j u s t a f l u k e
The following post is about parasites, reproductive cycles and sheep. You know you can't resist.
It's a new one on me, but it seems there is a flatworm called the Lancet Fluke which lives one of the earliest stages of its development cycle in the body of an ant. It just stays in there doing what parasites do until it matures and finds need to progress to the next type of host it requires - a sheep.
Scientists (isn't that a catch-all these days? what scientists? name two, I dare ya.) believe that the fluke actually manipulates the ant's genetic makeup (turning genes on and off) when the time comes to pack up and move to sheepville. The ant suddenly breaks from its normal pattern of behavior, however complex it may be, and climbs to the top of the tallest blade of grass it finds. Once there, it locks down on the tip of the blade with it's jaws and does not let go again until it either dies of natural causes or (and this is what the wormy is fishing for) gets eaten by a grazing sheep!
Other parasites use tricks like this, too. The thorny-headed worm lives a portion of its larval stage in the body of a pillbug, and later uses a peculiar cross-tolerance reaction of similar hormone compounds to overcome the bug's natural aversion to light. The hormone-crazy pillbug is willing to stray out into the dangerous sunlight in order to attempt to satisfy the spanish-fly hormonal urges, but usually instead of finding a piece of pillbug ass it ends up in a bird's belly. Stage two for little Mr. thorny-head is then underway.
This is a dirty trick for sure, but its not so far out there when you consider that lots of animals use feigned mating behavior to score food. Whether the flood of hormones is initiated by internal or external stimuli is not so much of a sticking point. The fluke thing is a little scary, though. Manipulating the actual DNA of the host to gain a stranglehold on the central nervous system is a lot more complex than finding a way to give him a boner and whacking him during the universal lack of decent judgment that follows.
It's in our literary archetypes. How many episodes of Star Trek spin-offs have revolved around the control of an animal or human central nervous system by an (alien) organism apparently less complex by biological definitions. (Think Futurama - Brain Slugs). Doesn't something like the existence of the lancet fluke challenge our basic biological classification systems? I mean (and you scientists out there help me out), we evaluate complexity through things like the number of elements comprising the CNS, and the formation of higher functioning structures (like legs and fingers and forebrains)...But, if a "simple" organism (no matter how many segments or whatever it has) can gain control of six legs and a jaw of an organism we consider more complex, maybe our ideas of biological complexity need to be revamped a little.
Unsoft's List
Friday, May 13, 2005 at 9:35 AM
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 at 2:16 PM
p o o r & d i s o r g a n i z e d
I've been back in public service for about a year and a half now, and so far I gotta say I'm very satisfied with the net outcome of my decision. I like my job.
When I worked for consultants, I was always forced to feel somehow negatively separated from the people I worked for. There have been consultant bosses who enjoyed what I provided for them, and were grateful - at least in $ome manner. There were so many more who considered me useful, but somehow beneath their work ethic.
I admit it, I don't like to work really hard at appearances. My philosophy is one of allowing systems to tend toward their nature, and evaluating their usefulness in a natural, somewhat more chaotic condition before trying to impose more order. I'm not an "entropy carrier". I'm not "organized". I don't benefit from working within too much organization, even if somebody else does all my organizing for me. If I am expected to put forth the effort to organize my environment, I'm just expending energy to the end of making things more difficult for myself.
What is organization really, other than dumbing down? It's like pop music. It's taking a process or a system and making it more appealing to a larger population by means of lowest common denominators. Trying to make it more universally accessible.
I have questions about our traditional ideas about work ethic, also. In the public engineering sector, the primary focus of work is to facilitate public projects and civil infrastructure development - period. Work directly and primarily enriches living communities. In the analogous private market, the major focus of work is to market and sell services (ususlly to public sector entities). This has a primary effect of enriching corporate investors and executives (typically with once-laundered tax dollars), and only a secondary (at best) effect of benefit to quality of life across the board.
How is it that allowing myself to be bought low and sold high in order to add value to the financial portfolios of the already wealthy (many times at the expense of public assets or safety) is somehow meeting a higher ethical standard than going to work directly for the public at large?
Nobody's getting rich here, especially not me, and I feel so much better about that.
I've been back in public service for about a year and a half now, and so far I gotta say I'm very satisfied with the net outcome of my decision. I like my job.
When I worked for consultants, I was always forced to feel somehow negatively separated from the people I worked for. There have been consultant bosses who enjoyed what I provided for them, and were grateful - at least in $ome manner. There were so many more who considered me useful, but somehow beneath their work ethic.
