Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!

We made chocolate covered marshmallow spiders!

And carved pumpkins!

The end.

I love life.

Why am I a biology major?  Because I love life.  I love living, I love being alive, and I also love studying life.  It’s crazy all the things that living organisms can accomplish!  It’s so intricate, complex, and specific; it’s astounding!

I do not know what I want to do with my life, but I do know that I like biology.  I’ve always pictured myself working in the genetics or biotech field, and who knows that still may happen, but I like ecology too because you get, or try to get, more of the “big picture” as far as what is going on in the world and how everything is interconnected.  Next July I’ll be going on CO-OP** instead of taking classes, and I’d really like to come home for that.  I’ve spent the past couple days beginning the process of finding a job and I’m excited about all the possibilities.    

Today I went to Nahant to visit Northeastern’s Marine Science Center for my Ecology Lab.  It was like the 5^th grade Homer field trip all over again.  Except this time instead or running along the beach ecstatic after finding a sea squirt,* we were walking along the coast examining the various species of snails, barnacles, and crabs, by their Latin names of course (not sure I felt the same exuberance as before – but still it was pretty cool).  We got to see the experiments underway; cages tethered to rocks; heating bulbs over Tupperware full of crabs, snails, and barnacles; and various other contraptions enclosing the ideas and tests of faculty and students alike.  They even had a bunker containing an entire skeleton of a whale.  So, pretty cool day.

Also – this is my 100^th post!  I’m considering that an accomplishment…

*My group name was the “Squish Sea Squirts,” so naturally finding a real live sea squirt was just about the best possible thing on the planet.

**This is a program that is a central part of school’s structure and in my five years here I will spend three, six month periods on CO-OP working in a field relative to my major.

Cholesterol

I lot of people hate Organic Chemistry – and this may be grounds for defining me as a nerd – but I think it’s actually kind of cool.  Like in lab this week we took olive oil, which is an unsaturated fat, and mixed it with cyclohexene and palladium to turn it into a saturated fat!  That’s like the kind of thing that scientists do in real life, not sophomore biology students in a lab.  One week we built this crazy contraption of various glass tubes to distill a mixture of cyclohexane and toluene.  One week we separated the components of an Excedrin tablet; when we were done we had aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine in three separate test tubes!  Anyway, yesterday I had my second Orgo test and it wasn’t even that terrible, which is surprising considering I spent the night before constructing cholesterol from my molecular model kit instead of memorizing addition reactions of alkenes.

Cholesterol!

In other news, biology is awesome, which I will expound upon in a future post.

Fitchburg

My last two weekends here I have spent out of the jurisdiction of Boston and somewhere near or around the area of Fitchburg, MA.  I like this town for three reasons. 1) Heather lives there. 2) It’s not Boston. 3) Heather lives there.

Last weekend I went in for the Apple Harvest Ramble in Harvard, MA.  It’s kind of a long, convoluted story of why/how we went to this event, but basically consists of my suitemate signed us up for a race thinking it was Harvard-across-the-river-University, but it was actually Harvard-across-the-state-Town.  So not wanting to forfeit a good race and a free tee shirt, I came out and ran the 5-miler with Heather instead.  And I got second place in my age category! And Heather got first place in her age category!  And we both won an apple pie* and got a sweet synthetic long-sleeve tee shirt!  So yeah, basically this translates to a very good weekend.

Apple pie and awesome tee shirt!

This weekend I came out to Fitchburg again to go white water rafting in Deerfield, MA!  Despite being the 9^th of October it was a sunny day and a balmy 80 degrees.  The river twisted through hills blanketed in trees showing off the vibrant colors of fall.  The sun streamed through overhanging branches, dancing on the turbulent water, and graciously warming my skin.  The refreshing water doused me from head to toe as we maneuvered through rapids, splashed each other’s boats, and (intentionally – for the most part) jumped in.  So yeah, basically this translates to a VERY good weekend.

All ready to go in our wet suits!

*How come all races don’t give out apple pies?  Who needs a ribbon anyway!

Science is crazy

Here are a few neat articles:

Bullet Proof Skin

Here’s a radical idea.  Spider-silk infused goat milk combined with human skin can apparently stop a bullet.  There are a lot of ethical implications here as far as genetic engineering goes, and it’s not like we’ll be seeing bullet proof babies anytime soon, but still it’s on the path science and technology is taking us down.  Who knows where we’ll be 100 years from now! 

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/spider-silk-and-goat-milk-can-make-human-skin-bulletproof-20110815/

Immortal Jellyfish

Here is a jellyfish that when experiencing extreme stress (starving or injured for example) can come to the surface of the ocean and convert into a blob.  The mass of cells then undergo trandifferentiation and essentially a new jellyfish is created.  How this works is unknown, however it could have huge effects if figured out in areas such as cancer research, degenerative diseases, and aging.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/immortal-jellyfish-does-it-really-live-forever

BANANAS!!!

