#science pagan

[theforestalwaysreturning]

In honor of the first rain of the year in my patch of Northern California.

Thank you, please stay long and visit often.

[grimnirs-child]

A question from a fellow Heathen labrat. Is there anyone I could kind of.. send the spirits of the mice and rats we cull to? I don't think they're Odin's thing, really. (Though the cervical dislocation we use to ensure death following the CO2 chamber does lead me to think of the CD that can happen with hanging if the hanged falls from a sufficient height..) I thought Thor because god of the common people, and our critters are pretty common..

Is there anyone you go to? And do you think it'd be iffy or weird if, when I do help out with a cull, I dedicate the deaths? As a kind of low-key animal sacrifice?? but not really?? I dunno, I guess my main thought is that I'm bringing death and I feel like I should Do Something With It, but idk what.

I dedicate mine to Odin, but that is because all the animals I handle & cull are experimental mice [as opposed to breeders etc] and part of my work, which is itself dedicated to Him. My relationship with Him is also one of those devotee in-too-deep relationships where all roads lead to Odin, but yeah I can see why that wouldn’t be appropriate for everyone.

I know what you mean about wanting to Do Something With It, I thank & honour the spirits of the mice I kill. To me it’s a part of engaging with & being responsible about the job we’re doing - take care to treat the mice well when they are alive, to kill them humanely [except when it has to be via terminal anaesthesia for experimental reasons, I always use CD & I take doing that correctly very seriously], and to treat their spirits with respect after death. 

So I do think dedicating that work, and/or sending the spirits to a deity is appropriate. I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable using culling as a stand-in for a sacrifice in a blot or something of that nature, because to me that is approaching it in a self-centred, “what can I get out of this?” way, rather than centering the animals. Similar to the way I approach culling - which is [where possible, IE with small numbers of animals] to cull via CD, because although it is more stressful for the human involved, it is the quickest for the animal. 

As to which deity, I think you can’t go far wrong with Hel. Bringing death, attempting to do so with as much dignity & mercy as possible, that’s all Hel-stuff, so far as I can see. I also think any deity noted for compassion & being approachable could be appropriate, so yes Thor could work there, I also want to say Sigyn & Sif. I have an instinct to say Angrboda would be another possible, as a mother & protector of beasts & animals, but I’d need to ask someone who knows Her better for a second opinion. [ @hyacinth-halcyon, any thoughts?]

[grimnirs-child]

Fungi

So you know I made that post about how I feel slightly suspicious and wary toward plants because they are, from a Kingdom Animalia perspective, highly Other and not to be fucked with?

I feel sort of the opposite about fungi. I have a lot of affection for and feel a sense of kinship with fungi. Yes they are a separate kingdom from we animals, but Fungi & Animalia are more closely related to each other than to the other kingdoms. 

Some of them are poisonous, some of them cause disease, but are not animals in general and humans in particular far more dangerous? They eat what we will not, they grow quietly and patiently in the dark, ignored by so many people. They love to grow in symbiosis, as colonies, as communities.

Fungi are our first cousins. Show them some love.

[secondgenerationimmigrant]

Part of my planned readings. If anyone around knows any C#, suggestions are welcome.

[by-the-tongs-and-by-the-hammer]

So I put a draumstafir under my pillow yesterday, and I did notice that my dreams were different. Though, for science, I'll have to keep it there for a few more nights to determine what it's doing, if it's doing anything.

[grimnirs-child]

Phase I of the Science Oracle is complete.

I have provisional correspondences for my 30 virus fact cards ... now just waiting for the shop to post me the set of cell biology fact cards. Woo.

[grimnirs-child]

A Geneticist's Invocation to the Ancestors

I honour my Ancestors, whose struggles and successes are written in my genome. I honour Mitochondrial Eve, Y Chromosome Adam, and the haplotypes that walked out of the cradle of humanity to every corner of the world.

To each and every Ancestor -- who struggled and fought and lived and died -- but never too soon to pass on their phenotype -- through the mists of time, I salute you!

To LUCA, the cenancestor, the root of the Tree of Life, three billion years old -- through the mists of time, I salute you!

To the first of the cells, born from the cradle of the RNA World -- I salute you!

I find it incredibly moving, and humbling, to remember that I am, and we all are, merely the latest link in a chain of unbroken inheritance that reaches back to the very beginning of life. All the challenges that have been faced by three billion years of ancestry, written in our genomes.

Some definitions below the cut for those who need a quick primer on some of the stuff I mention in that invocation.

Mitochondrial Eve -- mitochondria are parts of the cell that were once free-living, they contain their own DNA and are only inherited from one's mother. All the mitochondrial DNA in people today can be traced back to one woman, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 200'000 years ago.

Y Chromosome Adam -- Y chromosomes are inherited only from one's father, if you have one at all. [I personally do not and am a person of the XX variety] All current Ys can be traced back to one man, Y Chromosome Adam, who lived around 100'000 years ago. Note that he and Mitochondrial Eve were not contemporaries.

Haplotypes -- groups of genetic variants that tend to be inherited together. Haplotype analysis has been used to trace the spread of ancient humans through the world, as roughly speaking, people from one area, eg Europe, tend to have similar haplotypes, which will be different compared to people from Asia or Africa.

Phenotype -- one's observable characteristics. I have brown hair, that is my phenotype. My genotype may be I have one gene for brown hair and one for blonde, but brown is dominant so my phenotype is brown hair.

LUCA, aka the cenancestor -- the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all life on the planet, from humans to E.coli. Thought to have lived around 3 billion years ago, all life evolved from LUCA's descendents. The Tree of Life is a map of when in evolutionary time different lineages branched off. So when the ancestors of modern chimpanzees split off from the ancestors of modern day humans, etc.

RNA World -- RNA is a 'nucleic acid', a sort of single stranded version of DNA, DNA gets converted into RNA in order to 'read' the information in genes. The hypothesis of the RNA World says that at the very dawn of life, everything was RNA, as RNA can carry out its own reactions, unlike DNA, and that DNA then evolved later as a more stable way to store information. I personally like this hypothesis and think it has a lot to recommend it. [I can't really give a 101-level description of why, without this becoming a 2000 word screed, sorry.]