I admit it, I don't like to work really hard at appearances. My philosophy is one of allowing systems to tend toward their nature, and evaluating their usefulness in a natural, somewhat more chaotic condition before trying to impose more order. I'm not an "entropy carrier". I'm not "organized". I don't benefit from working within too much organization, even if somebody else does all my organizing for me. If I am expected to put forth the effort to organize my environment, I'm just expending energy to the end of making things more difficult for myself.
What is organization really, other than dumbing down? It's like pop music. It's taking a process or a system and making it more appealing to a larger population by means of lowest common denominators. Trying to make it more universally accessible.
I have questions about our traditional ideas about work ethic, also. In the public engineering sector, the primary focus of work is to facilitate public projects and civil infrastructure development - period. Work directly and primarily enriches living communities. In the analogous private market, the major focus of work is to market and sell services (ususlly to public sector entities). This has a primary effect of enriching corporate investors and executives (typically with once-laundered tax dollars), and only a secondary (at best) effect of benefit to quality of life across the board.
How is it that allowing myself to be bought low and sold high in order to add value to the financial portfolios of the already wealthy (many times at the expense of public assets or safety) is somehow meeting a higher ethical standard than going to work directly for the public at large?
Nobody's getting rich here, especially not me, and I feel so much better about that.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 at 2:07 PM
h a r d w o o d
I bought one of these as sort of a graduation present for myself, back in 1993. They are handmade instruments, with consistent playability, a distinctive sound, and understated good looks. I wanted a lifetime instrument, in the tradition of my grandfather's Martin D35®. Something that would see my fingers and wrists through to the end of their serviceable life, and possibly even serve the (as of then unmaterialized) next generation.
Handmade instruments aren't as cheap as I am, so I ended up selecting one of the lower-high end models and opting for some inexpensive customization. I had played one in my local dealer's showroom, and the overall tone is very bright, if a little lacking in presence. To compensate for this, I asked that the spruce top be satin finished like the rest of the guitar. The glossy finish tends to make a nice hardwood take on some of the tonal characteristics of a laminate top. Plus, it looks cool. Nobody can mistake that for some kind of plywood, even at a distance.
Additionally, I speced out a pickup for it that I theorized would be slightly more sensitive to the compression waves traveling through the body, making the "plugged in" sound more rich. It's such a disappointment to listen to a really fine acoustic instrument get plugged in to an amp and be instantly transformed into Fisher-Price My First Guitar™.
Well, the Taylor people were fantastic. They put it together exactly like I imagined, and I've been playing it nearly exclusively since 1993. The surprise came a few years later, when I walked into a showroom in another city and saw literature for a new model (in one of their cheaper machine-made series). It was the same body style and size, and the exact same pickup I speced out for mine.
Inadvertently, I had stumbled onto a decent configuration. The company literature promoted the guitar as an affordable means of acheiving high-end sound. The cheapo knockoff was one of their most successful production models, and its legacy can still be easily discerned when browsing the most recent catalogs.
I've seen the bastard progeny of my pedigreed lifetime instrument ever-increasingly through the last decade, with their multi-piece designs, laminate tops, machine-cut joints and other telltale signs of genetic inferiority. Oh how I should hate them. Hate them with the convition of a thousand Hitlers. I should hate them like the Klan hates. Mindlessly. Completely. Categorically. I should hate them for how they're made, and what they propose to be.
But, I don't.
As a matter of fact, I'm kinda proud.
I can't help but open my ears, and apparently my mind eventually follows them wherever they go. The guitars that are based on my custom model sound great. What's more, people can afford them and some of the coolest people out there making music share my appreciation.
Not all gifted musicians have gifted bank accounts, right?
In the end, I see it an an access issue. Why shouldn't nice sound and sexy playability be something we all can enjoy? Plus, they record nice, so quality gets added to the archived workbase of artists worldwide.
Even cooler is this. Because of the success of Taylor Guitars™, Late 90's business models (you remember them? the ones where small investors and other regular people made money as opposed to late 80's/early 21st century models where nearly all money is accumulated under corporate leadership) were a growth environment for handmade high-quality musical instruments with innovative design. Today's musicians have many choices of investment purchase that we could have never imagined in the 80's.
These days, when I see and hear a cheapo knockoff of my expensive investment being used at some trailerpark bar to thrill the panties off a local cutie with big silver earrings, I imagine the hardwood grandfather of it all, at home in its case, gathering age and weather, smelling like smoke and old wood, and sounding better and better every day, and my little heart swells up with pride at what I used to think might have been the greatest contribution I would ever make to the world.
Now, of course, I know better.
I bought one of these as sort of a graduation present for myself, back in 1993. They are handmade instruments, with consistent playability, a distinctive sound, and understated good looks. I wanted a lifetime instrument, in the tradition of my grandfather's Martin D35®. Something that would see my fingers and wrists through to the end of their serviceable life, and possibly even serve the (as of then unmaterialized) next generation.
