph.” The article went on to say that the woman, 27-year-old April Magolon, was visiting Epcot in May of 2008 when the incident occurred, and that “she has suffered ‘severe physical injury, emotional anguish and distress, including, but not limited to post-traumatic stress disorder’ as a result of the run-in with Donald Duck.” We believe that if the lady does indeed have flashbacks about being groped by an oversized barnyard fowl wearing only a sailor shirt and no pants, she deserves compensation. We also believe that Congress should investigate this erratic duck behavior, to determine, for example, if climate change is involved. We (my tapeworms and I) are sure Congress can find the funds for such an important investigation ... somewhere.] Which brings us to the actual topic of this week’s column, which answers the age-old question: What is the difference between a congressional committee and slime mold? Think about it for a moment. No clues yet? Perhaps a recent article from Discover Magazine might help. The article, entitled “Brainless slime mold makes decisions like humans,” cites a study by Tanya Latty and Madeleine Beekman of the University of Sydney (which we firmly believe is in Australia.) Apparently these two highly paid university researchers were giving deep thought to how they could best spend their most recent government research grant, and of course slime mold came immediately to mind. The article first explains how people make decisions, and gives the example of a couple ordering from a wine list at a restaurant. When offered two choices–for example a $8 bottle of wine and a $40 bottle–the diners, unless they were government employees on an expense account, usually chose the $8 bottle. But when a third option–a $1500 bottle of vintage wine–was offered, the very same diners more often than not went for the $40 wine, due to the fact that compared to a $1500 bottle of wine, $40 was pretty cheap, after all. The article explains, “Business uses this tactic all the time - an extremely expensive option is used to make mid-range ones suddenly seem like attractive buys ... because humans like to compare our options, rather than paying attention to their absolute values.” But what about slime mold, you ask? Well, slime mold “spends most of its life as a large mat called a ‘plasmodium’, which is a single cell that contains many nuclei.” After several carefully controlled experiments, the researchers determined that slime mold (Physarum Polycephalum) also preferred the mid-range wine when given three options, but went exclusively for the cheap stuff when there were only two. No, seriously, the slime mold wasn’t tempted with wine, only with oatmeal. Slime mold, as it turns out, doesn’t like bright lights, but does like oatmeal. Especially Quaker Oats. So by using various combinations of lighting and oatmeal, these two intrepid researchers proved that slime mold can ooze around a tabletop and make difficult decisions about what to eat much more quickly than your average congressional committee. Again I quote here: “Its search patterns are very sophisticated for a brainless organism.” And it’s not just the Aussies who are fascinated by slime mold. The article says that “A Japanese group found that if they placed the mold among food sources arranged like Tokyo’s urban centers, it created a network that closely resembled Tokyo’s actual railway system. The slimy network was optimized to transport nutrients to the main plasmodium. The implications, of course, are that had they had a large enough mat of slime mold and plenty of oatmeal, the Japanese could have built Tokyo’s railway system in half the time. My favorite quote from this article asks “But how does Physarum make decisions at all without a brain? The answer is deceptively simply - it does so by committee. Every plasmodium is basically a big sac of fluid, where each part rhythmically contracts and expands, pushing the fluid inside back and forth.” There is more, but the operative word is COMMITTEE. So, what is the difference between a congressional committee and slime mold? Take your pick: A. No difference at all. B. One is composed of brainless organisms that reproduce by spores, serve no useful purpose, and have no term limits, and the other is a harmless fungus. C. Time lapse video evidence clearly shows that at the breakfast table, slime mold can locate a lump of oatmeal much more rapidly than can your average House Ways and Means Committee chairman. D. You can clean up slime mold with a dishrag and some Lysol. |