Why we hate schools

As someone who has been in school or worked in school for all but six years of his life, I always get upset when i see another article of schools doing something stupid. And sometimes schools do stupid things.
a school in north Carolina suspended a 4th grader for two days because a substitute teacher overheard him telling a classmate that one of his teachers was cute. they claimed it was sexual intimidation.  An 8 year old calling a teacher cute is Sexual intimidation. Personally, I don't think an 8 year old is capable of intimidating anyone over the age of 10 and cute is not what I would think of as an intimidating comment.
I remember my 7th grade year at Harding Jr high School. I was 11, maybe 12, we had a young English teacher, Miss Fruchtman. She was maybe 22 or 23 and cute was not one of the words that the boys in the school used to describe her. If cute rates a two day suspension, we would have been out until we could shave.  She was actually my doctors daughter. My father and her father had gone to the same High School in Europe, they used to repeat latin statements to each other that they learned in school. to their amusement and to my boredom. His daughter was never the less, stunning, and anyone overhearing the comments passing among her prepubescent male students would by Carolina standards be totally shocked.
I can't understand why people running schools can't understand that kids are kids and not short adults. They are usually silly and rarely mean what they say or do. And to accuse 8 year olds with sexual intimidation against adults merely adds to the public conception that schools suck. I weep for my occupation

The Truffles are in

I went to Wegmans Supermarket the other day to pick up a few cases of seltzer. For some reason, their price for seltzer is the most reasonable in the area.
As I wandered through the produce section, I saw that the exotic mushroom case was full with Burgundy Truffles, ranging in size from large marbles to small golf balls, each embedded in a layer of rice and all kept safe under lock and key. The price was listed at $ 599.00 per pound. Needless to say, I passed. Actually, no one buys a pound of truffles, you buy one for 25 dollars or so and use it for some fancy meal or sauce. I was planning to make meatloaf that night so I had no need for a truffle.   Then a surprising thing occurred as I prepared to post this. I googled burgundy truffle and images to get the picture that you see here. I saw the expected mushrooms, and some pictures of candy truffles (they are made to look like the fungus) but then I saw a photo of a young man wearing purple underwear. Clicking on the picture said that they were called burgundy truffles. Now I've heard underwear referred to by a lot of different names, none of which you will see here, but truffles was not one of those names.  Delving deeper into this burgundy truffle mystery, I read that the undergarment in question was made of a material that contained 5% seaweed, and how this material facilitates the exchange of vitamins and minerals between your body and the garment. Acting both as an anti inflammatory and a source of vitamin E.
Underwear that acts like a vitamin pill?  The world must be coming to an end.

Bragging Rights

I read yesterday in one of the never-ending lists of the top ten this or the top twenty that that my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, is number nine on the worlds top universities. Of course, we were behind Harvard and Yale, that was to be expected. What made me feel good was that WE BEAT PRINCETON. They came in 13th. When I was going to Penn, we were always looked down on as the poor stepsister. We made the first computer, but Princeton had Einstein. They beat us in every sport except golf. They even had Bill Bradley who went on to play for the Knicks. We had Candace Bergen, but at the time, she was merely Edgar Bergen's daughter, Cappy, and after she was elected "homecoming Queen" the University kicked her out for skipping classes. All we really had was Ben Franklin, and he had been dead for 200 years.

Bur Finally, WE BEAT Princeton. I'll feel good for a day or two. Take that, Tigers.

Things I Don't Have to Know

I always tell the students I teach that one of the objects of life should be to learn as much as possible about everything. But then, every once in a while, I learn something that I think my life would be better without.

The story began with an article I found about the critter on the right. Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba-like protist that lives in the muck at the bottom of warm fresh water ponds and streams in the southern US. It generally causes no trouble, feeding primarily on bacteria. However, every year, two or three unfortunate souls get these things up their nose from where they travel into the brain and eat enough brain cells to kill their victim. Now, two or three deaths per year is not much. Lightning kills over 50 per year in the US, and for those who worry about things, wearing a nose clip reduces your chances to zero.

In following up on this information, I learned several things. 1. The critter is not really an amoeba, but more closely related to the euglena (remember him from HS Biology?).  2. The entire biological classification system is being changed again. Bye-bye Linnaeus, hello biochemical and genetic analysis. (but that is a story for another day).  and 3. The more likely human parasites in water, E coli, Giardia, Shigella, Cryptosporidium, Endamoeba, are spread through fecal contamination. Then I found what I don't need to know

"Swimmers share the water — and the germs in it — with every person who enters the pool. On average, people have about 0.14 grams of feces on their bottoms which, when rinsed off, can contaminate recreational water. In addition, when someone is ill with diarrhea, their stool can contain millions of germs. This means that just one person with diarrhea can easily contaminate the water in a large pool or water park."  (credit to The Artful Amoeba, a Scientific American blog)


Of course, my first thought on reading this was, Who did the study?, How did they do it?, and WHY?   I would like to think of my Butt as being pristine but I will never trust the guy next to me in the pool ever again. I may have to reserve my swimming to the ocean where the jellyfish and the sharks are at least visible.

