In the beginning...

Kinuko Craft's art or Rossetti's Goblin Market

In the beginning … she explained what kind of wanker she was.

A global pandemic seems like the right time to start.  Everyone is locked away, squirrelling at their new lives in their old homes.  So it seems as good a time as any to write about the beauty and the terror of Biology.  Because if all the graphs, all the stats, all the death-tolls have helped me realise anything, it’s that the mathematical folks amongst us don’t always have the best grip on Biol.  The everyday folks don’t have the best grip on maths.  And no-one has a grip on how much toilet paper is the right amount.  And that’s okay.  No one human can know all the things.

So I’m passionate about Biology.  If you pushed me to lean harder I’d say wildlife biology, ecology, animal behaviour and evolutionary biology.  I love dissections.  I love skulls.  I love artefacts of skeletal life, be it internal or exoskeletons.  I love footprints and scats (poo).  I love to poke things with sticks if I don’t think it will cause too much damage.  And whilst others have been Kriss-Krossing* the globe in planes hunting rich and rare creatures, I can literally lose a day watching the bumblebees, wasps, or chickens in my own backyard.  But different folks for different strokes, as they say.

Anyway, I’m not bad at maths.  Probably I’m quite good, if you go back to high school, but I’m mostly lapsed now. I do have a couple of text books and I do still occasionally recreationally scratch out some algebra in the way others do Sudoku.  I did both Maths B & Maths C (“the hard maths”) back in the day, in Queensland.  In university, maths mostly was relegated to serve statistics in my degree. The problem with that is that 87.5% of people know statistics are made up, and maybe about 1.3% of people understand how they’re made up and where the possible dodginess lies in the different statistical constructions.  I’m pretty average at stats, but I can drive an excel file with some ability.  Unless it’s accounting. That is boring.

I guess this is part of the nexus of this all corona-virus drama - mostly people think of Biology as the soft and squishy and “wordy” science.  

I’d argue it’s far more than that - it’s that very soft squishiness that provides the whole prism through which every human paradigm is created.  You can never escape you flesh prison, ye big olde embodied brain you!  Stay tuned on the epic “Biology built every paradigm” story at some later point.

 Your body is always there, inputting, existing, weighing down your attempts to convert to digital or cloud or whatever new theoretical idea you have going on.  You’d be surprised how much your “rational” parts are over-ridden by the temperature, what you’ve eaten, or even needing to go to the loo.  Ever seen a cat getting edgy before the litter tray?  Or a toddler?  Don’t think it doesn’t happen to you, loo paper or not.

Apart from that let me explain I’m a huge fan of movies.  I don’t mind the occasional short and succinct classic novel, but most of them are so, so old.  Actually that undersells my skills: I was a High/Distinction level student in an arts major in English literature.  I even got offered an Honours place in 19^th Century Womens’ Literature for my work on the publication of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” in both Playboy and as a children’s book.  But truth be told I’d only used that because it was a short read and justified citing Playboy.  I’m such a history numpty that I thought 19^th Century was 1900s when I signed up and was well distraught by all the bloody Brontes and Austens and what not.

Anyway, movies at least have a higher turn-over, and are a far better way to communicate to the public.  Way more people will get my Avengers: Endgame references than my Goblin Market ones, so whatever.  “Sweeter than honey from The Rock” is where the humans are at.  Love your work Dwayne Johnson.  So films and 90s pop-culture will probably feature on the suggested “reading list” for this blog.  Content list?  Interesting shit list?

Another “fun” thing is that I actually think maths and English are essentially exactly the same.  The construction of mathematical phrases is just as beautiful, sometimes more, than the construction of sentences.  And if not as many people can understand it, well that just shows that it is a super-pure art.  There is poetry in both maths and English, and no-doubt all the other written languages I don’t write.  English and bad English is all I do.  The thing about maths-wank, as opposed to art-wank, is that sometimes it saves lives.  I mean I’m happy to hear from people who want to argue art-wank saves lives - have at it in the comments I may or may not read.

Oh yeah.  I’m also an educator.  I’ve done all the major levels, primary, secondary, tertiary.  Full time is no fun, but educating is the coolest job.  Because it isn’t just about knowing the stuff, it’s about understanding how to help others know the stuff.  How to get others excited about the stuff you know.  That’s a whole different skill set. And if there’s one super-amazing thing, it’s getting to play with ideas and constructs and theories and youngish, malleable minds all day.  Or even a couple of days a week.

So….  

Biology.

Maths.

Films & 90s Pop culture.

Occasional literature.

Academic references.

I flit here, I flit there.

This is the blog of one biology butterfly and it’s time to see where it goes. 

*Kriss-Kross will make you jump, jump: