Tagged: Rock Doc

I swim laps at noon several times a week. I enjoy the water, and the gentle exercise is good for my aging joints.

Like other old ladies in the pool, I’m no speed demon. Even a bucketful of performance enhancing drugs would not make me slice through the water quickly. But like all the lap swimmers I know, slow or fast, I take an interest in Michael Phelps and the other American swimmers soon to compete in London in the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Republished from WSUNews

PULLMAN, Wash. - I swim laps at noon several times a week. I enjoy the water, and the gentle exercise is good for my aging joints.

In a 1789 letter, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Well, it should interest you to know that death is no longer a certainty, at least for one species. The Rock Doc, Dr. Kirsten Peters, has the details.

"The gene for death has been isolated –and reversed- by scientists. Not a bad day’s work, you might say.

Sorry, it’s not the death of human beings that’s at issue. But it is a gene for death that’s embedded in a plant on which we all directly depend each day. And that’s good enough to be plenty encouraging.

One of my habits in recent years has been studying climate history in my free time. What can I say; it keeps me out of bars.

Recently, I was startled to learn that the temperatures experienced by American wheat farms back in the 1830s were almost 7 degrees warmer than they now are.