Buckethead

My son took me to a concert the other evening. It was, to say the least, a fascinating experience. For someone whose recent concert going experiences have been pretty much limited to the Phila. Orchestra, my trip to the Theater of the Living Arts this past Wednesday was mind expanding. The last time I was in the TLA, it had seats. They no longer exist. There is a bar in the balcony, certainly an improvement in my eyes. Was patted down before I could enter, something else that doesn't happen at the orchestra.  Chatted with a man who I assumed to be a "deadhead" (somewhere in his 50's, beard, ponytail, wearing a t shirt that said "Rehab is for Quitters"). We discussed the resurrection of Andrew Dice Clay, and if it is even possible in todays world to be Shocking. The star of the evening was a guitarist called Buskethead. As the picture shows, he literally wears a bucket on his head. I was told that often it is a KFC bucket, but at this performance it was just white. Buckethead is actually an excellent guitarist. My son played one of his CD's for me on the way down into town. It is very good, a blend of quiet jazz, new age, with a lot of very fast finger work.  The crowd however was not there for subtle guitar stylings and they war not to be disappointed. I think the term used is shredding the guitar. My only problem with that is that the sheer volume tends to overwhelm the skill. If I had been down in front I would have gone deaf. I played his quiet CD on the drive home.
If you would like a good sample of what he does, go here.
http://www.guitar-tube.com/watch/buckethead-soothsayer

The Mushrooms are in

I've been gathering wild mushrooms for a long time. My father knew about 5 different ones that he had known from Ukraine, Pravdibi Hrib, Kozak, Pidpenki, to name a few. But my hunting really took off after college. Over the years I've tried "seeding" my lawns by spreading the older specimens I collected on them in hopes that some of the spores would take off. I had no luck with the morels and the Apple tree, but this year I have had success With Boletus bicolor and the oak tree on my front lawn. It turns out that this species forms a symbiotic relationship with oaks. The recent rains have brought up a healthy crop. I'm drying them for use this Christmas to make mushroom dumplings and mushroom gravy. I have to get out to the woods later to look for Armillaria, or "stumpies" as the locals call them.

Tiny Creatures

I find it fascinating seeing the complexity of life and especially that of miniscule organisms. The worm here is less than a millimeter in length. It lives at the bottom of the ocean in the hydrothermal vents. It's amazing what we have found on this planet, and what microscopy has revealed. I'm just sorry these tools didn't exist when I was an undergrad.

My Chance at the Electron Microscope

In my junior year at Penn I was taking a course on plant microstructure which involved a great deal of microscope work. Our professor told us that at some point he was going to arrange a session for us with the universities' electron microscope. The day finally arrived, we went down to the basement of the Bio lab building. Electron microscopes were always kept in basements to reduce vibration. We spent a half hour playing with a polarizing microscope they kept down there, and just when we were about to go into the room where they kept the electron microscope, a woman came running out shouting "They just shot the President"

I don't remember anyone actually saying anything after that. I remember wandering off to the Frankford El and riding it home. It wasn't until about 40 years later that I got into that room to see that microscope. I guess some things are never meant to be.

Creature Names

While browsing through some of my favorite sites, I stumbled upon Parasite of the day, and the selection of that day was Trypanosoma irwini. It was discovered in Australia, and named in honor of Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter".
I always liked the rule that the discoverer gets to give it a name. Sometimes it's just the boring color (alba, rubrum), or location (pennsylvanicum) But sometimes the names show a real sense of humor in the taxonomist. There is a genus of beetles Agra, some of whose species are Agra cadabra
and Agra vation. or a fly genus phthiria, called Phthiria relativitae. There is a whole website devoted to this. Quite often, species are named after people, sometimes the discoverer, or someone important to the discoverer, or, as in this case, an important local celebrity.
Once upon a time, in a previous life as an undergrad, I had a professor who was not so subtly trying to convince me to go for a graduate degree studying an organism called Euplotes. He, as a graduade student, had discovered a new species of Euplotes and had named it after his mentor, who before that had done likewise. I was sure that he was looking for someone to do the same for him. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be me. One, I wasn't particularly crazy about the critter itself. and two, If I did discover something new, I'd more likely name it after some girl I was crazy about at the time. I joined the Peace Corps and went off to South America instead.

New and Improved?

At some point in the last year, blogspot was eaten by Google. Since I had stopped posting a while ago, I was unable to continue with my old account. Somehow, by hook or by crook, I was able to access things last week and continue where I left off. Today, I was not so lucky, I had to start over with a new address.
But when I opened up the page to type, a popup window appeared telling me this was new and Improved.
Sometimes I wish things could just stay old but working.