About the Sex Organs of Eels.

I never know what I'm about to learn when my weekly email digest arrive from The New Yorker.  Today's lesson is about the non-existent sex organs of eels, in this article, "Where Do Eels Come From," by Brooke Jarvis.  The bottom line is that the sex organs do exist, if you are patient enough to wait for them through four metamorphoses:

Careful observers discovered that what had long been taken for several different kinds of animals were in fact just one. The eel was a creature of metamorphosis, transforming itself over the course of its life into four distinct beings: a tiny gossamer larva with huge eyes, floating toward Europe in the open sea; a shimmering glass eel, known as an elver, a few inches in length with visible insides, making its way along coasts and up rivers; a yellow-brown eel, the kind you might catch in ponds, which can move across dry land, hibernate in mud until you’ve forgotten it was ever there, and live quietly for half a century in a single place; and, finally, the silver eel, a long, powerful muscle that ripples its way back to sea. When this last metamorphosis happens, the eel’s stomach dissolves—it will travel thousands of miles on its fat reserves alone—and its reproductive organs develop for the first time. In the eels of Europe, no one could find those organs because they did not yet exist.

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Goosebumps: Another Vestigial Feature from our Former Furry Pre-Human Selves

Why do humans have goosebumps? The question was answered by an article titled, "Why Do People Get Goosebumps" at Discovery Magazine. Short answer: Our goosebumps are a vestigial feature. Some humans have vestigial tails and some have vestigial gills. All humans are filled with evidence from our fish ancestors as well as our reptilian ancestors.  Neil Shubin explored many of these features in his book, Your Inner Fish (also made into a documentary).

The goosebumps pop up to lift the fur that no longer covers us. Why would our furry ancestors survive better with fur that lifted up? "Hair-raising goosebumps are also a response to threats, which would have made our ancestors appear larger and scarier. Just imagine a cat or dog when the fur is about to fly. Their puffed up hair is an indication that they’re ticked off and are in fight-or-flight mode."

That’s why you might get chills from pretty innocuous stuff, like going to a concert. A screaming crowd alone is enough trigger our goosebump reaction.

“Your emotional brain … is like a tiny, scared rabbit in the forest. It expects death around every corner. So a crowd screaming will sound just like that — something that we should be scared of,” Colver said.

And often, it’s the music itself that gives us the chills. According to Colver, certain instruments, tempos and pitches are known to cause these skin orgasms. An unexpected or particularly resonant sound can initiate our fight-or-flight response.

“Loud noises, or piercing noises (like a sustained high note played on a violin) get interpreted as really threatening,” he said.

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Axiomatic Civic Responsibility

I’m looking at the “protesters” in Michigan and ruminating on the nature of civil disobedience versus civic aphasia. By that latter term I mean a condition wherein a blank space exists within the psyché where one would expect an appropriate recognition of responsible behavior ought to live.  A condition which seems to allow certain people to feel empowered to simply ignore—or fail to recognize—the point at which a reflexive rejection of authority should yield to a recognition of community responsibility.  That moment when the impulse to challenge, dismiss, or simply ignore what one is being told enlarges to the point of defiance and what ordinarily would be a responsible acceptance of correct behavior in the face of a public duty. It could be about anything from recycling to voting regularly to paying taxes to obeying directives meant to protect entire populations.

Fairly basic exercises in logic should suffice to define the difference between legitimate civil disobedience and civic aphasia. Questions like: “Who does this serve?” And if the answer is anything other than the community at large, discussion should occur to determine the next step.  The protesters in Michigan probably asked, if they asked at all, a related question that falls short of useful answer:  “How does this serve me?”  Depending on how much information they have in the first place, the answer to that question will be of limited utility, especially in cases of public health.

Another way to look at the difference is this:  is the action taken to defend privilege or to extend it? And to whom?

One factor involved in the current expression of misplaced disobedience has to do with weighing consequences. The governor of the state issues a lockdown in order to stem the rate of infection, person to person. It will last a limited time. When the emergency is over (and it will be over), what rights have been lost except a presumed right to be free of any restraint on personal whim?

There is no right to be free of inconvenience.  At best, we have a right to try to avoid it, diminish it, work around it.  Certainly be angry at it.  But there is no law, no agency, no institution that can enforce a freedom from inconvenience.  For one, it could never be made universal.  For another, “inconvenience” is a rather vague definition which is dependent on context.

And then there is the fact that some inconveniences simply have to be accepted and managed.

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Exquisite nature macro photography with a cell phone

OK. In THEORY, anyone can clip a macro lens onto their phone and take cool photos. Sasi Kumar, a 20-year old man from India has made high art using only these simple tools. Apparently, he has an uncanny ability to hold his phone still while triggering the shutter. And he has lots of patience, enabling him to get the money shot. It is a delight to look at his work.

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My Encounter with a Brown Recluse Spider . . . Maybe

This is a Public Service Announcement!

Three days ago, I was working on my cars in my garage. I reached down to toss some leaves out into the alley and got bit on the wrist by something, presumably a spider. The bite flared painfully up over the next 48 hours. Today has finally crusted over and the surrounding redness is finally receding, though it is still painful. I used ice and anti-biotic ointment.

Here is my advice: 1) If leaves are lying around in your garage, use a rake or gloves if you're going to touch them. 2) If you get bit, if it's painful, if redness starts expanding around the bite, and if you look up "brown recluse" on the Internet, you'll have an "oh, shit" moment. They are common in Missouri (where I live) and many other states to the south and east of Missouri. Most people will be OK in a few days, but it can be a big deal for which there is no anti-venom and it can inflict a small minority of people with serious long term medical complications 3) many articles tell you to bring the spider to the doctor so they can ID it. This leads to comical images of going out and looking for a spider you never actually saw. You'll imagine looking at their little spider-faces and trying to decide which one looks guilty (even though it was just minding its own business when you trashed his/her home. Which brings me back to Rule #1: Next time I touch a pile of leaves in my garage, I'm going to use a rake or wear gloves. I've never got bit before but I should have thought about it, because a good friend of mine (you know who you are!) had some serious medical treatment for a brown recluse bite several years ago while cleaning out her garage.

I have an acquaintance who works in pest control. He told me that every house in St. Louis has brown recluse spiders in the house. They go about their business and you might not see them. If you'd like to have fewer of them in the house, you can spray pesticide, but I don't like the idea of spreading those chemicals around given that my two teen-aged daughters live here. Instead, a few years ago, I bought a pack of sticky pads that people sometimes use to catch mice. They catch bugs too. If you leave them out for a few months and then inspect them, you will be AMAZED at how many spiders and other bugs end up glued to your trap.

Or rule number 4: Don't ever clean out your garage.

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