Great discussion out of the blue

Today a random student wandered into my office and wanted to talk about evolution and religion. Heavy food for thought! And he wasn't even a biology or a science major (physics...poor sap)! We chatted on about Darwin's life and the prevalent thoughts of his time. I then told him about the basics of evolution theory and supporting evidence. At the center of evolution is the idea of natural selection or Survival of the Fittest. Organisms need to survive long enough to pass on their genes to their offspring. Genes coding for characteristics that are not beneficial, lead to the death of the organisms. And as one of my great past science teacher often said: "Dead things don't reproduce." In essence, organism populations are changing with each subsequent generation. Along with natural selection, is the idea that organisms share common ancestors. Then he wanted to know more about creation myths across different religions. And, surprisingly, this lead to a great discussion on how religions have "evolved" over time. Those religious beliefs that adapted to change in people's thoughts survived and are most supported today. In the same light many of these religions are related to each other at some point in their past...very similar to sharing a common ancestor. Interesting...
Then I happened to remember this quote from a favorite fiction writer:

"Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion."
-Terry Pratchett

Food for thought...now discuss amongst yourselves.

I'm a milk machine

Here's my odd ramblings for the day...

While at school, I have to pump my milk once or twice during the day.  I'm really glad I have an electric pump, but it still takes about 15minutes or so.  And with where my outlets are in my office, I'm tethered opposite my computer so I usually just sit and think or read or grade.  I realized today that I have some pretty weird thoughts while during this time. Yep, the mind tends to wander while I'm hooked to a machine to simulate my kid nursing.

Firstly I realized that I have definitely fondled my boobs way more in the past two months than I have in my entire life.  Maybe I should go into the porn industry to change this.  Now what would my porn name be? Maybe Kitty McScience? or is that too nerdy? Then that gets me thinking about biology and leads to  thinking "Damn, so that's what these things are for!" and "Sheesh...I'm a milk machine!" Which leads to thinking about science fair projects and my science mind kicks in. Now I'm totally fascinated with exactly how many mL are emanating from each one.  Then I find myself cheering for the total production..."go, go, go boob...make more milk!"  Way odd I admit, but it passes the minutes.  I'm totally glad Tam and I were able to nurse even if does produce weird thoughts :-)  And Brian just laughs at me when I share this with him :-)

Tam in black and white

Having fun with the sunlight and Tam's Hair. I love the middle one where it looks like he saying "What's goin' down in the crib, baby?"

One week done!

Survived my first week back to classes.  This semester I'm hoping for fairly smooth sailing since 2 out of the 3 classes I've taught several times before.  (The third class I've only done once before).  The nice thing about not having a new class is that I don't have as much prep for new lectures/tests/labs etc.  Most days of the week I'm only at school for about 6 hours.  Tuesday is a rough day with lab, lecture, lab.  Labs are the delight of the science world and usually run 3 hours long and I only get paid for 1.5hr of that (go figure!).  

So I went in on Tuesday for the longer day and did pretty well getting my work done and not thinking too much about Tam not being with me.  Long about 1 o'clock and after a bout of pumping, I totally needed to call home and hear that all was going well.  It was and Brian did really well with not laughing at me for being a total mom.  After hearing a squeak from squeaker, I was able to get through the rest of my day ok.  I've also put up a great collage of photos on my desk to peak at whenever I get needing a baby-fix.  Dear gawd...he's like a drug!

For the next 7 weeks (to the end of the first quad), I have Thursday free and I get to stay with the pooh-master while Brian works.  So far, I usually bring him into school with me for a few office hour time.  He does really well at being quiet and content just hanging out in the carrier or sling while I'm running around the office.  In some sense, I glad I have him to show my students that you can juggle kids and a science career.  Even my head of the department is pleasently surprised at how good a baby he is nearly all the time.  This is also because I'm uber-quick with the boob or diaper change when he starts to show any signs of fussiness.  Knock on wood that things keep going well.

Otherwise, school is school and I'm getting back into the swing of things.  I really enjoy teaching my microbiology lab and the students are really excited about "playing" with living bacteria.  It helps that I had micro back at Westminster . . . and was good about doing everything wrong at least once.  I like to tell him that we have rules for reasons like:

1 - pull long hair back when the bunsen burners are on.  Yep, I lit some of my hair on fire once ignoring this one.

2 - no open-toe shoes like sandels (even if you have socks, sorry Nate).  I have dropped an entire rack of living bacteria cultures in glass tubes onto my feet.  About half broke open but my foot wasn't lacerated to shreads!

3 - Wash your 'scope slides well and keep things clean.  I wasn't so good at scrubbing my equipment, so I got dirty slides, which meant I did poorly with guessing my unknown bacteria and lost points.

4 - Wear gloves and don't touch open wounds.  This is the worst.  I was wearing gloves, but pulled my hair behind my ear and touched my freshly pierced earlobe.  Big infection resulted, but the ear didn't fall off :-)

Well some people just need to screw-up once before the rules sink in and aren't forgotten.  I hope Tam doesn't get this trait from me :-)