08:08 – Moron North Carolina legislators are again falling prey to the SLAGIATT tendency of all legislators. Like most other legislative initiatives, their attempt to pass legislation to allow DNA samples to be taken from anyone arrested for (not charged with, let alone convicted of; simply arrested for) a felony or some misdemeanors will be seen in retrospect as what Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Ignoring the Constitutional issues and the fact that DNA reveals much more about a person than simply his identity, the simple fact is that North Carolina cannot afford to do this. The financial cost would be extremely high, and the state crime lab is already running months to literally years behind in processing DNA evidence.
UPS just showed up yesterday with some Rhizobia inoculum, which we include in the biology kits. Rhizobia are nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria that can massively increase yields of certain crops, like peas and Lima beans. But the commercial cultures, which are basically just the bacteria on a peat moss substrate, have very limited shelf lives. The stuff we got in yesterday, for example, has a best-by date of 12/31/15. So commercial Rhizobia innoculant isn’t really suited to long-term storage.
But Rhizobia can be cultured, and it’s well-suited to putting into stasis in a solution of phosphate-buffered saline, where it remains in what amounts to suspended animation for years to decades. It can be reactivated by inoculating some sterile culture medium made by diluting a couple tablespoons of table sugar and and a few ounces of beef or chicken broth in a couple liters of water and allowing the medium to sit at room temperature for a few days. When the medium becomes visibly cloudy, you have a couple liters of inoculant liquid with trillions of Rhizobia bacteria in it. That liquid can be used directly to treat seeds.
So I think I’ll produce the PBS cultures and sell them to people who are doing long-term prepping. I considered lyophilizing (freeze-drying) the cultures, but the PBS liquid cultures will work as well and are simpler to produce.