Defining the Genome

Here’s another one! A big essay on central dogma is coming up, so again there’s that problem of getting some background work done before I start putting up the really complicated stuff. It’s like watching Doctor Who from the middle, you know? Sometimes you’ve just gotta start at the beginning or nothing makes sense.

Defining the Genome

As most already know, at the very heart of any genome is something called DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA consists of two strands twisted into a double helix, (the sugar-phosphate backbones) with “ladder rungs” connecting in the middle. These “ladder rungs” are actually called nitrogenous bases, and they are the smallest units of the structure.

                There are four nitrogenous bases; adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Most geneticists shorten these to A, T, C and G. To save things from getting too complicated, DNA is read from only one strand at a time; this is what is meant by a DNA sequence. DNA is double-stranded so that each base can form a chemical pair with the base across from it. These unions are called “basepairs”, and they are at the heart of DNA’s function. But, certain bases can’t pair with each other; the pairs are limited to A/T or vice versa, and C/G or vice versa. And it is the different combinations of these bases that makes your DNA, and by extension you, unique. And together, they form deoxyribonucleic acid.

                DNA is an incredibly complicated thing. The amount of basepairs in a single human genome alone amounts to roughly 3 billion. Early estimates to the size of the human genome were done by measuring the amount of genes in a cell. This gave us a pretty good idea of how things worked on that level, but the idea to go about sequencing the entire genome from start to finish didn’t come up until the mid-80’s, when capillary sequencing was developed. When it first got started in the 1990’s, the first five years were devoted to just mapping the chromosomes. Chromosomes display banding patterns when treated with a chemical agent. These parents are very unique, and can be used to identify individual chromosomes.

                Within each chromosome are certain regions. That way you can find out which genes are located in each region. All of this “physical mapping” was done before the sequencing even started.

                When mapping with chromosomes, they wouldn’t pick a single chromosome and build up from there. No, they would pick many and go out. That way, they could easily see how the different chromosomes interconnected.

                Of course, the project eventually succeeded. And we now know much, much more about the human genome, and even genomes in general, than ever before. For instance, it’s been discovered that the amount of basepairs in a genome doesn't actually do much to contribute to the complexity of a species. In fact, sheer size is insignificant compared to the specific sequence. It’s how the bases pair, not how many pairs there are, that makes the difference. Salamanders, for instance, have many more basepairs than humans. And in fact, large genomes can sometimes mean problems; genomes often get big because viruses sneak their way in and replicate. This is one cause of repetitive regions, regions in a genome where the same sequence repeats over and over. These are the remnants of dead viruses which still function to some extent, and can jump around and insert themselves elsewhere in the genome, causing problems.

                Now, here’s the fun part; every human being has two copies of the genome in each of the trillions of cells in our body, each cell reading a different part of the “instructions”. Each copy, if you were to stretch it out to its full length, would measure out to almost two meters. That’s pretty impressive. The problem? Each set of genomes has to fit neatly into a chromosome – where the DNA lives – which is considerably smaller than DNA is long. So how does it all fit? The answer is in histones. Histones are highly alkaline proteins found which help package and order the DNA into structural units called nucleosomes. Think of it as a strand of yard wrapping itself over and over around one post, then stretching to the next. Then wrapping itself over and over around that post, and proceeding to the next. And so on and so forth. This storage method works so well that all 3 billion basepairs – a copy of each set, one from mom and one from dad – fits into a single chromosome.

                The chromosomes, when ordered, occur in pairs. In humans, each cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of forty-six. Some are duplicated chromosomes (the ones that look like X’s) and some are non-duplicated (the ones that look like I’s) but this doesn’t make much of a difference. Except in the last pair, which are a bit different; in each cell there are 22 pairs of autosomes, and one pair of sex cells; these are the famous X and Y chromosomes that determine whether an individual has male or female biology. Every female in the human species has two X chromosomes, and every male has one X and one Y. The reason males can’t have a matching pair is because without the X chromosome, a human being would die. The X chromosome is ultimately more complex than the Y, and vital to human survival.

                And so, all in all, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in each cell, including 44 autosomes and two sex cells. But there’s also another set of DNA, that lives outside the cytoplasm cell, inside another organelle (an organelle is basically an organ for a cell.) This brings us to the mitochondria, a vital part of cell biology, which has its very own set of DNA.

