Can't Get There From Here

In Evolutionary Biology, distinctions can be made between traits that are plastic (i.e. have the capacity for short-term, reversible change) and traits that are fixed (i.e. do not change, or if they do change, do so in an irreversible fashion). Plants for instance, may be able to change their growth habit in very different ways depending on where and/or when they germinate and grow. And yet, biologically speaking, they may be the same species, or genetically even the same individual. A plant grown in shade may change its growth form to maximize available light absorption (by increasing leaf surface area), and when transplanted into open sun may change in the opposite way, reducing surface area to avoid damage from overexcitation of its photosynthetic machinery.

Some traits however, are not so easily mutable. Take pentadactyly, for example. As long as 360 million years ago, the earliest tetrapods (animals with four limbs) had as many as eight "fingers" (or toes). We now known that the five-finger/toe arrangement we see throughout the animal kingdom first appeared 340 million years ago. For 340 million years we've seen tetrapods with, more or less, five fingers and toes. Some traits are so deeply ingrained into the developmental plan that any evolutionary change which doesn't have an immediate penalty or may have a positive effect is fixed.

I've been there I know the way

When I was young, my dad yelled at my mother and I a great deal. There's a great deal of psychology and history behind it all but to make a long story short, he was frustrated with the turns his life had taken, and that left him with an exceedingly short fuse. He had little time, patience, or tolerance for people or things that didn't agree with him or go his way.

I didn't have any means to fight back - any uprising was seen as an immediate excuse to increase the severity with which my father would try to enforce his will. He demanded that I show only happiness around him - anything less was forbidden. The fact that he used it to feed his Martyrdom Complex was the icing on the cake. So I trained myself to completely internalize all of the hatred, and anger and frustration and animosity I built up for myself over the years. I pushed it down, compacted it, distilled it, poured into a little botttle and left it in a dusty corner of my subconscious where I'd hopefully forget about it. Of course, the bottles would pile up, cracks in the glass from the contents inside would occur and an explosion would result, necessitating a release. But better to do it in all in one shot, I thought, than to continually subject myself and those around me to a continual, prolonged misery.

I don't remember when I started doing this - I must have been maybe 8 or 9 or so, sometime between the point where I vomited all over the dining table when I force fed myself in terror over what my parents would do to me if I didn't finish my supper and when I first started cutting myself (only very occasionally mind you, but it was still nevertheless deliberate). But somewhere long long ago in the past, I adopted this strategy to deal with the times I was sad and angry with my friends. In a way, it wasn't very different. Like my dad, some of my friends had ended up developing an idea that I could only be happy around them and never be anything less. Or, they had an image of who I was and looked down on me for not living up to that ideal. And so I further refused to talk about whatever it was that bothered me about someone or something someone had said or done.

Around 15 years later I still find myself stuck in old habits. The silent building up of an acute sense of rage and anger to the point where I would explode in momentary bursts of omnidirectional vitriol. It isn't a sustainable strategy - some day I'll have to make that evolutionary leap to something that works better. But like many evolutionary changes, that leap is really only a series of very small baby steps aggregated together over a very long period of time. As in biological evolution, in the course of human experience, that kind of change doesn't happen in the blink of an eye. The change is ongoing, unceasing. Like that open source project you may have read about on slashdot, our version numbers seem to be increasing in ever smaller steps - from version 0.98 to 0.98.1, to 0.98.2. Looking at how human personalities grown and change with time, human beings are always perpetually works in progress. And I realize now, I'm no different.

Got to find a reason/A reason things went wrong...

Never start no static/I just get it off my chest

Things are starting to get to a point where the pool of people I know with whom I can spend more than five minutes without getting grossly pissed off by them is growing smaller and smaller by the day; in the meantime, the block function in Adium is getting a serious workout. Unfortunately, Adium doesn't neatly organize all of my contacts who are blocked into a separate list the way Fire does. I've heard that Adium's upcoming 1.0 release is supposed to fix that though.

I've always been a stickler for classification and organization - chalk it up to being indoctrinated trained in the biological sciences. From my training and through my astute observations, I've been able to group the people in my life into various categories. Taxonomically speaking, I've used personality traits as my characters; maybe when I get around to it, I'll draw up a suitable tree.


