He would have to explain it...but if I remember correctly it was along
the same lines as my sister...who has a PHd. in Microbiology and
Genetic Engineering.
Pretty fascinating stuff...made me feel pretty insignificant...all I could
say was..Well..I can my hand under arm and make this noise...can
you?
Hehehehehe
But yeah...very intelligent and a decent player...for only being serious
about it for such a short time. He can only get better.
As for coming here...heck anytime...I have lots of room and there are
alot of cool things to see in the great Northwest...we have ..uhh
rain...and well more rain.
Actually alot of fun things to do.
Dave
Captain USA
It should be obvious - I play with maggots. Almost just kidding.
Actually, I study developmental biology, how critters go from being a single celled egg to becoming a full
fledged organism, with fingers and toes and eyes all in the right place at the right time. More
specifically, I study how the nervous system of the fruit fly, whose scientific name is Drosophila
melanogaster, is wired up. So why study a fruitfly, who would care? Well it ends up that (it was very
suprising to the discoverers) the same molecules/proteins that control the very basic design of a fly
also control the basic design of mammals, including good old people. So many of the details we learn
about flies ends up true about people, only its much much easier to figure these things out in flies.
Told ya! And I am there showing I can still whistle with a mouth full of
saltine crackers...made me feel like an idiot let me tell ya.
Genius in my house and all I can do is stupid human tricks...like show
mate in 8 and crap like that....I knew I should have taken that right
turn in Alberquerque (sp?) in that wonderful road they call life.
Instead I was bartering a Mark Mcwire rookie card for a box of Fruit
Roll Ups.
Dave
Captain USA
We should talk some time Maggoteer! I'm into Cognitive
Neuroscience, more in the systems neuroscience area than genetics
and cell signalling - All that stuff seems way too hard for me!
I study learning and memory processes in the adult human brain
(fMRI), and we had a guy up from Cold Springs Harbor recently who
gave an amazing talk on memory in Drosophila - really interesting
stuff...
Anyway, I'm waffling now, back to chess (I think that needs much
more work than my PhD studies!)
Joe
The Critic
Definitely lets talk!
I'm trying to stabilize my number of games at about 6, and when I'm down to that number, what say I
send you a challenge. Then we can talk geeky neuroscience stuff and justify to ourselves that playing
chess is really part of our "networking" , and so it's ok to play chess at work instead of studying for
general exams. Grin grin. We can exchange useful information, like "how to avoid running into irate
committe members in the hallway by traveling to and from lab through the steam tunnels and air
conditioning ducts".
Maybe you can help me out. My kids got this aloxilatil, about 8 inches
long that had these awesome looking feathery gils on each side of its
head. A few weeks ago it quit eating and the gils began to get
smaller and have vanished. It has gone from living under water to
being an above water salamander. Instead of eating goldfish I'm
feeding it crickets. Have I just witnessed evolution? I've never seen
anything like it. Sorry to bore the rest of you. Kirk
That's pretty neat! I've only seen pictures. It would be very cool to watch!
So I think you witnessed metamorphosis, not evolution. Many salamanders (time to be a science nerd,
the Amphibian order "Urodeles"😉 go through metamorphosis to become sexually mature, much like
tadpoles into frogs. It's just not as radical looking, since larval salamanders have legs, but what you
described is what should happen.
I'm curious, was it from a pet shop, or did the kids get it the old fashioned kid way, out of the local
creek? Some species of salamander actually become adults (that is, mature sexually) while keeping
juvinille features like those gills you saw. And I've always been told the "lab variety" of axolotl is
SUPPOSED to keep it's gills....
I agree John. That's one of the reason's I appreciate playing you on this
site...You're here for the chess, not the ratings (although you do seem to enjoy
being MAP) You've played me with my rating low and you take on all challengers.
Ultimately, we'll never know who is or isn't using a program and it probably all
averages out anyway cause we've all lost to them at one time or another.