New Beginnings

This is the first 'serious' post on this blog after my diaspora. Appropriately, the Space Shuttle Program is going for a new beginning today. So, once more unto the breach...
2 things have come in from Pleiades this morning.
Debris was seen falling off Discovery as she made her launch today.

Video showed what appeared to be a large piece of debris flying off the external fuel tank two minutes into the flight. The object did not seem to hit the orbiter. Footage also showed what might have been at least two light-colored objects flying off Discovery as the shuttle cleared the launch pad.

Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale raised the possibility that the light-colored objects were harmless pieces of paper that protect Discovery's thrusters before launch. But he insisted it was too soon to say what the cameras may have picked up, and he gave assurances the multitude of images will be examined frame by frame in the coming hours and days.

I guess they went for it with the launch and it still had the same old major problems.

This Is Why We Do Experiments And Trials
This is also from the Pleiades mailbag.
It seesm the trial GM crop genes have escaped into the weed population .

Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant "superweed", the Guardian can reveal.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago.

The new form of charlock was growing among many others in a field which had been used to grow GM rape. When scientists treated it with lethal herbicide it showed no ill-effects.

Unlike the results of the original trials, which were the subject of large-scale press briefings from scientists, the discovery of hybrid plants that could cause a serious problem to farmers has not been announced.
The scientists also collected seeds from other weeds in the oilseed rape field and grew them in the laboratory. They found that two - both wild turnips - were herbicide resistant.

The five scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the government research station at Winfrith in Dorset, placed their findings on the department's website last week.

A reviewer of the paper has appended to its front page: "The frequency of such an event [the cross-fertilisation of charlock] in the field is likely to be very low, as highlighted by the fact it has never been detected in numerous previous assessments."

However, he adds: "This unusual occurrence merits further study in order to adequately assess any potential risk of gene transfer."

Well, that's really weird.
How does genetic material pass from one plant to another? It sort of suggests that scientists have not done their homework on what this mechanism is; otherwise they wouldn't be getting results so wildly out of line with accepted theory.
How did the genes go from the crops to the weeds so easily?
How did it defy the odds? Maybe the odds were stacked wrong?
How did they end up in the soil to be taken up by the turnips?

Comings & Goings
I'm getting used to doing the rudimentary HTML coding for this blogging thing. Working on the Mac isn't too alienating. Still, I need a wintel box. I've half a mind to get Virtual PC on an external drive instead of getting a new PC. While it won't save too much money, it will save space; and I do need to keep running some software on the Windows platform...

I've been working on a promo for an auto-customising company. It's really cool to be able to work on a corporate video where the central idea is FAST CARS.

Also, I spent a day interpreting for some heavies from Shochiku studios on Friday; something I was going to report on the other blog, but I got sidetracked by 'Newman'. Shochiku are an old entertainment firm that produces Kabuki Theatre as well as movie entertainment. They are a studio in the classic sense. The folks from the company were out here checking out Fox Studios Australia because Shochiku need to build a new studio facility; so it was the Q&A tour of Fox Australia. It was a fun day.