We're knee-deep in molecular genetics now in AP Biology--and it's not your father's biology anymore, or even your older sister's. She only had to contend with mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA. Created by WGScott, shared under CC The biology world has exploded with RNA confetti! miRNA  siRNA.  ncRNA RNAi piRNA tasiRNA and rasiRNA While this leads to big ...

Teaching matters.We owe it to our children to get it right.  What do you care to know about the world? There's a place for what used to be called boredom, for empty spaces to slide into your mind. It's not particularly unpleasant, but it lacks the dopamine we've programmed our children, ourselves, to crave. If you sit still long enough ...

What I WANT to do this summer: Create themed artBlogGet a little tanKeep a mani/pediLearn how to play tennisWhat I NEED to do this summer:Finish four (possibly five) commissioned portraitsFinish my prospectusWrite my final paperLose weightClean/organize my apartmentHow great would it be if I could do all ten?!? We shall see. I have 74 days. 

And she forgot the stars, the moon and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not: but in peace Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. John Keats, ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. ''The Second Coming,'' ...

Is it possible to care too much? Is it possible to have too much passion? Could you imagine a world in which too much of a good thing could actually turn out to be a bad thing...? Can caring too much and having too much invested, ultimately narrow your focus so much that you are unable to see the bigger picture? Can caring too much cause you to ...

I lost a friend this week, a strong woman who once jumped out of airplanes to fight forest fires, and lost her fight with some vagrant cells after a long, long battle. None of us are permanent, of course, a flippant statement when one is healthy. She's dead, I'm still here. That won't always be true for me. Nor you. Nor our students. *** I ...

I would like very much to go to the Siemen's STEM Institute this summer, though after today, I'm not sure they'd welcome me  in their midst. I've spent hours wrestling with a Flip camera, MS Movie Maker, and and apparent conflict between the chip set in my laptop and the rest of the world (a chip with a chip on its shoulder), and  may be ...

An Cailleach Bhearra wandered around back in the 10th century in western Ireland, eating ''seaweed, salmon, and wild garlic'' (my kind of woman), looking for firewood. If the day was bright and sunny, beware--she had gathered plenty of wood and was set for many cold days ahead. If the day was gray, she didn't bother, and she will make the days ...

A drum found on the edge of the Delaware Bay. Grace God, I know nothing, my sense is all nonsense, And fear of You begins intelligence; Does it end there? For sexual love, for food, For books and birch trees I claim gratitude, But when I grieve over the unripe dead My grief festers, corrupted into dread, And I know nothing. Give us our daily ...