People Past & Present

Today, I was heading to my French class, passing by the regular gaggle of students gathered outside of the doorway. I dropped my bag off and headed back out to get a drink from the water fountain. The faces of the two guys in the group of students were different than the "usuals" loitering around the French classroom- yet they till looked familiar. Very familiar. I  stopped to look at them longer to see if I could maybe trigger a memory. Suddenly I noticed that Adam from my elementary school was standing right there. In my school during hours- Not at his much smaller school. Instantly I recognized the second guy as Zac, also from my old school. I was shocked. They looked so different than when I last saw them. Their voices were deeper, with a kind of raspy kind of rumble to them. Both of them smiling, and saying "long time no see".  That was about all they could say, and they took the words out of mouth, leaving me speechless. A flood of memories came back to me, bitter ones that had slight sweet aftertaste of relief. I was reminded that we live in a small world (or at least for me, a small state), and that people do change over time.

Fish and Freezerburn

I was sitting in my basement, looking at a fish mounted on the wall, and thinking about how cold it is outside. Then, I started wondering- how can fish survive the cold weather? So, I began looking up how they go about doing this on google and I found some interesting answers. In tempature regions like where I live, where it is warm during the middle of spring to halfway through autumn, the fish simply go into a hibernation-like state when the lakes freeze over with ice. Fish who live in the areas where the tempature is constantly four degrees celcius or below, though, have a much more interesting way of dealing with the cold. Many of these cool fish have an antifreeze in their bodies or an antifreeze they can make when needed. Some artic fish take this to a whole new level, having antifreeze instead of hemoglobin. How is this possible? The fish live in salt water, where the water can be mch below 0 degrees Celcius and still not freeze. One property of water is the colder it gets, the more oxygen it can contain. Since the frigid waters of the artic are so oxygen rich, the fish don't need any oxygen carrying substances to assist them in getting enough oxygen to survive.

Harvest Hue

It's that time of year again, when the green of leaves slowly burn away to reveal a red undercoat or brighten in to a sunny yellow. It seemed strange to me when I was younger that the leaves waited until autumn to turn those beautiful and vibrant colors? Why, I wondered, did the leaves go through the effort to change  their color anyway? They  change because they have too

      In autumn, the days slowly become shorter, the tempature colder, and that feeling of stiff, dry air become more apparent. These conditions are not very good for the trees, or more so, for their photosynthesis. Autumn is the time of year when making food from those green pigments becomes too much of a hastle and for a much smaller reward. To conserve energy, the trees stop making clhoroplasts(what makes plants green). Slowly the remaining chloroplasts deteriorate, letting the more vibrant pigments in the leaves to be seen. From here, the leaves are chemically self-cut from the tree, letting them flutter down to clutter the forest floor and litter our not-so-green-anymore lawns. I used to find it odd that the trees would shed their leaves in the autumn just to grow them back in the spring, but the leaves in winter cause a major problem- they create a large surface area for snow and ice to accumulate, and with enough weight can break branches.

Even though trees change their colors out of practicality, I always have, and will, love gazing at the bright canopies that stretch over the horizon.

Getting a Dog

  It has been about four months since my dog died. It was just before my family moved to our new home. It was heartbreaking yet not surprizing to see Dexter, our Brittany Spaniel of 15, die of old age. When we moved, I noticed that both our next door neighbors had dogs. It made me feel a pang in my heart. I really want have another dog, but I'm not sure what to get, or how to open my dad to getting another one- he took Dexter's death pretty badly. I have looked up some breeds, and I am especially looking for a breed that doesn't shed since all of the vaccuming is very inconvenient(not saying I wouldn't like to have a dog that does shed!). Some choices for non/low-shedding dogs are- Cockapoo(poodle and cocker hybrid), most terrier breed, poodle, Bolognese, The Italian Greyhound, and some others. I'm really not sure which to choose from, and It would be a great help if someone could give me some advise on the matter.

Nature is Sexist

I am truly sorry if I have offended anyone by this statement, but it is true. You may think "HELL no, nature isn't sexist!", but if you were to step outside the box of our own species,  you would begin to see the countless examples of nature being sexist. Take, for instance, the praying mantises of the mantid order. The female is much larger than the male, and often will eat the male after or even during mating. Same goes for many spiders. When there was an orb web spider perched between two bushes in my front yard, a vibrant yellow-white and black pattern suspended above the ground on it's web, I noticed a wee little spider that seemed to be caught on the end of the web. Then I realized that the spider looked strikingly similar- it was a male. The poor guy was oly about 1/4 to 1/6 of the female's size. This size sexism nature dishes out to animals isn't just limited to insects- many predatory bird and fish species follow this trend as well- just not nearly as much as the poor spiders. In almost every species, though, females are much more likely to pass on their genes any given male. Now if nature is sexist, and obviously created differences, why is it so wrong to point them out to people? It's a fact that women have less muscle mass, consume more calories , and have bone problems from having children and having their period about every month. Men have more muscle mass, can go bald, are more suseptible to X-chromosome genetic diseases, and usually don't live as long as women do. Is it wrong to not assign a woman a job that doesn't involve heavy loads, is it wrong to have the man pay more for his incurance? Whether you like it or not, nature is sexist.