                A mitochondrion produces boatloads of energy in the form of the molecule ATP, or Adenosine Triphosphate. A cell can actually have many mitochondria at a time, ranging in number from a few to several thousand. They are passed down only through the maternal line, and, (trivia time!) used to be their own free-living bacteria.

                Scientists theorize that mitochondria were a separate entity long ago, but were devoured by some ancestral cell and integrated into our biology. Now it works for us, despite having its very own set of DNA. Mitochondrial DNA exists in the form of a chromosome just like nuclear chromosomes. (Nuclear being chromosomes that reside within the nucleus of a cell, rather than separately in a mitochondrion.) But the mitochondrial chromosomes aren’t linear; they’re circular. And each chromosome has only 17,000 basepairs. Does your head hurt yet? Mine did. And we’re just getting started…

Introduction to Traits and Heredity

Okay, so since I stopped writing on this blog a while ago, a lot has changed. Namely, my name. (Pun intended.) I prefer to be called Brighid now, (pronounced BREE-id) and this blog will reflect that. With that in mind, here is an essay on traits and heredity. I’m putting this up, (and the essay after it) because while psychology is easy to understand without too much background, genetics is something that won’t make much sense at all unless you start at the very beginning. And so, without further ado;

 

Introduction to Traits and Heredity.

A lot of us have wondered at some point where we might get certain traits from. Why you have brown eyes like your father but not blue eyes like your mother, why you’re taller than your mother but still shorter than your father, or why both your parents have brown hair and you have red. Well, it all boils down to the genome.

                A genome is basically like a set of instructions, telling your body what to do, what to build. And since each cell follows a different set of instructions, infinite variations are possible. Different genetic codes create different traits, such as red vs. brown hair, or tall vs. short. Or personality traits, like nice vs. mean, or patient vs. impatient. Of course, certain traits have more to do with the environment than anything else, but we’ll get to that later.

                There are many, many different traits to choose from when talking about the genome. So that’s why we like to categorize them into neat little boxes; physical vs. behavioral, visible vs. hidden, and innate vs. learned. But let’s not forget the number one rule of the scientific world; almost nothing fits in a neat little box. So there are certain traits which are easy to define. Say you happen to be very tall. Height is something that can definitely be classified as physical, visible, and innate. But what about something like intelligence? Well, it could definitely be behavioral – intelligence definitely affects the way we interact with the world – but it could also be physical. Why? Because intelligence can also be defined by the number or pattern of neuroconnections in the brain. What about visible vs. hidden? Well, at first glance you would classify intelligence as a hidden trait. You can’t just look at someone and tell how smart they are. But what if we’re speaking in the context of the products of said intelligence? If you knew that someone you were talking to had won a Nobel Prize, their intelligence wouldn’t be very “hidden”, would it? And as for innate vs. learned, there is still debate about how much intelligence can be learned. So as you can see, this kind of categorization can be tricky, not to mention dangerous; it wouldn’t do to make false assumptions that could mean a lot to the scientific community.

                But let’s think about something; where did all these genes come from? The answer is simple; your parents! But wait… weren’t we talking earlier about the child who had red hair, even though both their parents had brown hair? Maybe it isn’t as simple as it seems.

                People have been puzzling over this pretty much since humans began. Perhaps you know of a fellow named Hippocrates? Hippocrates was a nature philosopher, who studied the mechanisms of inheritance. He had a theory called Blended Inheritance. He saw that the male reproductive organ had a fluid that it produced when it was in the process of, well, reproducing. He theorized that females must have a similar fluid, and that each fluid carried a plethora of genetic material. Some from the eyes, some from the toes, some from the hair, etcetera etcetera. His idea was that when the fluids met, there was a “battle of the fluids”, and the genetic materials from each fluid which remained victorious would be the ones which made up the new human. Well, okay. There are some obvious flaws in that theory, but it seems pretty solid. Except, wait… it explains why a kid might look more like mom than dad or vice versa, and even explains how a child might be a near-perfect blend of the two. But what about our little redhead from earlier? This is where a fellow named Gregor Mendel comes in.

                Gregor Mendel was a monk, living in Austria in the early 1800s. And he had a bit of a hobby; he liked to study genetics. Of course, if you’re studying genetics you’re going to have to study reproduction at some point, and his bishop didn’t particularly like him studying animal sex. So he switched to pea plants instead.

