onilecraM | Marcelino

Now It Has Begun…

Well, I’d rather not brag to Liz “I told you so,” so I decided to tell the whole web that I told it so. One Neon Tetra down, twelve more to go. When we got back tonight from dinner, Liz made this discovery. One of her little guys had sunk to the bottom. “Now it has begun” was all I could say. (I got hit for that remark.) Oh well. The matrix of life has readjusted itself. Now we are dealing with a smaller organism number in the same size matrix. I am not sure which of my hypotheses is correct, however. Liz noted that the Pleco was looking sort of aggressive afterwards, but that doesn’t prove anything. As for the other hypothesis, none of the other Neons look suspicious, so I am not sure of the validity of that hypothesis. I did think of a new alternative hypothesis, the suicide hypothesis: A Neon Tetra, after being exposed to the pressure of 13 other roommates, reaches a critical stress level and kills himself. Since he cannot drown himself (or jump out of the tank) this is done by a refusal to swim. The swim bladders now deflate, and once at the bottom, the sunken fish starves to death (or suffocates - I will have to check my high school bio book on that one). I will get back to you on this as my experiment continues. I expect at least one more to die before this weekend. (Liz thinks I am mean.) The fact is, no one considers the scientist who proved that dolphins were being killed in tuna nets mean. They implicated the fishermen who subjected them to those conditions as the perpetrators of the crime. Just a thought. You decide.
I am thinking that a way to prove my hypothesis is to have my father perform an autopsy on these little guys as they die off. We can rule out foul play or maybe stress induced death by this method. The latter can be done via a blood test - if the cholestorol levels are too high, we can assume stress. We shall see.
In other news, I went out to dinner with my father and Liz tonight. He is in Gainesville learning some flow-cytometry methods from some doctor at the med school. I assume he intends to put this knowledge to use somehow. Dinner was really good, and the conversation was even better. It was pretty nice, because Liz took away some of the tension that had been existing between my father and I, and my father alleviated some of the tension that has been plaguing Liz and I. (I live a stressful life.) Either way, stress was lower tonight, and I learned a lot about my dad. I guess I don’t give him enough credit all the time. He deserves more. When I listen to him, I actually learn a lot. I should probably have done this more often growing up. Maybe now I will. Maybe not. Who knows…. We all have to learn on are own at some point. Either way, tonight was productive.
Had lunch with Amier today also. We talked about RhinoHazard at lunch today. He gave me some thoughts about database programming. If anyone knows where I can find professionals capable of doing some massive database programming, drop me an email at Marcelino.Alvarez@duke.edu Progress continues, however. We are shooting for an August release. I really don’t know how feasible that is given the current lack of a database. I will keep you posted on this.
I think this is all for tonight. I need to study some organic chemistry now. Test next Wednesday. Yay.
Goodnight, everyone.