Aleta's Book Report

by John Tayman This was another "I heard it on NPR" book. I think it was Fresh Air two years ago. The author was so animated in his description of the book that I ordered it the next day, forgot I had ordered, and ordered it again. I think Beth Dunigan has the extra copy. I found it amazing that the United States actually behaved in this manner toward a group of persons infected with leprosy- but then I think about spread of disease and few treatment options at the time. The personal stories are fantastic. Throughout the reading, one meets different famous people who came to "tour" the facilities through the years, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Mark Twain, and movie stars Shirley Temple and Bud Abbot of Abbot and Costello. The reader learns much about leprosy, and the book really makes the reader realize that we as a people know very little of long illness. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5183996

by Oliver Sacks This is my favorite Oliver Sacks book. Sacks relates stories about patients having neurological disorders. "Cupid's Disease" was a great chapter about a little old woman who heard music from the twenties in her head. It turns out, she contracted syphilis which went dormant for decades. When it began to re-emerge, she started having aural hallucinations. Her syphilis was cured, but only after Sacks assured her that she would continue to hear the music, as the damaged area would not heal. This was great for her - she wanted to keep the music and was refusing treatment if the antibiotics killed the music as well as the syphilis. This story was used in an episode of "House, M.D." Another story from the book is about a man who had a stroke and could not sense his own leg. Lying in bed in the hospital, he reached down and felt a cold hairy leg in the bed with him. He became afraid and threw the leg out of bed - unfortunately, it was his own leg. He end...

Struggle for Existence I have been re-reading Darwin's book, and I notice that I am reading it from a completely different viewpoint. My first read, like many of you, was as a biology undergraduate student reading a required text. Now I find that I am reading this from the view of a biology educator. Chapter 3 had several topics slap me in the face, and I have to share these topics. All of these topics are the main focus of our basic biology texts and I found Project WILD activities that addressed these subjects Coevolution - Darwin does not call it this name, but this is what our textbooks call it. He discusses the relationship between mistletoe and apple trees, and then seed dispersal. Exponential growth - again, not called so by Darwin, but we have all studied this and factors which control populations. He discusses the condor as example of this phenomenon. Predator-Prey relationships - "Quick Frozen Critters" comes to mind with the rabbits and coyotes. Competition for...