"Cattails" From Lilly to Dory

Hi, Sister!

So, today I randomly stumbled upon this gif:

http://i.imgur.com/tOtXQs8.gif

...and it got me thinking.  That cat seems to be intentionally using his/her tail to distract the snake.  Could this be part of the reason cats evolved to have such dexterous tails?  Aside from the more commonly referred to uses as a communication tool and a balance aid, I can see this tactic being very beneficial in the plains and jungles of Africa, where snakes are abundant and cats first evolved.

Further, it's been asserted that cats pay attention to the "fluffiness" of a potential mate's tail, and that both females and males with luxurious tails tend to be selected more often for mating, giving fluffy-tailed kitties the advantage in passing on their genetic material.  I assumed that, like other mammals, fur in the hind region serves primarily to trap scents which alert a potential mate to sexual maturity/genetic compatibility, and that it falls mainly in the category of sexual selection (as opposed to natural selection, which is driven by environmental factors such as climate and predators).  While this may be true in cats, it also appears that that fluffy tail is helping to confuse the snake into biting fur instead of flesh, which would mean that it has an advantage in natural selection as well.

So, I'm hypothesizing that luxurious and dexterous tails in cats have an evolutionary advantage in arenas where snakes are a predator, meaning that they are favored by natural selection in addition to being favored for other reasons by sexual selection.  What do you think?



Love, Lilly

"Westward to the American Dream" From Dory to Lilly

I like the long drive from Boise to our parents' house. It's a good time for listening to loud music, singing along when I know no-one will judge me, and thinking deep thoughts about the universe. As I was doing those first two things, I noticed an odd thing that kept popping up in my music that made me start in on that third thing. I kept hearing the word word "west," so I started paying attention. See if you can find a pattern here:

From the musical "Wicked":

Elphaba: "So if you cannot find me, look to the western sky! As someone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly. And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free! To those who'd ground me, take a message back from me: tell them how I am defying gravity."

From Streetlight Manifesto's "A Moment of Silence/A Moment of Violence"

"Oh, to the west you don't know what it is you're running from, but everybody's laughing loud: last chance to make your mother and your father proud." 

And then I thought about that song who's writer and name I don't remember, but a line floated up from years ago:

"We're headed East, way way East, to catch the summer. We're headed West, way way West, because anything's better than here."

These songs are all using "west" somewhat symbolically. West for a new beginning, for an opportunity. Somehow, west is a valid way of suggesting possibility, opportunity, a way to start over. I was trying to think of why this might be, and I then it was suddenly so obvious. In the history of the U.S., and even further back into European colonization, the idea of quite literally going west has always represented those ideas--going west to to the New World: to streets paved with gold, to an end to religious discrimination, to a homestead and a plot of land, to adventure, to find a water route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. These were the dreams of people who went west (whether or not they accomplished those is a different story, and not the point). The point is, that that idea is still embedded in our culture, and apparently in our language and our symbolism. Cool. I was thinking about this more (long drive) and trying to come up with more evidence. I listened to that beloved song "Defying Gravity" again--this song is important to people, on par with "I'll Make a Man Out of You" even if people have never seen the rest of the musical. It resonates. I wonder why?

lyrics

Elphaba: "It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes, and leap! [...] 

Glinda: "How can I make you understand? You're having delusions of grandeur!"

Elphaba: "I'm through accepting limits because someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change, but till I try I'll never know!"

Holy American Dream, Batman!

As I said before, though, this goes back all the way to Europe. Think Lord of the Rings, which was written by a British Author.  East and West are very meaningful.  The further East you go, the more entrenched things get.  Civilizations get older, more care-worn.  Gondor, as the furthest west we go (besides Mordor), is like the big brother of every other place we see. They're the final barrier between the literal representation of Evil and the younger and more innocent peoples further West.  The Hobbits are the furthest West in Middle-Earth and they are the most innocent. Aragorn goes West to become anonymous, to escape the burden of his heritage.  And then, of course, we have the Undying Lands of the West.  If Tolkein meant Middle-Earth to be Europe (Middle-Earth is an Old English name for Europe), then the Undying Lands are certainly the New World, and Frodo's eventual voyage to the Undying Lands again represents that idea of a fresh start, an escape from the old, entrenched rules of the East.

I think the point I'm trying to make with all of this is that symbolism of the West.  That the West is inextricably tied to that very American idea of being able to make it if you try hard enough, to always having an opportunity no matter what has happened before, to always being able to start again. To travel from East to West.

