I had a busy day yesterday so I am just writing today's post now. In the morning, I heard Dr. Murray Brilliant of the Marshfield Clinic discuss the genetics of personal appearance. One of his research specialties is albinism. Pigment in the body is quite important to its function and having an albino condition means also having some disabilities, especially in eye function. Failure to produce pigment happens in the womb and occurs in all kinds of animals. He showed us a picture of an albino African lion and one of an albino alligator. Learning more about what genes contribute to the phenomenon has improved understanding of genetics and how genetics contribute to appearance.
In the afternoon, I gave a talk on three sources of entertaining non-fiction information: TED talks, Great Courses and YouTube. TED talks can be listened to and watched on computers, tablets and smartphones. They are short, free of commercials and cover a wide range of topics, delivered by interested and motivated people. I recommend Ernesto Sirolli and Nancy Lublin for samples but John McWhorter and Anne Curzan might suit some samplers better.
Great Courses are a commercial operation and they aren't cheap. You can see much about them on their web site. Some are only 6 lectures, such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the inexplicable universe but some are 36 lectures. The course on mindfulness by Dr. Ronald Siegel and the one on meditation by Dr. Mark Muesse are excellent. You can rely on any Great Course to be that good. You can buy them on Amazon. com and you can often borrow them from your local library
Finally, we heard Dr. Tim Krause on the subject of net neutrality and as part of that, how the internet works. As a side bar, he told us about security, denial of service attacks and the impolite use of the app Yik Yak by some students in classes more intent on anonymous ridicule of the teacher than learning.
On top of that, Lynn did several other things at the same time, including picking our greatgrandson up and helping him cook our spaghetti dinner. It was a loaded day. It is something of a loaded week.
