designed redundancy

as a former aerospace engineer, i have a geeky affinity for redundant systems. when we used to design navigation systems for airplanes and spacecraft, we normally built in three parallel sensor systems designed to run simultaneously but separately. if one of the three systems failed, we would know it wasn’t functioning right, because we could compare it to the other two functional systems and see that its data was anomalous and we couldn’t trust it.  that whole system was called fail safe, because we could affford for one of the three components to fail. once one of the three had failed, we were no longer faced with a “fail safe” system but a “fail ops”  or “fail operational” system, meaning that neither of the two remaining navigation systems could be entirely trusted, because if they disagreed with each other, you didn’t know which one was right and which was wrong. At that point, the pilot had to go manual. Eventually we started using four systems instead of three, so that you were still “fail safe” even if you lost one of your four systems. that’s a very long way of introducing the black protruberances along the stem of this lily. lilies normally reproduce by underground rhizomes, but if for some reason that method fails, they can also grow from these little black marbles called bulbils. it makes me wonder why i have two ovaries but only one uterus. that strikes me as a potentially catastrophically shortsighted design flaw.

tiger lily stem with bulbils