269, 270

Yesterday I learned the word "fungible." I know I just did a word of the day not too long ago, but I like "fungible." It means easily replaced; interchangeable, flexible.

Today I learned about Gregor Mendel, the pea plant guy. Did you know that his ideas weren't really accepted until like 35 years after he first presented them? And it also is hard for me to believe that he was doing his work less than 150 years ago. 150 years ago does not seem like very long at all, but to think that a.) we really knew nothing about genetics then and b.) Mendel basically discovered genetics just by planting and observing a ton of pea plants is insane to me. Think of all the crazy-high tech, complicated scientific research that goes on these days. This is so rambly. I can't get my point across...it's just that what he was doing seems so simple to produce such amazing results. It seems like that can't happen anymore.

241

Today I learned about conjoined twins. I had always heard that conjoined twins form when the embryo doesn't separate fully, but apparently there is also a theory that the twins form after the embryo has already separated; the cells seek out like cells to join to, and sometimes instead of finding cells in the same body, they find cells in the other twin and the two become fused. I know this theory is not as accepted as the first, but I don't know if it's like plausible or if anybody halfway intelligent dismisses it entirely. To me, though, it doesn't seem that likely. I mean, why wouldn't you ever have conjoined twins where, say, the head of one twin is growing out the back of the other? Or what prevents non-identical twins from becoming fused in the same way? Maybe the cells that find each other have to be almost identical--they have to come from the same body part or have the same DNA or whatever. I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190

Yikes. OK kittens, I've been putting this off but I think the time has finally come. Here for your pleasure is a huge list of things I learned on vacation and in the 2 days since.

1.) Where did the name Shamu come from? According to seaworld.org, "Many stories exist about the origin of Shamu's name. One revolves around the first collected killer whale that was named Namu after a British Columbian town. When SeaWorld welcomed its first killer whale, it was named Shamu, for 'She-Namu.'" That sounds like bull, but whatever.

2.) I learned that blackwater is "a term used for sewage containing fecal matter, in contrast with greywater, which is the waste water from kitchen sink drains, washing machines, and other washings."

3.) Mount Soledad in San Diego is 822 feet high.

4.) I learned that I can live in one of these rad condo things in La Jolla for the low low price of two and a half million dollars. HAHAHA! That's funny. They are pretty sweet though. Why don't I have two and a half million dollars?

5.) I learned that Giverny is this place in France where a ton of impressionist painters, including Monet, lived and worked. They hung out at the Hotel Baudy and painted lots of pictures of haystacks. I saw an exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art: more here.

6.) If you want to avoid stepping on a stingray that's laying on the sand underwater, you should shuffle your feet as you walk. This is especially true in calmer waters.

7.) At the science center I learned about the Horsehead Nebula and how stars form in these nebulae. I watched a cool video on it. Um, I'm like real dumb or whatever, so I don't remember a lot of it, but it was pretty interesting and I did learn some stuff, I promise. You can look here or somewhere similar if you need a simple explanation.

175, 176

1.) There was some discussion today on the meaning of the word "vase," mainly weather when pronounced to rhyme with "face" it means something different than when pronounced to rhyme with "bras." It was suggested that "rhymes-with-bras" refers to a decorative object while "rhymes with face" is just any old thing you stick flowers in. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it was true. It turns out not to be, though. None of the sources I checked (Wikipedia, the OED, and Merriam-Webster online) says anything other than that they are variant pronunciations. MW actually breaks it down pretty well, while also throwing in "rhymes-with-days" as a third pronuciation (fucking Canadians): US oftenest ˈvās; Canada usually & US also ˈvāz; British usually, Canada also, & US sometimes ˈväz.

2.) I also learned today, kind of, about tides. The Wikipedia article is a freaking 90-page report on the subject, and therefore was not particularly helpful to me since I would have to spend more than 4 seconds reading it. I also checked on Howstuffworks.com. It still does not fully make sense to me with regard to the water actually moving around on the Earth and rising up higher on whatever particular beach you happen to be standing on, but I get that the pull of the moon bulges out the Earth on the sides closest to and farthest away from the moon. This happens, for the most part, twice a day: two high tides and two low tides. Eh. Thinking is hard.

