The adrenaline rush of going fast is undeniable. The fear. The excitement. Yet, there also seems to be something redemptive about going fast, as if we can actually run away from our problems.
Well now I’m no hero
That’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
–Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road” Continue reading “Tag, or the Springsteen-Smoke Theorem”
It appears that a few gentle readers are concerned that the “for gentleman scientists” bit of our every so pithy tagline implies that ladies are not welcome – that we might, indeed, be sexist pig dogs. Let’s lay this one to rest, forthwith. While our porcine and canine qualities, not to mention their synergistic effects on one another, are certainly open for debate, our sexism is not. Continue reading “On “gentleman scientists””
This fourth post, long-awaited by two people, concludes a two-part post based on my having to watch Disney’s Cinderella roughly 17837 times. After a while, you start noticing the little things, or go mad, or both.
Like a Freudian psycho-analyst asking about mom, screens bring up issues[1] for classical geneticists. Screens are what we do. Conceptually, screens are simple. In fact, they are like your screen door. The goal is start with everything and separate it into two groups – one that passes the screen and one excluded by the screen – based on a particular characteristic. Your screen door tries to do this based on size, letting in the breeze, but keeping out the flies, if everything is working well.
With screens, be they in the genetics laboratory or your back door, the devil is in the details. We need to worry about how well the screen works. If our screen door has holes in it or we are opening the door a lot, bugs are going to get in. If the screen is dirty, it might not let as much of the breeze through as we would like[2]. We need to worry about whether we are actually screening for the characteristic we care about. Screen doors separate bugs from breeze based on size. They do not detect “bug” and zap it with a laser, because one house could not contain that much awesome[3].
I’m concerned that the King, Grand Duke, and Prince did not think through the details of their attempt to screen their female subjects for Cinderella – i.e., The Great Slipper Screen[4]. Continue reading “Cinde-really 4: The Great Slipper Screen”
I was chatting with the boss over lunch about my fabulous lunch box
, when I realized that this lunch box is one of the physical objects that I have owned the longest and still use* – over 25 years. What struck me is that the objects that are so defining of us all, like my laptop, my iPad, my smart phone, or my clothes go past and are replaced in a blink of an eye compared to that lunch box. If we are defined by our things, then you can define me by a worn copy of The Rainbow Goblins and a battered Return of the Jedi lunch box.
I think I’m pretty happy with how I turned out.
*There is a teddy bear named Bosco that I have owned since at least a month before my birth, but I no longer cuddle him at night since I found Mrs. Rugbyologist.
My daughter really enjoys playing the iPad game Flick Fishing HD. Don’t worry folks. It’s all catch and release. Also, The Frogger can now identify about 30 different species of fish. We also use it for spelling practice:
Can you spell “barracuda”?
It also got me to wondering why different fish react differently to being caught on a line as this is a threat that is completely different from any natural predators. Are the fish aware they are in danger or just trying to get away from an annoyance? Is the behavior panic or some version of a standard predator avoidance? Or, is the fish evaluating the threat and then putting together the best strategy it can to counter the specific threat? That sounds pretty advanced, but we already know that some fish can use tools*.
*Depending on how you choose to define “tool”.
The Finch and Pea 