Month: July 2020

Little Things That Make Me Smile

Inspired by Cheshire Moon‘s song “The Little Things,” this post really is just a couple recent pictures of things that make me happy, and I hope they’ll make you happy too.

First off, the cat photo I’m not counting as a cat photo, because first you have to actually find the cat.

Second, my visual example of that lovely feeling when something you’ve ordered finally arrives in the mail, even when it’s something small. (Shout out to Pridosaurs!)

And third, a whole bunch of goldfinches perched on the catnip just outside the garage side door. (There were six of them intermittently within photographing range.)

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A Brief Explanation of Artificial Selection

Exactly what it says on the packaging.

Over the course of history, humans have continually and repeatedly manipulated the reproduction of organisms to manifest select traits of preference. This is known as artificial selection. Because at the time, farmers weren’t aware of genes and alleles, farmers selected based on phenotype, rather than genotype. Once they had chosen a trait they wanted to see prevalent in their livestock population, they isolated the organisms already expressing it to breed amongst themselves. By doing so for multiple generations, they ensured the organisms were “purebred,” or solely carrying the selected characteristics.

Since this selection isn’t natural, the target traits aren’t necessarily advantageous to survival, or useful at all, as can be seen with pigeon breeding, a popular hobby in England in Darwin’s time. In that case, they were selecting for size, shape of beak, color, and other such trivialities.

In contrast, plants like kale were selected for more defining traits, in this case the large leaves. Kale, like cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, broccoli, and cauliflower, was developed via artificial selection from wild mustard. Interestingly, though these are all drastically varying vegetables, and many of them are likely not mentally associated with each other, they’re all of the same species: Brassica oleracea.

This is because in artificial selection, the traits selective breeding is based on are all present within one species. This in itself seems obvious, since it’s a requirement of creating viable and reproducing offspring. However, in this case it means that even generations later, the results are manifestations of different alleles, not different genes, and as such their descendants are still of the same species. Furthermore, especially since farmers had no knowledge of alleles, but rather were choosing based on what they saw, they were selecting for many traits at a time, hence the drastic differences between resulting offspring.

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Hawaiian Sudoku

Plenty of people play Sudoku. With its grids for numerals, one of each number per row/column, but also per square, and the many varying difficulties the initial number line-up can provide, the puzzle game is portable, convenient, and engaging. However, I don’t often play it anymore.

This story starts in an airport in Hawaii, with a bored kid and an equally bored mother waiting for a flight. Though I don’t remember the details, I do know that Mom found a book of Hawaiian Sudoku to trade off while we waited, and that when I rediscovered it about a year ago, I addicted to it all over again. Which, I mean, as far as compulsions go, playing number games while listening to my History teacher really wasn’t that bad.

So what is Hawaiian Sudoku? Well, rather than grids, it’s a map of overlapping circles laid out in an image (hibiscus, poi pounders, volcanoes, etc.). Each circle operates like the rows and columns in the original game — there can only be one of each number, 1-6, in each circle. Furthermore, the same rule applies to diagonals — straight lines cut across the image — and parts of the edges, with shading and dots indicating which segments start and end where.

Here lies the problem — I no longer know what to do with a standard Sudoku puzzle. It should be easy, right? It used to be. But now, I’m so used to circular Sudoku, with its fluid, almost hypnotic cascade effect, the grids I grew up with seem foreign, uncompromising, and almost disturbingly blank in their formatting.

So, anyhow, that’s the story of why I have to relearn traditional Sudoku, and hopefully (if I didn’t scare you off with that bit) a recommendation for you to check out the Hawaiian version! Like I said, it’s addictive, but it’s also worth it, at least I think so.

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