                What he discovered was truly fascinating; Hippocrates had been thinking of genetics like pails of paint. If you have one pail full of red paint and one full of white paint, you can mix the two however you like, but you’ll always come out with some variation of the two colors. Of course, you can get lighter or darker pinks, or even colors that look almost totally red or white, but there’s no chance of a new color. But Mendel had a different idea; he had the idea of particulate inheritance.

                The idea here is that each parent has two genomes, a working set and a hidden set. When the parents get together to make a baby, they each have a chance of passing down some of the hidden set, and some of the working set. Of course, the hidden set is also hereditary; any trait you see in yourself that you don’t see in your parents was a working set at some point in your family line. But this can explain our little redhead; most likely a grandmother, or someone in the family, was a redhead. But the gene was hidden until it collided with more hidden-redhead genes from the other parent. Now, keep in mind that these hidden genes won’t come into play unless they are contributed from both parents. If our favorite carrot-top had gotten even one set of brunette genes, from mommy or daddy, her hair would have come out the same color, the gene remaining hidden.

                But there’s more. Enter Mr. B.F. Skinner, a psychologist in the mid-1900s. You may be wondering, what does a psychologist have to do with genetics? A lot, as it turns out. Skinner did a lot of experiments with operant conditioning. In one, he would place a rat in a cage with a lever, a red light, a green light, and an electrically wired floor. If the rat pulled the lever while the green light was on, food would be dispensed. But if the red light was on and the rat pushed the lever, it would receive a mild electric shock. In time, the rat would learn to pull the lever only when the green light was on. And through his experiments, Skinner found that the environment can have quite a lot to do with how these traits manifest. This is the classic nature vs. nurture situation, which makes it a lot harder for geneticists; now, alongside all that visible vs. hidden, physical vs. behavioral, and innate vs. learned from earlier, we also have to work to find out whether a trait is something an individual was born with, or something they learned. Or even if the environment took an innate trait and modified it.

                That, my friend, is the basics of genetics. Just the basics. Genetics is a very diverse and complicated science, and can’t possibly be covered in one essay. But let’s see what we can do with a couple.

Biological Treatments

I just finished this one. I watched the lecture a few days ago, but wrote the essay over the week. It's part of a larger series on psychological treatments, so if you want to see those, go ahead and ask! But for now, have fun with biological treatments. (And try finding the PBS documentary on frontal lobotomies on Youtube. It's a bit graphic, but very informative.) Enjoy!

Biological Treatments

 

Aside from talk therapy, there are also other, more direct ways of dealing with mental illnesses. These fall under the category of biological treatment, and include methods such as medication, electro-convulsive shock therapy, and even psychotherapy, all of which come with their own degree of controversy. But we’ll delve into that later. Let’s start simple with medication.

                When we medicate a mental patient, what we are doing is manipulating their neurotransmitters. Now let’s think for a second about just what a neurotransmitter is. A lot of people like to think of the brain as having “wiring” of some sort, transmitting electrical signals continuously throughout the brain. Not so; along the axons, (the proverbial wiring) there are synaptic clefts; gaps in the wiring that the signal has to transverse. And so, one side of the axon, (the transmitter) will release neurotransmitters to relay the information across the gap. The other side, (the receptor) picks this information up, and it continues on its merry way. When using medication, we want to manipulate one or a combination of these neurotransmitters; norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine. These are chemicals that the brain produces naturally, but can be manipulated to produce desired effects. Norepinephrine, for example, is associated with energy and alertness. Dopamine corresponds to the pleasure-reward centers in the brain, and serotonin, along with pleasure and happiness, is also thought to induce obsessive/compulsive behavior. There are, however, problems; first of all there are many, many areas of the brain through which these neurotransmitters pass, and only a couple areas we actually want to be affected. This spells two words; side effects. Second, because the brain is an amazing piece of equipment, it know how to self-regulate; meaning if there’s suddenly too much of a certain neurotransmitter introduced artificially, the brain will slow its natural production. This means that a patient will need more and more medication over time, and is likely to get addicted. Despite the downsides there are many, many different drugs in use right now with the purpose of somehow manipulating these neurotransmitters. Here are four of the most common;

                Tricyclics: Tricyclics slow the re-uptake of norepinephrine and serotonin. What that means is that when the neurotransmitters are released, they take longer to be absorbed into the receptor, meaning they hang around longer than usual. This is said to increase their effects. There are, however, side effects, which include weight gain and poor concentration.

                Monamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MOI): There are certain enzymes in the brain made to destroy norepinephrine and serotonin if they hang around in the brain too long. This drug inhibits those enzymes, meaning said neurotransmitters can hang around a little longer. There are also many side effects, including high BP, and blurred vision.

                Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI): These do exactly what they sound like; they slow serotonin uptake like the tricyclics, but they’re very selective about it; leaving norepinephrine alone and going straight to the serotonin. These produce fewer side effects, and allow for higher doses than other medications. One very famous type of SSRI is actually Prozac.

                Lithium Carbonate: This is most effective with bipolar disorder. It serves to end manic episodes, and what psychiatrists have found is that when the manic episodes end, the depressive ones do as well.

                Once again, the thing to remember is that these drugs have downsides, which can sometimes be huge. So more and more people nowadays are saying that they should serve only as a transitional; to get people into a stable enough frame of mind where they would be willing to actually go to therapy, and slowly stop the medication as their mental state improves. But there are certain cases in which this is not an option.

                Schizophrenia, for example. Talk-therapy to a schizophrenic is basically useless; the illness has an almost entirely biological cause. That’s why many schizophrenics take anti-psychotics, such as chlorpromazine, which works by blocking dopamine receptors, and reduces positive symptoms. (Delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, etc.)

                But there are problems with this, too. A schizophrenic on medication will often feel like before they had this amazing ability. They may feel like they were somehow more perceptive than anyone else, more intelligent, and the meds are just dumbing them down. Not to mention, a nasty side effect of large doses of chlorpromazine, (which will happen eventually, to the brain’s self-adjusting system) is something called tardive dyskinesia, the symptoms of which include excessive lip smacking, and drooling. People who have been taking chlorpromazine long enough sometimes even have to hold a towel at all times, constantly wiping the drool from their face, which is not very effective. This is why one of the biggest challenges with schizophrenics is actually keeping them on their meds.

                Before the end of the essay, there are two other treatments I’d like to talk about, which can be considered more physical treatments. The first is electro-convulsive shock therapy, and this is a great example of how discoveries in science can come about completely by accident. (Remember penicillin?) A while ago, it was discovered that when people with severe epilepsy experienced a seizure, they reported feeling calm and happy. Obviously not happy about the seizure, but there were definitely positive effects. Not long after it was discovered that when a seizure was induced in a depression patient by way of administering electric shocks through specialized equipment, their symptoms were alleviated; they felt better. This treatment is still in use today, though it is by no means a cure-all; it is a transitional, used in cases where the patient is suicidal, and needs to get into a good enough place that talk-therapy will be effective. The effects are by no means long-term.

                And finally, frontal lobotomy; one of the most gruesome and controversial treatments of the modern world. (No longer in practice today, thank goodness!) One of the most famous figures in frontal lobotomy was a man named Walter Freeman. Just under a hundred years ago, Freeman began giving these such lobotomies to his patients. He would anesthetize the patient, and then slip a small, kitchen ice pick up into the skull around the eye, moving it back and forth and severing the connections to the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobes of the brain. The good news; when you performed this procedure on a violent patient, suddenly they would stop attacking people and become completely docile. Often they would simply sit around playing cards all day. The bad news? Severing that connection basically takes away everything that makes you you, and turns you into what is basically an obedient, sentient vegetable. Think of the Ood from Doctor Who, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Eventually people realized that what Freeman was doing was wrong, and his infamy drove him to other areas, with other patients. If a housewife was too unhappy with her situation to live anymore, he would give them a frontal lobotomy. If a child was too unruly for their parents to handle, he would give them a frontal lobotomy. He ended up lobotomizing nineteen children, including one four-year-old. And that’s why mad science isn’t always fun, folks.

                The treatments we’ve been talking about are not the only treatments out there. There are many others, farther out of the periphery of the mainstream, from art therapy to comic therapy. (Yes, Marvelites, it exists.) But these are the most well-known, and most reputable types.

               

Let's Get Studious

Alright, readers. (Of which there are few. And I know this.) It's time to get serious.
   By that I mean it's time for me to get serious. About my studies.
   As you all know, I am now fifteen years of age. That means college is creeping ever closer. (Eep!) So lately, I've been trying my hardest to ramp up my studies. I'm taking courses on genetics, physics, psychology and math. And to help my learning along, I've been writing essays about everything I study. So my mom suggested I put some of them here. So I will. Of course, there are way too many to just post them all here. So what I'll do instead is post my favorite one now, and post them as I write them from here on. So read on, dear reader; for a talk about psychopathy.

