complexity

Everyday we come in contact with other people and most of us are able to see and recognize who we are looking at. For example, when I walk across campus to class, I could recognize by face people from my classes. I could distinguish one classmate from another. But just imagine being in class and not being able to recognize the face of your teacher, whom you meet at least twice a week; or imagine not being able to recognize your own roommate in your dorm. Worse, can you imagine looking in the mirror and not being able to recognize your own face?

Evolution and Literature:
Notes on Change and Order

“Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how it bloomed two and a half centuries ago on the slopes of mount Olympus…Sing how it passed down through nine generations, gathering invisibly within the polluted pool of the Stephanides family. And sing how Providence … sent the gene flying again…” (p 4).

Biology 202
1998 Second Web Reports
On Serendip

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Baltimore, my hometown, probably knows the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America, is not healthy. The thought of Fells Point on a humid night in July or August wouldn’t be complete without the ubiquitous smell of the harbor after a storm, when all of the trash has been washed toward shore. It’s fairly innocuous, just present if you take the time to notice. However, for a few weeks of summer 2007, the smell wasn’t just present, it was overwhelming. Massive die-offs lead to hundreds of decaying fish crowding Fells Point and the Inner Harbor, the parts of town responsible for tourist revenues, and where my sister worked at the Maryland Science Center.