Ninety, Ninety one, Ninety two

Aight, three things for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday:

1.) A "biome" is "a major portion of the living environment of a particular region (such as a fir forest or grassland), characterized by its distinctive vegetation and maintained by local climatic conditions."

2.) Rainbows! Rainbows are caused when light is refracted upon entering a rain drop, reflects off the back, and then is refracted again on the way out the front. "The amount by which light is refracted depends upon its wavelength, and hence its colour. Blue light (shorter wavelength) is refracted at a greater angle than red light, but because the area of the back of the droplet has a focal point inside the droplet, the spectrum crosses itself, and therefore the red light appears higher in the sky, and forms the outer colour of the rainbow" (Wikipedia). Got it? Good.


3.) I had a third thing I was supposed to look up, but, unsurprisingly, I can't remember what it was. Hmm...hey, remember these?! That has nothing to do with learning but I just came across it. I had so many of those. Jeez, how many Happy Meals did my mom let me eat? Oh wait, no, I did learn something. They had names: Robocakes, Gallacta Burger, Fry Force, Krypto Cup, Macro Mac, Turbo Cone, C2 Cheeseburger, and FryBot. Heh, that's funny.

Sixty

Right now I am learning about vaccination. This is pretty interesting. People are believed to have been using some form of vaccination for over two thousand years, primarily against smallpox. People in Asia would deliberately expose themselves to mild cases of smallpox to keep themselves from getting it later. Around 1800 Europeans started using cowpox to vaccinate themselves against smallpox (hence the word "vaccine"--from the Latin "vacca," cow). In the early days they would vaccinate people by cutting a slit in their arm, swabbing sombody's smallpox pustule, and then rubbing it in the slit. Eeeeeew. I mean, I know that's basically still what they do, but let's dress it up a little bit with syringes and Strawberry Shortcake band-aids, shall we?

There are three types of vaccine that can be given: one kind where the virus is dead, one where it's alive but not very stong, and one where you don't get the actual virus at all but just a certain protein from the virus that will trigger an immune reaction.

Compulsory vaccination was used to eliminate smallpox, is currently being used to eliminate polio, and may soon be used to eliminate measles. Some people object to compulsory vaccination on religious grounds or out of the belief that vaccinations are not as safe as we believe (the possible connection between vaccinations and autism, for example). People with strong objections may be exempted from compulsory vaccination.

Fifty two, Fifty three, Fifty four

I suck, I suck.

Tuesday I learned about the appendix, because I always think that I am dying of appendicitis. It's on the right side, by the way. I can never remember. Anyway, some people actually think the appendix might have a function. It has lots of lymph cells in it, so it might play some part in the immune system (although that doesn't seem likely because people who've had them removed/are born without them don't seem to have weaker immune systems). One guy thinks it may play a part in developing fetuses (feti?). Most people think it's leftover from when we were herbivores; it produced the bacteria needed to digest cellulose in all those veggies. Now it's shriveled up and does nothing other than occasionally kill people. Thanks a lot, evolution.

Yesterday I learned that American Gladiators airs on ESPN Classic weeknights at 7. Score!

Today is for mood rings. I'm totally copying this straight from howstuffworks.com because I am a lazy motherfucker, and plus they can say it better than I can anyway. So: " The stone in a mood ring is either a hollow glass shell filled with thermotropic liquid crystals or a clear glass stone sitting on top of a thin sheet of liquid crystals. These liquid crystal molecules are very sensitive; they change position, or twist, according to changes in temperature. This change in molecular structure affects the wavelengths of light that are absorbed or reflected by the liquid crystals, resulting in an apparent change in the color of the stone."

