Monthly Archives: January 2016
If Snow be Black
After last week’s monster storm that left Eastern USA snow white, the snowbanks slowly melted into pools and streams. But what if snow were black? The Bard liked nature the way he saw it, but he loved to mock our … Continue reading
Posted in Environment, Nature
Tagged Candide, melting glacier, Shakespeare, snow
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Are Bats So Scary?
Some animals have few human friends, like bats. We had a little brown bat tucked inside folded wings, like dead leaves, hanging over a rocker in our porch. It was a welcome guest. But ask the public about the most … Continue reading
Posted in Animalia, Health
Tagged bats, chiroptophobia, Ebola virus, HIV-AIDS, mad cow disease, rabies, revenant, zoonosis
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Mastodon in Our Town
Not Mastodon the heavy metal band from Atlanta, but a heavy, leathery mastodon from Virginia. It is the first found east of the Blue Ridge. A local bricklayer was hunting on private land one day in 1983 when he found … Continue reading
Posted in Animalia, Nature
Tagged College of William & Mary, elephant, extinction, fossil, George Cuvier, mammoth, Mammut americanum, mastodon
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SNPs are Us
It won’t be long before snp is added to the pantheon of approved English words in the OED. It will sit among those rarest of words, those that lack a vowel like the crafty Welsh invented—cwm (a mountain hollow), crwth … Continue reading
Posted in Biomedical, Health
Tagged 23andme, DNA ancestry, DNA testing, genetic disease, promethease, single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs
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From DNA to New Cousins & Ancestry
The back of a Cornflakes box is a good deal more absorbing than another person’s family tree. Genealogy is a rather personal game of history. Our interest seems to gain momentum with age, which may unfortunately mean we are too … Continue reading
Posted in Biomedical, Health
Tagged 23andme, ancestry, ancestry.com, DNA ancestry, Family Tree DNA, Finding Your Roots, genealogy, King Richard III, Queen Victoria, Who Do you Think You Are?
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Roger musing about Peace with Nature 