Michael Fri Sep 17 23:28:43 2004
New bots $13.95 with delivery!
I've got to work Marlboro Man into the toon. I know he irritates the lot of you, but it's just so indicative of the meta-imagery of the Internet and its concomitant counterpoint of the interconnectedness of all reality.
Speaking of interconnectedness, this whole home-schooling thing with my daughter the genius is really working out. We're working on biology. It turns out she likes taxonomy as much as I do. We're looking at different taxonomic systems and laughing about the fine points. The best taxonomy site we've found so far is http://www.tolweb.org -- this one's great! It totally ignores all that kingdom crap that nobody else ever agrees on, and just groups everything by phylogenetic criteria. Fun fact: animals are more closely related to fungi than to plants. Who knew? Also, the rote memorization of fish-amphibian-reptile-bird-mammal we all did in school is WRONG -- turns out birds and lizards are more closely related than either are to turtles, so it's now fish-amphibian-(mammal-reptile:(turtles-(lizards-birds))) -- because, I kid you not, birds really and truly are dinosaurs. Coooooooool.
My wife is starting to look askance when we get sidetracked on yet another romp through taxonomy. She wants to stick closer to the various curricula our spies have retrieved from the private schools in town. Just in case our daughter needs to pass a test in biology, she says -- so we've also been learning all the alternative wrong taxonomies. Keyed by originator and private school. The kingdoms according to Aristotle (plants and animals; Aristotle came up with the idea of classifying living things), the kingdoms according to Liseo Ponceño (animals, plants, fungi, protists, bacteria), the kingdoms according to the USDA (animals, plants, fungi, monera), the kingdoms according to the book we bought at Borders last month (animals, plants, fungi, protists, monera). As you see, most people pretty much agree on animals, plants, and fungi, and it's after that they start disagreeing. And of course they're ALL WRONG.
Actually, the whole kingdom thing is counter to reality. Actually, there are prokaryotes (non-nucleated cells) and eukaryotes (nucleated cells). The eukaryotes consist of, like animals, plants, fungi, and about sixty classes of protists which are all on the same level as plants and animals+fungi+some other stuff I've never heard of. So "monera" are basically the prokaryotes, and "protists" are eukaryotes which aren't other kingdoms. Monera and protists are all single cells, unless they're not. (They're only not when they form "colonies", i.e. relatively undifferentiated blobs, like yoghurt and cheese, which are both bacterial colonies. Yum.)
I'm having a blast with this stuff.
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gopher Sat Sep 18 11:22:21 2004
Re: New bots $13.95 with delivery!
> I've got to work Marlboro Man into the toon. I know he irritates the lot
> of you, but it's just so indicative of the meta-imagery of the Internet
> and its concomitant counterpoint of the interconnectedness of all reality.
I dunno, I think he's kinda cute.
Back on the topic of hurricanes, it's a shame that if we get to an M hurricane, it won't be Mao. That would have been a perfect match for Ivan and Karl. We must fight the Red menace! And, of course, we all know that this weather is being brought upon us by North Korea's hurricane gun.
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Michael Sat Sep 18 23:00:14 2004
Re: New bots $13.95 with delivery!
> North Korea's hurricane gun.
Oh. That's really inspiring, gopher... Wow. I was thinking of running with some Taino petroglyphs for my next trick (they're so groovy-lookin) but the North Korean hurricane gun would allow me to go get a floating head of whatsisname and get Dubya back into the limelight.
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mouse Sat Sep 18 13:07:40 2004
Re: New bots $13.95 with delivery!
> I've got to work Marlboro Man into the toon. I know he irritates the lot
> of you, but it's just so indicative of the meta-imagery of the Internet
> and its concomitant counterpoint of the interconnectedness of all reality.
not _irritated_ - sort of bemused. he's so completely clueless and oblivious.
which means, of course, he will fit in _perfectly_ with many of the toonbots cast. i'm interested to see what he looks like.
> We're looking at different
> taxonomic systems and laughing about the fine points.
ah, taxonomy! i used to work with taxonomists. you can't get any two of them to agree. i know, i've tried. (although i'm convinced i _could_ have gotten them to agree, if i had the right equipment....stupid assault weapon ban!)
i actually started out studying phytoplankton (single-celled algae) - and if you are paying any sort of attention, you realize how completely arbitrary the whole system is. down at that level, things pretty much do as they need to to get by. if they can get hold of a chloroplast, fine, they'll be plants - if not, they'll do the animal thing (and this is true within a single species, let alone a genus or family). and of course while the standard taxonomic trees are based on evolutionary relationships, it sort of closes its eyes to the idea that evolution may be happening. so the whole system is not all that fixed. except it is.
but this whole home schooling thing sounds dangerous, michael. sounds like you may actually be teaching the kid to _think_. don't you know you're just supposed to teach her to memorize the test answers? how is she ever going to get ahead?
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Michael Sat Sep 18 22:56:02 2004
Re: New bots $13.95 with delivery!
> down at that level, things pretty much do
> as they need to to get by. if they can get hold of a chloroplast, fine,
> they'll be plants - if not, they'll do the animal thing (and this is true
> within a single species, let alone a genus or family). and of course while
> the standard taxonomic trees are based on evolutionary relationships, it
> sort of closes its eyes to the idea that evolution may be happening. so
> the whole system is not all that fixed. except it is.
And lately they're talking about even species boundaries not being so very fixed, what with all the lateral DNA transfers between different bacteria and all. And that whole bacterial mat thing, with signal chemicals closely related to our own hormones... Biology is coooooool.
> but this whole home schooling thing sounds dangerous, michael. sounds like
> you may actually be teaching the kid to _think_. don't you know you're
> just supposed to teach her to memorize the test answers? how is she ever
> going to get ahead?
Ha. I'm a sole proprietor and my wife is a theoretical physicist and at last count we live in three countries (two and a half, anyway). I don't think the kid's going to be happy in a cubicle anyway. As a friend of ours said when she was about two, the geek factor is too damn high for her to have much hope. In twenty years, we'll look at the magnitude of her therapy bill to see whether it worked out or not -- but in the meantime, we are having a blast.
The ten-year-old mind is astounding. She alternates between simply not processing some things -- like, literally just not able to see some things obvious to me -- with flashes of breathtaking genius.
And trust me, there's nothing more fulfilling than finding something you and your child both really enjoy, and taking the time to do it right. Both kids and I dig on _Teen Titans_, and Dr. Seuss is something I share with my son (I catch my daughter listening more than she'll admit), but with taxonomy, for the first time, my daughter and I are discovering stuff at about the same speed. It's really fun.
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mouse Sun Sep 19 13:58:38 2004
Re: New bots $13.95 with delivery!
> And trust me, there's nothing more fulfilling than finding something you
> and your child both really enjoy, and taking the time to do it right.
no, i can imagine what a blast it is. and i suspect in all of this, she will find something she really loves, and the therapy bills won't be that bad.
of course, it will probably be something like scientific research or music or art that pays in peanuts - so i hope you aren't counting on her to support you in your old age.
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