This article discusses the lack of genetic diversity in the bananas we eat and love.  Essentially, if a disease or fungus were to come around that these bananas were prone to we would experience a “banana apocalypse” and the world’s favorite fruit would exist no more.  This is actually occurring with much of our agricultural goods.  We want our corn to look and taste like other corn, and our potatoes to look and taste like other potatoes; one variety all the time.  I think we’re probably going to be ok no matter what happens to the banana industry, but it’s still something to think about! (Also, Chiquita has cool stickers)

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-06/can-fruit-be-saved

Top 5 Awesome Things

So I realized that I haven’t actually made a post yet about life back in Boston.  Though I had a fantastic summer* and didn’t want to go back to school (or more accurately, back to Boston) I have been having a pretty good time now that I’m here.

This semester I’m taking Ecology, Organic Chemistry, Finance, and Environmental Ethics, and I’d talk more about all those but most people would find that very boring, also they’ll all probably end up in a post of some sort before the end of the year.  I however am really enjoying these classes.

Besides classes I’m volunteering again with Science Club for Girls and hopefully with Youth Enrichment Services**.  I’m also still playing (and loving) Ultimate.

So.  Basics out of the way.  Here are the Top 5 Awesome Things I’ve Done Since Returning to Boston!

1) Sailing – I went sailing in one of those little boats on the Charles!

2) The Beach – I went to Revere Beach with my roommates!

3) Frisbee Club Sectionals – I went to Rhode Island for a Frisbee tournament!

4) Arboretum – I went to the Arboretum and pretended like I wasn’t in the city!

5) Red Sox – I went to a Red Sox game and watched them hit an in-the-park home run and a grand slam, and beat the Orioles 18 to 9***!

[I forgot to take a picture of this one]

Yay! Life is good!

*The best on record I believe.

**More on this later if it happens!

***This was before they decided to suck and not make the play-offs. 

Truth? Or Consensus...

This semester I’m taking my first philosophy class; Environmental Ethics.  I’ve never taken a philosophy class before, and it’s becoming more and more evident that I have no idea what the subject is actually about.  Anyway, I really like it.  Other than the fact that nothing can be proven, so implications for environmental ethics will never be applied, so there’s really no point to all this arguing,* I enjoy the discussion.  We’ve been discussing value in nature, if it exists and what kind of value it is.  I thought this was a pretty straightforward question when it first came up, with a pretty straightforward answer.  I was wrong.  I’m not going to get into all that mumbo-jumbo here, I already had to write an essay on it, but if you’re interested check out the works of Paul Taylor, Peter Singer, William Baxter, and Immanuel Kant. 

So the point of this post: consensus has very little to do with the truth.  Think about that for a moment.  IT’S SO TRUE!!!  All too often we do things because others do them, say things because others say them, and believe things because others believe them.  However how often are these things actual truth?  It’s so easy to look back in history and see where we have been wrong; to see where we have believed one thing then later refuted it as false and taken on a new belief.  Scientific knowledge and evidence have led us to specific rational conclusions in one generation that are overturned in the next due to additional scientific discovery, new evidence, and deeper reflection.  Consensus is not an indicator of truth.  From the 1500’s geocentric belief of earth as the center of the universe prior to Galileo’s shattering discoveries of heliocentricism, to the incompatibility between the 2000’s creationist view of earth’s origins and evolutionary theory – consensus versus truth is hardly relevant at all. 

This is great!  It’s not great that people believe things that are false.  It’s great that we know and can think critically to develop our own views and beliefs.  It’s great because you don’t have to fit in with the crowd.  You can be right and the only one who knows it.  Now I’m not saying this is correct for everything.  There are definitely things that I am very wrong about, however there are things I may be right about too, even though the vast majority may disagree with me. 

Another valid point is that each and every person sees the world through his or her own lens.  Perspective differs for each individual and this experience/perspective is very real.  My perspective is not the same as yours, and truths are generally influenced by perspective.

C.S. Lewis sums up this idea in a line taken from the Chronicles of Narnia. 

“For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis

Lewis embodies perspective as a result of both situation and background.  My upbringing, culture, economic status, and religion affect my perspective just as much as my physical location. 

Disagreement, opposition, and varying views are critical elements for a successful society.  It challenges us and pushes us to find what is right.  It keeps us on our toes.

*I realize this may seem a little pessimistic, and it is.  I respect this subject because it makes people think, it gets the conversation going, so that change may someday ensue.  In degrees we may eventually make significant progress towards becoming a just society, but for the time being, chances are looking pretty slim to me.