Category: Barbara

08:27 – Here’s the final front cover image for the biology book. There may be a few changes to the text, but otherwise this is pretty much what it’ll look like. Thanks to Mark at O’Reilly, who took the cover image I shot and did his Photoshop magic on it to get rid of the lighting flaws and other artifacts.

About the only change I suggested other than minor tweaks to the text was the background color. The chemistry book uses blue, and I thought it was obvious that the biology book should use green. And the forensics book, once we get around to actually publishing it, should be red (or at least maroon). Physics, when we eventually do that one, should be black.

Barbara worked a full day yesterday, and was delighted to do so. Unexpectedly, Colin was no worse than usual. True, he did pester me constantly to go out, but there was nothing new there. Colin did disappear briefly while we were on a walk. Like all Border Collies, Colin wants to herd anything that moves. This time of year, on breezy autumn days, he has his work cut out for him, herding blowing leaves.

The incident occurred as we were returning from our walk, approaching our house. Our next-door neighbors have a huge pile of leaves at the curb. As we approached it, Colin took off in pursuit of a blowing leaf. He went airborne just short of the leaf pile, and plunged into it. So, there I stood, holding a roller leash that extended into the leaf pile, with no dog visible at all. After a moment, the leaf pile started to ripple and shift, and a Border Collie pup burst out the other side. In his mouth, he carried one leaf. I can’t swear that it was the same leaf that he took off in pursuit of, but I suspect it probably was.

I was working on a new group of lab sessions yesterday, and I couldn’t decide what to name the chapter. As I mentioned to Barbara later, as a librarian she’s used to a well-defined taxonomy that doesn’t change other than to make room for new subjects. Biological taxonomy, on the other hand, changes like dreams, particularly with the advent of DNA analysis. A species may be moved from one genus to another, or indeed may be assigned as the sole member of its own new genus. A genus may move, in whole or in part, from one phylum to another, and even phyla may be moved from one kingdom to another. Even the framework changes. What is a kingdom in one taxonomic system may be a sub-kingdom or even a phylum in another. For that matter, some scientists make a convincing case that the whole kingdom system is invalid and that if we are to have a valid taxonomy it must be on a monophyletic basis. But the real problem is that life is messy and doesn’t fit itself into a convenient two-dimensional matrix. I suppose it might eventually be possible to classify all life in an n-dimensional matrix, but I sure wouldn’t want to attempt it.

Oh, yeah, my chapter title. It started out “Investigating Protista”, changed to “Investigating Protozoa”, and then changed again to “Investigating Protists”. I finally settled on “Investigating Protista/Protozoa/Protists”.

14:45 – I’ve sometimes posted Pat Condell videos here, often noting that I generally agree with Pat but that he’s a bit mealy-mouthed for my taste. Actually, I’m sure that Pat hates and despises islam as much as I do, as evidenced by his latest video.

10:04 – Barbara continues to improve. She’s even taking Colin for short walks down the block and yesterday while I wasn’t looking she rolled the trash cart back down the driveway. She goes to the doctor next week for a follow-up visit, and I suspect he’ll approve her to drive again and return to work. She’s going stir-crazy here. Of course, Colin is going to be a problem because he’s now used to having her home all day every day.

Yesterday I finished up the group of lab sessions on microorganisms and started on a group of lab sessions on genetics. Right now, I’m working on a lab about Mendelian traits and inheritance. There are actually relatively few pure Mendelian traits in humans, but one of them is a classic. The ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide.

Fortunately, I also did a self-sanity check. Beginning biology students often make the false assumption that dominant and recessive Mendelian traits correlate to the percentages of individuals in a population that exhibit the dominant and recessive phenotypes. In other words, a high percentage of individuals exhibit the dominant phenotype and a much small percentage the recessive phenotype. A moment’s thought establishes that’s not the case, at least for anyone who’s aware that Huntington’s disease is a dominant Mendelian trait.

But I made that exact false assumption with regard to Colin and his prick ears, assuming that floppy ears in dogs are Mendelian dominant and prick ears recessive. In fact, floppy ears are a recessive Mendelian trait. The fact that probably only one in ten thousand Border Collies has prick ears doesn’t indicate that prick ears are recessive, but merely that Border Collie breeders have selectively bred a population of Border Collies that are almost entirely recessive with respect to ear conformation. (Not that they were selecting for ear type specifically, but sometimes something you don’t care about one way or the other is part of the package that you’re breeding for.)

Now the only problem is that I don’t remember either Colin’s mother or father having prick ears. Hmmm.

10:42 – Duncan was a giant among Border Collies, standing about 4″ (10 cm) taller than other large males and weighing half again as much despite the fact that there was no fat on him. When Duncan was two or three years old, we took him to a Carolina Border Collie Rescue event held at a farm owned by one of the volunteers. There was a large open field and a herd of about 100 Border Collies running around in it. We could pick out Duncan instantly because he towered above all of the other BCs, except one who was even larger than he was. (Despite the fact that Duncan was registered purebred, we always suspected that he might have some English Shepherd in his bloodlines.)

Barbara just got out a photo of Duncan standing on our front porch that showed the line of his back was at the line of mortar above the seventh row of bricks. She then took Colin out on the front porch while I stood back to see the level of his back relative to the bricks. At eight months old, Colin is already taller than Duncan was as an adult. He’s going to be a very big boy.