The Death of the Social E-mail

Remember the good old days when you had to actually write a letter, on paper, put a stamp on the envelope and wait a week just to send a friendly 'hello' to someone you haven't heard from in a while?  No?  Good, then you were born some time after the invention of the telephone.  Writing letters for more than formal announcements made a come-back with the advent of e-mail.  Being free and instantaneous meant people could frivolously spend their time personally catching up with old friends on a one by one basis.  Then came blogs, and social networking sites and microblogs (ie. twitter).  I'll admit that I'm somewhat behind for commenting on this now (after all, even Led Zeppelin is still pretty new to me), but I see the death of social e-mail even affecting my own interactions now.  Some of my best friends are people I talk to a couple of times a year.  If our daily activities don't overlap, odds are we don't have any banalities to sit around and talk about.  Since it's the banalities that tend to lead into the bigger topics, I just end up talking about whatever big events have happened.  For the rest of the time, I can just check your status, mood, interests (new and old) and catch up via your archives.  People just don't have an excuse to ask 'So, what's going on with you' any more.  Therefore, e-mail, just like postal mail, shall be relegated to formal announcements to select groups of people or else the highly personal stuff that people are too afraid to say either in person or over the phone.

Immunity Challenge

I'm sick of Tennessee, I'm sick in Tennessee.  This summer has so far exceeded all others for days I've been sick while the weather is nice.  In mid May I came down with a soar throat and cough that persisted for over a week and led me to go to the campus clinic to get a Strep test.  Although the rapid Strep test (which only tests for strain A) came back negative, the doctor prescribed antibiotics anyway.  Sure enough, the soar throat and cough went away.  I took the pills for 10 days and finished off the prescription, then I got really sick.  Without going into too much graphic detail, I ended up going back to the doctor, getting blood and urine tests done and being told that Mono and Hepatitis were the two diseases that he though were most likely, but neither explained the bile in my urine.  For my time at the doctor's office, I got nothing but a bill and an appointment for next Wednesday to go over my liver function assay and possibly do more tests.  

The next day after that, my gums somehow got infected, then the sore throat came back and then just about everything went away.  I'm still not back to 100% health, but I feel much better, especially after two or three cups of coffee.  I feel like a human being again rather than a walking disease vector.

I suspect that the antibiotics were the cause of all the problems.  Possibly they disturbed the balance of my usually varied and hardy bacterial flora.  There were probably lots of very low concentration bacteria that performed specific jobs and kept each other in check as well as kept out new, competing pathogens.  Once one or two microbes were allowed to become dominant, they wrecked havoc on my body, and it wasn't been till now that my body is getting things back in check.  Clearly my body is just too fragile to handle modern medicine.

SLEEEEEEEEP!

My bed is now just for show.  Having mastered procrastination in high school and producing quality work in the AM in my Undergrad, I've finally conquered the last hurtle, sleep itself.  I'm not sure how long I can keep going like this, but I've had a total of 9 hours of sleep since Sunday, 4 days ago.  In the past I'd always gone through several predictable stages of exhaustion: aches, difficulty staying alert, eventually hallucinations (rare).  This time though, I have yet to really experience any of that.  I've been a little crankier, but hanging out with Kristina fixes that right away.  My hourly productivity is a little down too, but with so many extra hours, I'm just plugging away.  The body keeps moving, the projects and assignments get finished, and so the academic robot is complete.

Inclusive fitness

The theory of inclusive fitness argues that a gene for altruistic behavior will increase in a population when the reward for the altruism, proportional to the degree of relatedness of a recipient, is greater than the cost to oneself.  The problem with this is that traditional methods of measuring relatedness would say that each parent, offspring and sibling all have an r-value of 0.5.  That is, there is a 50% chance that any given gene that you share is via common ancestry.  That is, it is equally advantageous to help a parent, a sibling or offspring.  However, in terms of human examples, I think that a parent would be willing to make a sacrifice for their child more readily than for their sibling or parent.  Altruism toward individuals with an r value of 0.5 is common in females of a social species.  In many cases, there is help between sisters or mothers and daughters or even aunt and niece, but I'm fairly confident that it is much more common to see males only their parent, or less commonly their sibling or offspring.  I think that the reason for this is that the male is geared for more of what will be the next generation result of his help.  A parent can produce another sibling so that the inclusive fitness is increased by another individual of r=0.5, whereas helping a sibling or offspring produces individuals of r=0.25.  Therefore, I would expect that you would see male helpers of their parents at a certain rate in monogamous species, and about half as commonly for a parent in non-monogamous species and for either siblings or offspring.  