By the way, this could come off as terribly ethnocentric, and I don't mean it that way.  This is something subconcious in our culture, and it has nothing to do anymore with literal east and west--I'm not saying that the U.S. is somehow better than Japan or China. It's nothing so literal as that, although perhaps in our history it was. Now it's just an idea, a symbol.

Do you have anything to add to this, sister?  Or did I make any sense at all?

Love, Dory

"'A Song of Ice and Fire' and the British Isles,” from Dory to Lilly

So, as you may know, I’m taking a Shakespeare class this semester. The first play we read for it was Richard III, one of Shakespeare’s histories.  Well, it’s a history that Shakespeare took significant liberties with, including resurrecting a couple people that were actually dead at the time he’s talking about, speeding up events quite a bit, getting rid of the boring parts, making everyone talk in iambic pentameter all the time, etc.  This particular play is the last of his series about the Wars of the Roses, a civil war that eventually ended with the Tudors getting control of the British throne (think Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, all those folk.)

Ok, let’s switch gears for a second.  We are agreed that the culture of Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series has some pretty stark (pun intended) correlations to that of Great Britain, yes?  I’m thinking the rough shape of the country, the wall dividing the country proper from the savages in the extreme north, the knights, the sigils, the feudalism, the fact that the country is made up of several united kingdoms, etc etc. 

Well, as I was reading Richard III, I started to notice some things that were similar to events in “A Song of Ice and Fire.”  Attend:

Richard III is about the eponymous Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and how he eventually (temporarily) comes out on top in the Wars of the Roses and is king of England for a few years, before dying in battle against the guy who will become the first Tudor king,  Henry VII.  He plots skillfully, uses people and then betrays them, and has them assassinated or executed.  The plot of the play isn’t terribly similar to that of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” but the details—some events, some names, some sigils—are.  Here are some:

--The reason this civil war is called the Wars of the Roses is because the two main families battling for control of the throne, the Lancasters and the Yorks, both had roses as their sigils.  The Lancasters were red roses, the Yorks white.  (Reminds me of the Tyrells)

--At the beginning of the play, the king, Edward, dies.  There are two very young princes who are potential heirs, and Richard is appointed Lord Protector and has them sequestered in royal apartments in the Tower of London “to keep them safe.”  Instead, to remove them as an obstacle between him and the throne, he has them killed (brutally) by a dude named Sir James Tyrrell.

--A guy gets drowned in a barrel of wine. (remind you of Ser Dontos?)

--The Earl of Richmond, Henry, eventually becomes king. He’s the wholesome, noble guy who has been off in exile and has returned to claim the throne as the preferable alternative to Richard III.

So, yeah.  I may be stretching, but some of these are kind of uncanny.  I don’t think I’m suggesting that Martin is drawing from this play in particular, but I definitely think he’s drawing from British history.  The War of Five Kings and the Wars of the Roses are rather similar.

What do you think?  All of that was terribly confusing for me to try to summarize, (civil wars are complicated, and EVERYONE in the British nobility is named Henry or Edward), so were things sufficiently explained for you?

Love, Dory

"Magical Bloodlines" from Lilly to Dory

Hello, sister!

Firstly, I must apologize to you (and our readers) for the fact that it has been FOREVER since I last posted here.  A reasonable explanation may be that my hypothesizing *mojo*, if you will, is all being taken up by the massive quantities of writing my classes have demanded of me lately in the form of essays, article reviews, précis, research proposals, book reports, and what else have you.  Really, though, that's not an excuse, and I hereby pledge that I will do more fun hypothesizing here, because, well, it's fun!  So anyway, I just finished a five-page essay midterm in less than five hours (that's a record) and it was on the processes of genetic variation and speciation events, and naturally my mind began to do what it does best which is apply these concepts to various other nerdy things that reside in my brain.  Also, I've been kind of amazed by genetics and meiotic cell division and stuff lately, because for some reason it's hitting me now like it never did back in middle school or wherever it was I first learned about this stuff.

So yeah!  Nerdy stuff!