Handmade instruments aren't as cheap as I am, so I ended up selecting one of the lower-high end models and opting for some inexpensive customization. I had played one in my local dealer's showroom, and the overall tone is very bright, if a little lacking in presence. To compensate for this, I asked that the spruce top be satin finished like the rest of the guitar. The glossy finish tends to make a nice hardwood take on some of the tonal characteristics of a laminate top. Plus, it looks cool. Nobody can mistake that for some kind of plywood, even at a distance.
Additionally, I speced out a pickup for it that I theorized would be slightly more sensitive to the compression waves traveling through the body, making the "plugged in" sound more rich. It's such a disappointment to listen to a really fine acoustic instrument get plugged in to an amp and be instantly transformed into Fisher-Price My First Guitar™.
Well, the Taylor people were fantastic. They put it together exactly like I imagined, and I've been playing it nearly exclusively since 1993. The surprise came a few years later, when I walked into a showroom in another city and saw literature for a new model (in one of their cheaper machine-made series). It was the same body style and size, and the exact same pickup I speced out for mine.
Inadvertently, I had stumbled onto a decent configuration. The company literature promoted the guitar as an affordable means of acheiving high-end sound. The cheapo knockoff was one of their most successful production models, and its legacy can still be easily discerned when browsing the most recent catalogs.
I've seen the bastard progeny of my pedigreed lifetime instrument ever-increasingly through the last decade, with their multi-piece designs, laminate tops, machine-cut joints and other telltale signs of genetic inferiority. Oh how I should hate them. Hate them with the convition of a thousand Hitlers. I should hate them like the Klan hates. Mindlessly. Completely. Categorically. I should hate them for how they're made, and what they propose to be.
But, I don't.
As a matter of fact, I'm kinda proud.
I can't help but open my ears, and apparently my mind eventually follows them wherever they go. The guitars that are based on my custom model sound great. What's more, people can afford them and some of the coolest people out there making music share my appreciation.
Not all gifted musicians have gifted bank accounts, right?
In the end, I see it an an access issue. Why shouldn't nice sound and sexy playability be something we all can enjoy? Plus, they record nice, so quality gets added to the archived workbase of artists worldwide.
Even cooler is this. Because of the success of Taylor Guitars™, Late 90's business models (you remember them? the ones where small investors and other regular people made money as opposed to late 80's/early 21st century models where nearly all money is accumulated under corporate leadership) were a growth environment for handmade high-quality musical instruments with innovative design. Today's musicians have many choices of investment purchase that we could have never imagined in the 80's.
These days, when I see and hear a cheapo knockoff of my expensive investment being used at some trailerpark bar to thrill the panties off a local cutie with big silver earrings, I imagine the hardwood grandfather of it all, at home in its case, gathering age and weather, smelling like smoke and old wood, and sounding better and better every day, and my little heart swells up with pride at what I used to think might have been the greatest contribution I would ever make to the world.
Now, of course, I know better.
Monday, May 09, 2005 at 9:40 AM
And today, a bunch of people are dead! Damn, I slay me!
Am I the only person who thinks Lester Holt just looks a little too damn smug while his head is flapping? It seems like this guy is always smiling - ranging from a slight smirk to a full blown grin, whenever he reads the news...No matter what news he's reading.
He is a great talking head, and I have no personal issue with the guy whatsoever. Hell, he's the hottest TV news property out there. It just seems like his smile is a perpetual thing, and for a serious newscaster that can be somewhat of a liability.
I am a huge purveyor of inappropriate mirth. As a matter of fact, I've been known to laugh when I'm happy, nervous, scared, angry, confused, or even indifferent. Laughter and smiles are my armor. My insulation from my own reaction - until such a time as I can formulate more appropriate response to any given situation. It's my default condition.
Whenever I get hit with some weighty information - the proverbial ton of bricks, you can bet I'll react by smiling inappropriately as I inch my way toward comprehension. That's the way I seem to work, so I have no particular bones to pick with Smilin' Lester.
Still, it's sometimes unnerving to try to reconcile Holt's expression with the words that are coming out of his mouth.
He seems to be the least distracting when he's doing his morning gig with Katie Couric. More subtle reactions, and generally softer news. It's the head-on anchoring at MSNBC that always seems to convey unintended and inappropriate sarcasm. It's tough to swallow a tight, toothless smirk as a chaser to today's death toll in Iraq, or as an accompanying agent to the latest outbreak of potentially deadly disease somewhere.
I was wondering if Walter Cronkite is still alive. Wouldn't it be great to get him back? Somewhere in my mind, Jimmy Carter will always be my president, and Walter Cronkite will always be my newscaster. Someday soon, Lester will report the loss of these guys, and you can bet he'll be crying on the inside.
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