Personality Disorders (or, a small introduction to personality disorders followed by a talk about psychopathy).

What is a personality disorder? So far, almost all of the disorders we’ve talked about could be considered personality disorders, somehow. Wouldn’t you categorize depression or anxiety as being a part of one’s personality, unwanted though they may be? A personality disorder is most easily defined as a disorder which largely affects the way an individual interacts with others. They could almost be considered social disorders.

                There are many different categories of personality disorder, and within each category is a myriad of different types. There are dramatic/emotional personality disorders, under which is filed Borderline, Antisocial, Narcissistic, and Histrionic disorder.

                The odd/eccentric category includes Schizoid, Paranoid, and Schizotypal disorder.

                And the anxious/fearful category includes Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-Compulsive disorders. Let’s keep in mind that when OCD is classified as a personality disorder rather than an anxiety disorder, the symptoms are a bit different, and is, of course, defined as having a large effect on those the individual interacts with.

                All of these seem like fairly unpleasant things to have, and you’d be right in thinking that. But there is one disorder that seems to have been glorified by modern media, mostly by cop and detective shows. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Psychopathy.

                We see it all the time on TV, in the movies. Many will remember the classic American Psycho. Though rather extreme, Patrick Bateman is a wonderful example of psychopathy. Let’s go over the symptoms, shall we?

                A psychopath will tend to have a glibness, or superficial charm. In fact, when people originally meet a psychopath, we tend to like them. They come off to us as appealing somehow.

Then there is the characteristic grandiosity. A psychopath will make everything they talk about or do come off as grand or important. They will also almost always regard themselves as somehow superior, somehow better than everyone else.

Pathological lying is another, and this is where we get into the really problematic symptoms. The thing is, not only do they lie, they are almost always very good at it. You can be talking to a psychopath for months, hearing all these amazing, entertaining stories, before you finally figure out they are lying. And here’s the fun part; when they’re caught in their lies, when they’re really painted into a corner, it doesn’t seem to bother them. They’ll say something like, “oh, yeah, I was just kidding you, I wanted to see how far I could push it before you figured it out.” And blow it off like the most miniscule problem.

Even scarier, a psychopath is characteristically cunning and manipulative. They know how to calculate a means to an end to extents that most of us could only dream about, or perhaps fear.

They tend to have a shallow affect, to the sense that nothing affects them as much as it really should in an emotional context.

Finally, callousness and lack of empathy. Now, this is a fascinating one. Because while it’s certain that psychopaths lack empathy, what they do have is theory of mind. Let’s think about that for a bit. The idea is that “theory of mind” is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s place and see things from their perspective. Psychopaths are rather good at this, in a technical way. They can put themselves in your place and, in that cunning, manipulative way we were talking about, can predict your movements and reactions. The difference between this and empathy is that though a psychopath may be able to realize your emotions, they simply won’t care. They won’t be able to “feel” what you’re feeling, only acknowledge it.

All of these are great reasons why psychopaths are so popular as characters in crime shows, and often in horror movies. In a nutshell they’re manipulative, clever, selfish, good at lying, good at getting what they want, and don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

That was primary psychopathy. There’s also a lesser condition known as secondary psychopathy, not as severe, but still a problem. Those with secondary psychopathy tend to be impulsive; they’re not good at planning, and when an idea comes along they jump at it. They’re irresponsible; they’ll avoid positions of responsibility, and once in these positions, will not act appropriately of the responsibility. They are prone to boredom, and need to be constantly stimulated. They have a lack of realistic long-term goals. For instance, they can say that in the short term they would like to visit the zoo, but if asked of their long term plans they might state that they’d like to pursue world domination, or perhaps visit mars, or even state no plans at all. They tend to indulge in a parasitic lifestyle, having one or two individuals that they live off of. They will show poor behavioral controls, and more often than not, early behavioral problems. Juvenile delinquency is also common. And finally, revocation of conditional release. Basically meaning that, when given a chance to rehabilitate, they will almost always take it, and very soon drop it.

There are a few signs that can be attributed in general to both primary and secondary psychopaths. One is that their sex life will often be impersonal, and poorly integrated. Many psychopaths also tend to engage in criminal behavior, (and be pretty good at it, too.) And they will often show many short-term marital relationships. In fact, when a romantic relationship works out for a psychopath, it is often because the other person is themselves a psychopath.