Basically, what got me thinking is this: when we look at human alleles (the things that carry the traits in each of our DNA, different combinations of which produce our individual gene sequences), we find that what we think of as dominant alleles, like those for curly hair, dark eyes, round blood cells, etc, are actually our oldest alleles.  Dominance, by the way, in relation to genetic traits, doesn't mean "stronger" or "better;" it simply means it masks the expression of other traits, those that we call recessive.  So anyway, our dominant alleles are our oldest ones.  Think about that.  That means all of our recessive traits (those that we inherit but whose expressions are usually masked unless we inherit them from both parents in which case we have a one-in-four chance of expressing) are the results of random mutations within the gametes (sex cells) of generations and generations and generations of ancestors.  These mutations occured one allele at a time, and were shuffled around through the recombination stage of meiotic cell division until one ended up in a fertilized embryo, and when that person was born the outside environment decided that trait (red hair, let's say) was pretty okay and allowed that individual to survive to reproductive age and pass on the mutation.  Basic stuff, I know, but pretty awesome to think about.  As my professor says, "it's all sparkly in my mind."

So anyway, back to the main idea: our dominant alleles are our oldest alleles.  K, now flip a switch in your brain and start thinking about fantasy literature.  In a lot of stories there's this concept of magical bloodlines. These bloodlines are often implied to be ancient, and to carry a sort of primordial, world-building power.  In the "Abhorsen" series, there are three; the Abhorsen, the Clayr, and the Royal Family.  All three must exist and have an heir for the world to function correctly, and the magic associated with them acts as a genetic trait.  There is often another dynamic to this idea; when two (or more) of these bloodlines are combined in one individual, it often produces interesting results.  This is a tool that the authors use in almost every story that I can think of that has these ideas of genetically acquired magic and primeval bloodlines.  For example, in "Sword of Truth" Richard is the offspring of two independently magical bloodlines, affording a unique aspect to his magic. 

Fans of "A Song of Ice and Fire" refer to a similar concept to support a popular hypothesis regarding the parentage of Jon Snow.  His character is assumed to be the offspring of two such "primordial" bloodlines, each associated with a specific type of magic that is implied to be genetic.  At least one of these bloodlines (scientifically speaking) seems to be linked with phenotypical (appearance) traits that are apparently dominant in nearly every example.  In this an other stories, an individual who inherits these magical alleles seems to always express the phenotypical traits associated with it, but an individual who inherits alleles from two of these bloodlines will usually exhibit the phenotypical traits of either one or the other, suggesting that the traits are co-dominant. 

If we apply the rules of real-world genetics, a person who inherits co-dominate genes only has a one-in-four chance of exhibiting only one of them, while their chance of exhibiting both simultaneously (appearing as a blend of both) is 50%.  A real life example of this would be blood types A and B.  A child can inherit the allele for type A from one parent and type B from the other and have a one in two chance of exhibiting type AB, because the alleles are co-dominant. That couple's children have a 1:4 chance, however, of exhibiting only type A, and the same chance for only type B. 

Going back to "Abhorsen," Lirael is another good example of this.  She does not exhibit the phenotypical traits normally associated with the Clayr (to her character's deep dismay), even though she has just as much Clayr in her as all the rest.  Since we knew from the start that Lirael had inherited at least one the world's three primordial bloodlines, and that this bloodline generally causes all of its members to express very specific phenotypical traits, the fact that she doesn't suggests that her other parent was a member of one of the other primordial bloodlines.  Just as in Richard's case, when we learned Lirael's true parentage that information served to justify her unique type of magic.  Jon Snow's case is (allegedly) similar, in that the one known primordial bloodline also carries very specific phenotypical traits.  Since he doesn't exhibit these, this (along with the series title) suggests that the other half of his alleles are co-dominantly linked to physical appearance.  Point being, in almost every example the authors seemed to decide which side of the phenotypical dice these characters would land on based on information that is not immediately available, and to suggest a Mystery™.

I find it mega interesting that these fictional worlds seem to be paralleling this concept of old alleles being dominant alleles.  Their examples are simple and somewhat skewed versions of how it works in real life (and when thought about in this context may raise a few eyebrows concerning possible eugenics implications), but make me wonder what about this idea is intriguing to us as readers.  Is it just part of human nature to equate ancientness with power?  What are your thoughts, and do you know of any other examples of this concept in literature?

Love,

Lilly


PS: I tried to make the science easy to understand while simultaneously avoiding major book spoilers.  How'd I do?

"Wordle!" from Dory to Lilly

I have concluded several things, and also made something cool.

First, I made this!

It is a Wordle, and it shows all of our most commonly used words on the bloggy.  Except I had to tell it to exclude "like," because it was the biggest word on here. So,

Conclusion 1: We need to stop saying "like" so much.

Conclusion 2: This makes us look so awesome.

Conclusion 3: It has been 3 months since our last post, which is sad. The problem here is that we see each other too often and we have taken to hypothesizing in person instead of on the internet.  I suppose that's a good thing.

That is all.

Love, Dory