marichiko

I was at various times a medical librarian, science librarian/subject specialist for both the University of Idaho and Ft. Lewis College in Durango. I was head of Reference at a major public library in Colorado Springs, and I was acting director of the Helen Fowler Library at Denver Botanic Gardens. I finished up my illustrious career as a janitor.

Please don't insult the men and women who have literally spent their entire adult lives both studying and doing science.

MITOCHONDRIA:
mi·to·chon·dri·on (mt-kndr-n)
n. pl. mi·to·chon·dri·a (-dr-)
A spherical or elongated organelle in the cytoplasm of nearly all eukaryotic cells, containing genetic material and many enzymes important for cell metabolism, including those responsible for the conversion of food to usable energy. It consists of two membranes: an outer smooth membrane and an inner membrane arranged to form cristae.

What's cristae? What's an eukaryotic cell? What's cytoplasm? Further, what is the evolutionary importance of the mitochrondria? Have cells always had mitochrondria? How do they convert food to usable energy?

Hell, what's the difference between a plant cell and an animal cell? I bow before a person of such intelligence as yours who can now throw these words around without ever having read Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene, never studied the ground breaking work of Linus Pauling and, of course, never bent over a microscope, or never sat up all night memorizing those damned isomers and tautometers or the composition of the double helix. Hats off to every cellurite for being able to read the latest publications in Science with only a dictionary.


No, waa, waa poor 12% of Americans living below the poverty line, including many of the disabled. My life would be very different today if some damn scientist would have stuck his head out of the lab and said to me, "You need hyperbaric therapy, baby. You need medicines that we are now experimenting with for various types of brain injury - especially apoxia (go look it up). And while you're looking things up, look up Mary Sue Coleman. We need more scientists like her.

I could write you a horror story every week about the life of some OTHER disabled person living on SSI or SSDI if you want. I am more than willing to write those stories. I can think of 6 or 7 just off the top of my head right now - and me with memory problems!

If you, as a scientist cannot understand the points I am trying to make, then I can only believe you write out of personal bias - not science. I would be fascinated to read your hypothesis, a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences.

I will even comply with a double blind study just for you. And me. If it will help me go back to work, I'll try anything.

And Bri, I have admitted to severe anxiety problems, problems controlling my temper, severe depression, etc. I wasn't this was way before. I am now.

And Bri, I don't want a penny from you. Make your charitable donations anywhere you wish except to me. In fact, send them to Bin Laden first. And if you'll recall, I helped YOU with some of your English Lit questions. My help wasn't anything special, according to you, but you kept PM-ing me with questions, and I kept doing my best to give you research ideas, etc. I never asked you for a damn thing in return except how your papers turned out, and you never even gave me so much as the courtesy of an answer. Then you'd PM me again over Rupert Brooke or some other ass-hole. Why didn't you ask your prof, instead?

- From Burning, by Gary Snyder

Explicate THAT for me, Bri. And you thought Herrick was difficult.