Wood nymph

Two of my closest girlfriends in town have taken upon themselves to save me from the abyss of stress that threatens to engulf me for the next month. The wood nymph Marilyn on the picture has invited us for dinner. She happens to live in the neighborhood into which we are moving, and our houses will be very near one another. Here we are going for a walk with her dog.

Marilyn is quite an interesting individual: she intends to save the world from hunger. She studies corn, and looks for genetic properties which make some corn resistant to a particularly mean fungus that lives on it and is toxic enough to kill people when ingested. While the fungus is not a problem in a U.S. store-bought corn as the corn is screened for it, it is a problem in third world countries which rely on corn as their main source of nourishment, and will eat it, fungus or no fungus. Prior to living in Starkville, Marilyn worked at a research center in Mexico.

I was always against genetic modification of food. Still am against injecting my tomatoes with fish genes to make them more frost resistant. However, knowing Marilyn allowed me to see that not all genetic modification is bad. Pinpointing which genes allow the corn to be resistant to the killer fungus will be a huge deal and will have the potential to save many lives in places where people depend on corn to survive. I am not sure what happens next: do we just breed and grow the fungus-resistant corn, or do we actually inject the resistant genes into all types of corn and see if the method works? The answer, I suspect, will depend on money. Saving the lives of poorest of the poor doesn't usually come with a great profit margin...