This is not a joke.....

:f6: Note: This is actually about the fruit.

 Spoiler

Papaya sex change in the works:
The effort could weed out unproductive male and female plants so that farmers could grow only the fruitful hermaphrodites.

An effort is underway to perform sex changes on papayas. That's right -- the large, yellowish fruit.

Papayas, it turns out, have not just one but three sexes: male, female and hermaphrodite. The third produces the yummy fruit, but the male and females are mostly useless to farmers.

University of Illinois plant biology professor Ray Ming has secured a $3.1-million grant from the National Science Foundation to change the papayas' sex in an effort to grow only plants that produce hermaphrodite offspring.

Currently, farmers don't know which plants are hermaphrodite until the plants have grown and flowered -- meaning they must spend money growing more plants than they can use.

If successful, the research will allow papaya growers to save on production costs and use less water and fertilizer. The cost savings could be passed to consumers.

Ming is one of those consumers, though he notes that it's hard to get a perfect papaya in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. It certainly doesn't stack up to the fruit he just ate while researching in Hawaii.

"I don't eat it here that often," he said. "It is no comparison to the ones I have in Hawaii. It sometimes does not taste as good. It is wrinkled. It is old because of transportation and storage."

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

That hurt my brain for second, because every time I read "papaya" now, I think of the word f'ag.

Oh the irony that only we see.

That hurt my brain for second, because every time I read "papaya" now, I think of the word f'ag.

I know, but this is actually about papayas. I read this article today and I burst out laughing. My mom wondered why, so I showed it to her and she burst out laughing too.

I lol'ed

(I'd actually have no idea what they are, other than that they are a fruit)

I lol'ed

(I'd actually have no idea what they are, other than that they are a fruit)

[COLOR="Red"]

They're making hermaphrodite fags, eh? This could get interesting. [/COLOR]

+9001 internets to whoever wrote that article

This is bad news for southperry. It's ripe with papayas.

BETTER WATCH YOURSELF.

i thought fruit and plants didn't have a sex...
are there female and male bananas and melons?

+9001 internets to whoever wrote that article

This.

Replace all papayas with "[color='black']f[/color]ags" and read it again.

This.

Replace all papayas with "[color='black']f[/color]ags" and read it again.

fail.

Are you happy, Fiel? Your brainwashing was a success. Now you have a small army of minons who will understand your top secret orders. When enemies try to listen into your battle strategy, they'll be at a loss.

"So, you get any good information from spying, cadet?"

"Um, well...apparently they're going to 'pineapple those papayas with their orbital bee cannon', sir."

"...Wa-wha?"

[SIZE="4"]BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM[/SIZE]

I didn't find this funny at all.

I didn't find this funny at all.

Well it wasn't a joke so that's ok.

Well it wasn't a joke so that's ok.

Well, I guess I should say I didn't find it amusing either. Because I read this talking about the fruit, and not the silly Southperry censor.

Maybe I am just immune to brain washing.

i thought fruit and plants didn't have a sex...
are there female and male bananas and melons?

Hope you don't mind me asking, what grade are you in? It's pretty basic stuff to know that the male plants have to pollonise the female plants in order for the female plant's fruits to grow (well for papaya's it's different, I guess they cross-pollonise eachother or something?) The pollonising is usually done bt wind or bees. That's why for 50% of all food humans rely on bees.. if they ever get extinct we have a big problem.

PS. Sorry if pollonising is not the right word, I'm not in the mood to look it up and I'm not a native english speaker so yeah.