Now. Let’s try a little test, shall we? See if you can answer this question;

A woman meets someone at her mother’s funeral. She talks to this person, and gets to know them so well that she begins to fall in love. However, when the funeral is over, she realizes she never got the person’s e-mail or phone number, and has no way of finding them again.

A few days later, the woman kills her sister.

Now, I wonder if you can figure out the pattern of logic behind this? Go ahead; I’ll wait.

                Here’s the answer. The woman deduced that since the person was at her mother’s funeral, they were obviously connected to her family somehow, and might be connected to her sister as well as her mother. Ergo, killing her sister might cause the person to show up at her funeral.

                Did you get the answer before I explained it to you? Let’s hope not; the theory is that if you can properly answer that question, you could be a psychopath. Or at least very good at thinking like one. As you can probably tell, the logic behind that course of action was rather flawed, at least from a neurotypical perspective. But that’s how the mind of a psychopath works; they don’t seem to be bothered by the horrific, or even recognize it as such. Everything is just a means to an end.

                In fact, they can even disregard consequences that apply to themselves. For instance, in one study psychopaths were taken into a laboratory environment, and given questions to answer. They were then hooked to a piece of equipment designed to administer an electric shock whenever they got a question wrong. Funnily enough, the shocks didn’t seem to bother them. After getting a shock, they wouldn’t try any harder to answer questions correctly. The physical pain seemed irrelevant.

                But then, a different approach was tried; the psychopaths were given an amount of money, and money was taken away for each incorrect question. That started to really motivate them. Suddenly the psychopaths were focusing hard on each question, desperate not to lose their cash. It tells you a lot about how a psychopath works; choosing completely material objects over their own physical well being.

                In conclusion, the individuals portrayed in the media – from Patrick Bateman to Kyoya Ohtori – aren’t entirely too far from the truth.

So Much Awesome I Can't Take it!

Hey there, strangers! As you obviously know, I haven't posted anything new here in a long time. The last time I was talking about spring... huh. That kinda came and went, didn't it? Well, here's what I've been up to lately.

Fifteen!
I'm fifteen now! Yes, as of October eighth, 2013, I am officially fifteen!

Haircut!
I cut my hair. It's super short now.

Glasses!
I got new glasses! The old ones kinda broke... a lot. So now I have these new ones that are nothing like my old, huge black frames.

Nose Stud!
Yes, I got my nose pierced for my birthday. It is epicness. I will get pictures as soon as I figure out the ridiculous computer system our homegroup follows...

ComiCon!
The title alone should be enough to get you excited. I went to ComiCon with my girlfriend! I cosplayed as Tony Stark, she was Jotun Loki, and together we were FrostIron! (One of our collective favorite ships) IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! Once again, PICTURES SOON! As soon as I figure out my frakking computer...

Summer (?)

Alright. When I posted last month, it was about Spring coming to our town. So why, as I write this not even a month later, does it feel like Summer? As I like to put it, Spring seems to be having an identity crisis.
   Not that I'm complaining. Summer, for me, has always been my favorite season. Even stifling heat is preferable to bitter cold. And it means I get to listen to the white noise of the hallway fan which, despite having tune or rhythm, is quite soothing.
   And then there's A/C. Me and the A/C have something of a love/hate relationship. As an environmentalist, the air conditioner is supposed to be my sworn enemy. But I'll admit; I love it. I love the smell, and the sound, and the feel. A room with the A/C on always seems to feel safer. Perhaps because it signals Summer? Some sort of Pavlovian response in a creature designed to greatly look forward to the months without the trials of Winter? Or maybe, just maybe, I'm overthinking it and it's just a quirk.
   And now, dear readers, I have proven that I can ramble for a good amount of time about almost anything. Adieu.

Spring

Is it just me, or is it getting hot around here? No, it's not just me; pretty much everyone agrees that spring has officially sprung!
   And faster than usual. Wasn't it just a week or two ago that I was wearing heavy coats everywhere? And now the ceiling fans are all on, and I'm wearing shorts and a tank top. The daffodils are blooming in our yard, the cherry trees are blooming in Taylor park... the only thing missing is leaves. No leaves on the trees. Sort of weird. Who knows if it's just a heat wave, or if these early high temperatures will set the tone for the rest of the warm months, but either way I'm enjoying it!