It all comes back to you you're gonna get what you deserve/Try and test that you're bound to get served

Hence, this little running tally that I've made up in my head, in the hopes that maybe I'll learn from this little Rogue's Gallery I've assembled in my life - maybe I'll learn to avoid more people like these in the future, and keep them from getting their hooks into my life before it's too late. And so, here I present the first edition of the Ctenuchid's Personal Catalogue of Obnoxious People:

1) Arrogantus maximus - yes, dear, you have an opinion, and yes dear, you're entitled to it. But no, you're not entitled to berate and beat down people who disagree with you. And no, you're not entitled to yell and scream at me as if you seem to be right and I seem to be wrong without any regard whatsoever for what I have to say. Believe it or not, you don't know everything about everything, and while I'm sure you enjoy seeing me entertain your endless screeds with the nodding of my head...deep down inside, I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you.

2) Expectus toomuchus - God knows I try to be a good person. I really do. But for some reason which I can't for the life of me ascertain and/or fathom, you seem to hold me to some insanely high standard of perfection to which I can't possibly live up to. And I think you know it. Newsflash: I make mistakes just like everyone else. Just like you. I tried to be patient with you when you did things I didn't like - I think it's only fair I be treated the same way.


3) Hypocritica doublestandardia - "This uniquely pernicious class of individual is usually characterized by a highly defensive reaction which appears to be evolutionarily optimized to deal maximum damage to individuals of the genus Ctenucha. The reason for this is unknown. The defensive reaction is known to be grossly disproportionately large compared to a stimulus which may be relatively benign in nature..."

- of course, you know I saved the best for last. What else can I say about someone who routinely twists my own words against me to mean the exact opposite of what I intended to say in the first place? And this of course, conveniently feeds your Martyrdom Complex which consistently puts you in the position of innocent victim and me in the position of vile evildoer. Go ahead, ask me another question, when you know that whatever I say, it'll be the wrong answer in your book, and I'll be in the wrong for answering it no matter what my answer is. If I give you the answer x you'll chastise me for it not being y. And when I give the answer y you'll say how I'm wrong for it because it's too much like x. Since when is friendship all about being part of an ego-stroking circle-jerk? That's more than just unfair. It's greedy and selfish.


3.1) subspecies Preferentia againstmeitia - this unique beast (the result of a potential hybridization event between the above and E. toomuchus) thinks it's perfectly fine for their friends to behave as badly as they want to, as poorly as they want to, and, yet, when presented with a hint of human imperfection from me, immediately leap down my throat telling me what an awful of horrible person I am, shoving my own mistakes down my throat like so much vomit at the dinner table. Never mind how badly their other friends have treated them. Do I get the benefit of the doubt like they do? How about a "Get Out of Jail Free" pass? Oh no. Naturally no. Of course, no.

And so gentle reader, thus endeth the lesson. Tune in next time when I update the Personal Catalogue to include university administration and faculty...

Requiem for an Entomologist

Lake Opeongo, Summer 2005

I spent a lot of time ruminating on this. I was going to type out this long philosophical post on the glories and wonder of field work, and how Mike was someone who showed me that, and gave me so much because of it. But it's all just...well. Right now it just feels so fake and plastic, and it wouldn't be fair to him.

So all I'll say is this: God bless you Mike. And thank you, for everything.


Fishgut Bay, searching for water scorpions, Summer 2005

EDIT: I apologize if I lost anyone with this post - Mike Spironello was my TA for the third year entomology course which I took late last summer in 2005. Not only did I get to go back to Harkness (see the link in the sidebar) - but I got to experience more of Algonquin Park. Really one of the high points of the year.

What always just blew me away about Mike was how he fit my ideal image of a grad student to a "T" - someone who just breezed through life in a wholly nonchalant way, and yet in the snap of a finger could look at an insect and recite on command an almost encyclopedic amount of knowledge about it. A razor sharp mind whose sense of fun and enjoyment of life was something I'd never seen before.

More information on what happened can be gleaned by going to the link in the title, and I suggest you at least take a small glance to get to know him better.

The pictures are from the Flickr page of my friend and fellow entomological colleague, Yasser Habib (Later resized on Photobucket to fit the window).