Project 'Tomacco': Caffeinated Tomatoes | Hacker News Reader

Project 'Tomacco': Caffeinated Tomatoes

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16 pointsrjurney18 comments

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Chief Wiggum: Go ahead, Ralpie; the stranger is offering you a treat!

Ralph: Oh, Daddy! It tastes like Grandma!

Chief Wiggum: Holy Moses! It DOES taste like Grandma!

Ralph: I want more!

Chief Wiggum: Yeah, me too!

It's possible to genetically engineer plants to produce caffeine. They did it to tobacco, of all things, because caffeine is a natural pesticide:

http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=11404

Wow, thanks!

I should preface the comments by saying: I realize this is silly. Thats why it is fun. Also I think I'm going to make the initial experiment more scientific by having several plants with grounds, and several controls, in the same conditions.

Personally, I hope to see your experiment succeed with flying colors (mmm caffeinated pizza sauce) but I don't think the science is on your side:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg10134314520...

Thank you. But this setback is just an opportunity for innovation: I will now breed tomatoes tolerant of caffeine.

On the upside this could make Bloody Marys a more effective brunch cocktail.

I'm prepared to lose some karma points by saying this, but I really hope articles like this are not what Hacker News is going to turn into down the road. Sure, the experiment is humorous if not interesting and perhaps could even be thought of as 'hacking' but I don't come to HN to read about stuff like this. Still, post on and let the community decide I suppose.

Then just flag it. The reason we explicitly ask people in the guidelines to flag stuff they think offtopic instead of posting comments about it is that they comments generate long, useless discussions, like this one.

Personally, I wouldn't like to see hacker news contain lots of stories like this one but isn't there room for diversity? I'd say about 5% pure 'hack' shenanigans would be the appropriate level.

Anyway, I've searched this but hadn't found the link someone posted here: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg10134314520... It looks like I need to rethink the experiment. I figured something like this would happen, which aside from sharing humor, was my real motivation for posting this story.

Anyway, since we're sharing: what I'd really like to see is... less introspection in every other hacker news thread, lamenting the inevitable decline of this wonderful site :) Not every link is everything to everyone, nor do they have to be for this to be a great place.

Totally agree that not every link is for everyone, but I disagree about less introspection, whether or not the includes discussion about an inevitable decline. The community must discuss itself to be healthy.

A more constructive act than thread nannying would be to submit a great link you would like to see on hacker news yourself :)

Straw man arguments are as detrimental to the community as proposing users shouldn't discuss what's happening in their community openly. Don't tell me my point is invalid by suggesting I spend my time doing something unrelated to writing comments. In any case I do monitor the threads I've responded to because, as I've stated, I believe active discussion is vital to the continuation of the community. If you feel monitoring the discussion around comments is unproductive, than the irony of you "nannying" this thread and responding to my two comments is not lost on me, nor is the fact to you apparently missed the final sentence of my first post, to reiterate: "Still, post on and let the community decide I suppose."

Can you explain where the straw man is here?

It seems self evident that "posting more of what I'd like to see on HN" is more CONstructive than kvetching in the vein of "I hope we don't get more articles like this down the road, it's not what I come here to see."

Still, kvetch on and let the community decide.

Well dude... this is my thread. I posted it. Is it still ironic?

I think you've got a shot at getting some stimulus money. Good luck.

bluefish, HN is clearly the new K5

It should be called tomaffe or caffato

Retarded either way

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