Rod's Alter Ego

Green grass and high times

Our neighbor recently observed the pale green color of our front lawn and handed us a pH kit to asses alkalinity. "For vibrant green you'll need 6.5-7.0. The soil is acidic here. If it's lower than 6.5, lime the hell out of it."

So it was, and so we did, and now we wait.

Threw some fertilizer on, too. The stuff where the first number is three times either of the second two. "That'll get it green fast," he said. I'm a little concerned we went overboard. I half expect nightmarish mutant grass to be pressing though our second floor window screens by morning. Our neighbors will be awakened by blood-curdling screams.

While we wait we wonder, what is up with certain societal icons? Stephen Hawking is evidently now quite certain there aliens are out there, and cautions against disclosing earth's location - despite the fact we already have - fearing these beasties may be rapacious SOBs who will conquer and kill us for our resources. And closer to home: Helen Thomas, a veteran white house reporter, recently told a another reporter that the Jews should leave Israel and go back to their home. Home being either Germany or Poland. Uh, earth to Helen, do you not recall where six million Jews were murdered that caused them to leave their home in the first place!? Or the fact that Jews were living in Palestine well before the Holocaust?

Wacky beliefs explained by drug-drug interactions? Possibly. More likely a portent for us all - the inevitable misfiring of neurons in aged brains.

In science news, Lamarck is back! For those of you unfamiliar with Lamarck, he was a contemporary of Darwin who hypothesized, among other things, that traits possessed by the parents are directly transmitted to their children. The mechanism for this transfer was not well articulated. Nevertheless, on Lamarck's view, if a father had been a body builder his whole life his children would be well muscled, too. Lamarck has been largely ignored, especially so since the dawn of modern genetics, but it is becoming increasingly clear that nuclear DNA can become chemically modified (see epigenetic modifications) during one's lifetime resulting in the increase or loss of the expression of certain proteins, the workhorse molecule directly causing our phenotypic traits. If these modifications that can occur during a parent's lifetime - owing to what they ate, drank, drugs they used, etc. - occurred in germ-line DNA then the corresponding trait could be directly passed to their children. The phenomenon has been shown in increasingly more organisms. Beyond the implications for evolution, the article touches on the implications for human disease research.

Whew... okay then.

Well, we've had a wave of summer guests so far, from in-laws to former neighbors and colleagues from Cleveland.

We will miss ya'll, come back again soon!