From the Associated Press, today in improvements that make life worse:

Researchers in leading cherry-growing states are working on getting stemless cherries to market.

Researchers from Washington State, Oregon State and Michigan State universities are in the second year of a four-year project to develop a mechanical harvester that could not only save growers money on harvest costs, but also remove stems from the cherries. The stems sometimes dent the fruit as it's shipped.

The research involves researching what types of sweet cherries are most easily dislodged from their stems and studying consumer acceptance of stemless cherries...

The research is funded by a $3.8 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.

To go in a Mudedean direction for a moment, is not a large part of the cherry's pleasure the stem? For the cherry is not merely an object, it is a process. Without the dangling, the plucking, then the stem in all its nostalgic postcherry being—without all this, is eating a cherry still truly eating a cherry?