Awesome! I am wearing a mood ring today. My mom bought it for me in Arizona...she came back with all this authentic Native American type stuff, plus a mood ring. I dunno.

Thirty five, Thirty six

Saturday:

Bill did a little 'splaining to me about gravity, rubber mats, and balls (fun site there, by the way). As part of the honors program at college, you could take these special classes that were just, like, a bunch of smart people sitting around talking about smart people stuff (I don't know, I never ended up taking one), and there was one once called Time. I really wanted to take it and simultaneously knew that it would kick my ass so hard. My brain gets all pissy with me when I try to make it think about things like Time and Gravity (not to mention being all "Well, what kind of rubber mat? Is it like a yoga mat, or one of those sheets for people who wet the bed, or what?").

Sunday:

Today I learned that the cable company is CHARGING ME $2.10 every month for the stupid Channel Guide Magazine that I throw away. I want to stab the cable company in the neck. They have been nothing but asses to me since I moved in here. Damn.

Twenty five

Today I learned about clumsiness. I was wondering (FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON) what, physiologically speaking, makes a person be clumsy, and so naturally I looked up "clumsiness" on Wikipedia. This sends you to articles on dyspraxia and motor skills disorder. Basically, clumsiness is rooted in disrupted neurological connections in the brain and/or problems with the inner ear. Clumsy people have trouble planning out the sequence of movements they will need to carry out OR actually carrying out those movements after they've been planned. You can have problems with speech, fine motor control, and/or whole body coordination.

Dyspraxia often comes along with some other symptoms or disorders. Dyspraxic people often have an increased or skewed tactile sense which makes them more likely to be bothered by, for example, uncomfortable clothing. There also tends to be overlap with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders. I would have liked to use the word "comorbidity" in there somewhere just because I used to really like it back in my Psych days.

Obviously there are other muscular/motor/CNS type disorders that would result in clumsiness--ie, you drop things a lot because your muscles have been weakened from MS. That's sort of secondary rather than primary clumsiness though, I think.

I didn't come across anything personally enlightening. Those motor disorders don't apply to me, I don't think. I walked early, talked early, didn't have any physical problems at all, really. I have just turned into a spaz somewhere along the way. I'm probably not careful enough. Somebody get me a bubble!

Twenty One

Last night/this morning I watched An Inconvenient Truth. I learned some things about the environment and global warming. I actually didn't learn as much as I'd hoped (I know I know, "Read the book!" says Jared). But it was interesting to see the photos of glaciers/ice sheets/whatever over the past several years as they've been melting away, and to see the graphs of hundreds of thousands of years of temperature changes. I would say that I'm completely convinced, but I am never completely convinced of anything, ever. Such a skeptic.

Fourteen Fifteen

For Saturday:

Birds don't urinate.

For Sunday:

Poop is brown because of iron and a substance called bilirubin that is created by the breakdown of red blood cells and ends up in the intestine. I always kind of just thought it was brown because it was a mash-up of all the different colors of stuff you'd eaten. Now I know better.

Hopefully Monday will return us to a non-toilet-related Thing I've Learned.

Four

Today I went to my parents' house to do laundry, and my mom had cut an article out of the paper for me. It's about a guy in Mexico who found a frog in a mine. Why so special? The frog, less than half an inch long, was covered in amber and is estimated to be 25 million years old. 25 MILLION YEARS OLD. This is the first frog of its kind (genus: Craugastor) found in Mexico. One biologist wants to try to take DNA from the frog so he can see what species it is, but a.) it is apparently very very unlikely to get DNA from something that old, and b.) also it's not likely that the guy who found it will let anybody drill into it since it's so rare.

I kept thinking that this was exactly how Jurassic Park happened, but not quite. In that movie it was a mosquito in the amber with dino blood inside...the frog came into play when they needed something to fill the holes in the dino DNA. I think. It's been a while. In any case, it doesn't sound like we need to be worried about Mexican Frogosaurs taking over the continent any time soon.

OR DO WE?

No, we don't.