The bit about Mivart

I did that hour-long livestream yesterday, so as I’ll try to continue to do, I yanked out a much shorter segment for those who don’t have any patience for chit-chat. Also, the whole thing got instantly demonetized, I think because I talked about mammary gland development and evolution (YouTube is capricious and stupid — there was nothing prurient or explicit in what I said). Let’s see what they think of just the historical bit, where I talk about that unfortunate 19th century weirdo, St George Jackson Mivart, who got blocked by Charles Darwin and canceled by both the scientific community and the Catholic Church. See? There’s nothing new about cancel culture.

Let’s talk about evo-devo and evolutionary novelties on Friday

It’ll be a casual science convo on Friday at 3pm Central. I’m not going to do a lot of prep work because I don’t have the time, but I can talk about new evolutionary features off the top of my head. How about mammary glands? You like mammary glands?

If you’re one of my patrons (only a dollar a month, cheap), you can also join in the Zoom call. If you hate long-winded livestreams, I’ll also pluck out one of the more interesting excerpts and post that on Saturday.

Currently on schedule

Deviations will not be allowed, or the whole course train will crumple in a tremendous crash.

So: Mondays I give the lecture I prepared the day before, and get the genetics lab ready, and grade student problem sets. Tuesday, prep the lecture for Wednesday, and teach the lab. Wednesday, give the lecture, compose a new problem set, also work with my biocomm students. Thursday, second lab…also the day the university throws meetings at me. Friday, all spiders. Saturday, run through the next genetics lab, make a video summary. Sunday, write Monday’s lecture.

Can’t stop all semester long. The routine rules me now.

Except this week, I have to write the first take-home midterm, which I’ll then have to grade over the weekend. I’ll cope. Today, for instance, I got up at 4:30 and got the lecture done early, to give myself a little time to put together a first draft of the exam. The trains will run on time, or a head will roll. (I’m a fascist to myself, not to the students.)

I’m also anxious about this stupid pandemic and how it’s going to try and derail me. That’s why I’ve got all these contingency plans in my pocket. I have a timetable. Death and disease must not disrupt it.

You may ask, this is only the third week of a 15 week semester, why a midterm now? One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that if the students don’t the simple fundamentals early on, their train will crash and burn when we get to the hard stuff, so I do an early check on their comprehension.

A fly’s fate

I was upstairs a moment ago, checking on the fly lab. The students’ first fly cultures are looking good, we’ve got swarms of flies in bottles thriving, and soon we’ll be able to go on to the next phase of the experiment. I got to thinking, though, about flies and destiny. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a fruit fly.

You live in a thriving fly metropolis, surrounded by a mass of your peers buzzing and jostling each other, with your children frolicking under foot, burrowing through the tasty medium. Although it’s somewhat crowded, there’s plenty of food, and no predators. It’s a pleasant enough environment.

Then one day, a giant comes along and turns your city upside down, shaking all of the residents into a barren, empty bottle, nothing to eat, no offspring, just sterile glass all around. Your confusion is only brief, fortunately, because there’s a sickly sweet smell in the air, and everyone loses consciousness. One of three outcomes await you.

A. You awaken in a pristine paradise on a nice smooth bed. There’s plenty of food, and no overcrowding. You’re not alone, but it’s only a few of your peers around you. There’s room to dance and court and have sex! Your conditions are vastly improved. Bless you, kind giant.

B. You never wake up. Shortly after losing consciousness, your body slides into a vat of nearly pure alcohol, and you simultaneously drown and are poisoned, completely oblivious to your fate.

C. You stir back into consciousness to find yourself in a cluttered cavern, empty of food, but all around you are the dead husks of your fellow flies. You are tangled in a bit of silk, and you begin to struggle and flap your wings to escape. Little do you know, but the monster in the cave was ignoring you when you were motionless, but now your exertions have caught her attention, and you see eight eyes approaching and two needle-sharp fangs…you are paralyzed. You can feel your organs liquifying. Death is a relief.

Very, very few flies end up in A, and even there, the respite is temporary — they’ll meet their end in a few weeks. Right now, as the fly production ramps up, most are going to C, but later as populations get really large, most will go to B, since even now I’m getting as many flies as the spiders can eat.

It’s also almost entirely about luck. Flies that have obvious abnormalities or developmental issues or injuries don’t get picked for paradise, usually, but among the swarming majority of normies, it’s pure chance whether you get the reprieve — the overwhelming majority get either the poison bath or the chelicerae. It’s not fair. The universe is not fair. I imagine the flies in A consider themselves deserving of their good fortune, but they’re not — they just got lucky. For a little while.

Long day ahead

I keep telling my students about what I call Fly Time — the idea that these genetic experiments we’re doing require that we carry out the steps on the fly’s schedule, which may sometimes be inconvenient for the human experimenter. We’ll be flexible, but the work does require doing things outside the formally scheduled class time. That’s about to bite me in the butt.

We had this minor fire yesterday that canceled labs for the day. But we’re on Fly Time! They don’t care about our lab schedule! I’ve got a big plan that requires starting on time, and if we don’t begin the experiment this week it won’t culminate before spring break. I can’t compel students to stay and do lab work over their break, so if it runs over…I’m the guy who has to do all the final fly counts in the experiment. The students need to start the cross this week!

To accommodate our students’ busy schedules, I get to spend today in the fly lab helping a string of students coming in on Student Time to learn fly husbandry. All day long. Parked in a lab as students dribble in. Except for the time I get to spend lecturing them in class. And then I come home and put the recording of the lecture together and upload it. I also have to assemble a new problem set and post it on Canvas. Maybe if there’s a gap in the stream of students I can do that during the day?

Ha ha. The flexibility I’m trying to build into the course is coming out of my hide. There better not be any more fires this semester.