The Samurai and the Monk

In ancient Japan, one monk had the reputation of being the greatest cook in the entire Empire.  A samurai, similarly reputed for his excellence as a warrior, heard of this and journeyed to the monastery where he hoped to dine on as fine a repast as befit his status.  The monastery, like most monasteries that people of great importance reside in, was situated at the top of a great mountain.  Leaving his horse, for the slope was too steep, the samurai climbed the 5 thousand steps to the gates of the temple.  Once inside, he announced his presence and respectfully requested that the monk of famous culinary abilities, prepare a meal for him.  He was lead to a wide room with a single low table and was told that the great cook would be with him shortly.  Soon, a small, elderly man with a worn and wizened face entered and greeted the samurai.  “I am the cook which you seek” said the old man.  “I am humbled that a great warrior such as yourself would honor me with a request for a dish prepared by my hand.”

“Monk, I have traveled far to taste the most delicious food in the empire.  Bring me what you will, for your reputation is so great that I trust your judgment” replied the samurai.  At this, the monk bowed low and said “I know just the thing, but it will take some time to prepare.  I hope that you will be patient.”  The samurai agreed and the monk exited.  Hours passed with no sign of the monk’s return and the stomach of the samurai increasingly made its presence known to its owner.  The samurai asked any monk he saw if they knew when the great cook would return.  He meditated a while, but was interrupted by pangs of hunger.  Just as the samurai was fomenting into a ravenous fit, the great monk reappeared with a tray bearing a bowl of soup.  The samurai leapt at the bowl, and swiping it from the tray, raised it to his mouth and drained it without stopping for breath, spilling not a drop. 

“The legends are true!” exclaimed the samurai.  “That is the most exquisite, delicious soup that I have ever tasted!  It is as though this soup gives me new life! Before you bring anything else, I must know the secret of making such a soup so that my servants can prepare it at home so that I may be so rejuvenated after battle, if not daily.”

The monk smiled and bowed low.  He raised back up and explained to the samurai that it was in fact the only course and was actually a simple miso soup; that anticipation, and hunger was the spice that made the soup wonderful.  Had he not expected that he would enjoy it, or gone so long without food of any kind for so long, objective observation would show it to be as good as that of any other cook.  The samurai thought on this for a moment and then thanked the monk for imparting on him such wisdom and causing him to realize that he really wanted food cooked well not necessarily delicious food.  He then slew the monk for so wasting his valuable time and making him into a parable without prior consent.  For good measure, he proceeded to slaughter the rest of the monks in the monastery, lest they try this sort of thing again.  Half way through the slaughter, a half dead monk fell at the feet of the samurai and pleaded “but was it not the most delicious soup you ever tasted?”

“Yes” replied the samurai flatly “but I will now question my enjoyment of anything else that I encounter in life.  I will never again enjoy food so much as I did that soup, I will never enjoy anything so much as I once have.”  The monk at his feet had an excellent reply but expired before being able to retort.

Etymology

I can't believe that I never thought to look up the etymology of 'Hermit' before.  Here it is from the Online Etymology Dictionary :

1130, from O.Fr. (h)eremite, from L.L. ermita, from Gk. eremites, lit. "person of the desert," from eremia "desert, solitude," from eremos"uninhabited." 

I had hoped that it had something to do with the solitary habits of those who traveled and would therefore have the patron god Hermes.  It still seems exceptionally appropriate that it refers to desert dwellers.  I've always felt most at home in the desert.  I think that I'll perpetuate the misnomer that has to do with Hermes as well, that way I can have the best of both origins.

Haekel's Drawings

Apparently someone cut out each of Ernst Haekel's drawing of invertebrates and put them online under a creative commons license.  Awesome!!!

Check out the gallery Here