Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.

In fact, late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. Truth is, John’s endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist.

It is also 10 years ago, that Griff died an engineer and a hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers.

We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and generosity formed not only a cornerstone of the scientific life I have today, but resonates in the person and father I have become as well.

At a northern New Jersey Catholic high school, in a predominantly Irish town, being a gangly Polish boy from two towns over was not the formula to cultivate one’s popularity or self-preservation. Excelling and throwing the curve in biology and chemistry classes didn’t help either, nor did being a David Bowie fan in a place where Bruce Springsteen was revered. That’s probably where my nickname, “Zowie,” came from – the name of the glam rocker’s first child.

Worse, I had skipped a grade in elementary school, and being a year behind physically, was not compatible with self-defense during high school gym class.

So, it was sometime in junior year, when scoundrels had me cornered and slammed against the wall, books thrown down the hallway, that a simple gesture saved me. John, already well on his way to his adult height of 6′ 7″ or 6′ 8″, stepped in and said, “Hey, lay off of Zowie. He’s goin’ places.” And with that, the beatings stopped.

John and I were soccer fans. At that time, soccer hadn’t taken off in the States but I was a huge player and had met John at Giants Stadium where I had season tickets (Section 113, row 7, seat 26) for the relocated New York Cosmos. At just $4 a ticket, I could afford a season’s pass to see some of the greatest international soccer stars of the late 20th century: Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer, Italy’s Giorgio Chinaglia, Yugoslavia’s Vladislav Bogićević;, and, of course, Brazil’s Pelé.

John’s family were long-time Giants season ticket holders and probably got their Cosmos season tickets (three rows behind me) through some sort of promotional giveaway. I recall that John was surprised that a science dork like myself would be cool enough to come to soccer games alone – my father dropping me off outside the gates so he could go home and watch his beloved football on TV. But we Jersey boys did love soccer, even though we were at a school where American football and basketball reigned supreme. Many Saturday and Sunday afternoons were spent at the massive stadium during soccer’s American heyday of the late 1970s, when crowds would reach 50,000 – 75,000 strong.

John had a gift to make anything fun and to make anyone laugh. I recall sitting with him in a ski lodge in Amsterdam, NY, as I was recovering from frostbite during an ill-prepared class trip ski weekend. He pulled me into an imaginary board game with a napkin dispenser, where he pretended each napkin contained a message as to how to proceed during each turn.

John was a physical caricature, handsome but goofy, self-effacing but self-confident, and possessed of a clever and caustic wit, which he carried into professional life and fatherhood. No one was safe from John’s good-hearted and bombastic comedy routines.

Now, my memories of John seem half a life away, from the impromptu high school graduation party he called at my house to his pride at finishing his engineering degree and managing facilities for a million-square foot building in Manhattan. Perhaps he protected me as a kid because he knew that way deep down, he, himself, was destined to become an engineering geek. As well as the hero, protecting the lives of others in a very real way.

On the glorious fall morning of 11 Sept 2001, I was fixing coffee for my wife when the newsreader on my pager announced that a jet had struck the south tower of the World Trade Center.

I had missed my recent 20-year high school reunion and had not known that John had only months before been appointed director of operations at the WTC.

I did not learn until two weeks later that John had facilitated the escape of dozens of workers, handing out wet towels so people could breathe on their way down the stairs. In the book 102 Minutes by New York Times writers Jim Lynch and Kevin Flynn, John is immortalized in the corroborated account of the elevator rescue of 72-year-old Port Authority construction inspector, Tony Savas.

When he returned to 78, Greg Trapp saw a group of three Port Authority employees at work on the doors to the elevator where Tony Savas, a seventy-two-year-old structural inspector, was trapped. Trapp peered into the small gap and saw him, a man with thinning white hair, seemingly serene. One of the workers grabbed a metal easel, wedging the legs into the opening, trying to spread the doors from the bottom, where they seemed to have the greatest leverage. But their efforts had the opposite effect at the top of the doors, which seemed to pinch tighter.

At that moment, John Griffin, who had recently started as the trade center’s director of operations, came over to the elevator bank. At six feet, eight inches tall, Griffin had no problem reaching the top of the door to apply pressure as the others pushed from the bottom. The doors popped apart. Out came Savas, who seemed surprised to find Griffin, his new boss, involved in the rescue. Savas seemed exhilarated, possessed of a sudden burst of energy, rubbing his hands together, or so it seemed to Trapp.

“Okay,” Savas said. “What do you need me to do?”

One of the Port Authority workers shook his head. “We just got you out-you need to leave the building.”

No, Savas insisted. He wanted to help. “I’ve got a second wind.”

Both men perished soon after in the tower’s collapse.

John’s wife, June, the former June Maarleveld and sweetheart of the class behind us, was quoted in New York Times, Portraits of Grief:

“He was at the back of about 30 people they were evacuating,” his wife, June Griffin, related from the accounts of survivors. “He had been in fires before — he should have gotten out.”

Mrs. Griffin speculated that her husband, instead of running for the exits, headed for the fire control center, where his training as a fire safety officer would have directed him. “He was an engineer,” Mrs. Griffin said. “He must have thought, `Buildings don’t just fall down.’”

It’s unfortunate but leaving New Jersey and running on the tenure-track treadmill in a biomedical career caused me to lose track of a great many friends, and in some ways, to stop appreciating life even. Since John’s death, we’ve all found a little more time in our schedules to make time for one another. As the father of a little girl conceived in the months after the terrorist attacks, I try to respect June’s privacy and send little gifts for the girls every so often. I cannot imagine how they and nearly 3000 other families deal with the most public of tragedies that came to roost among those at the start or in the prime of their adult lives.

I finally worked up the guts to go to Ground Zero five years ago for the first time since the attacks. Despite all the bickering about what the memorial should look like, there was already some small memorial area set up in the interim. John’s name sits at the top of one column of names on placards commemorating those who died there. And I so dearly wish that I had attended our high school reunion to thank John for his friendship during my formative years.

Instead, I keep a makeshift memorial to him, constructed at my old lab, that now sits outside my office and greets me every day. I also keep some other reminders: John’s picture, a photo of the Waldwick, NJ, memorial to John and all the firefighters who perished, a personal note from June with some of the best marital advice I’ve ever received, among others.

Some great minds have said that facing death often gives people the license to finally live their lives.

I am fortunate to have been touched by a soul who needed no such reminder.

I first started experimenting with watercolor about 10 years ago, and from the beginning got into “wet in wet technique.”  To paint “wet in wet” you paint a base color and then add other colors to it while it’s still wet.  This allows the different colors to bleed into each other, making interesting patterns. People who saw my wet-in-wet work at shows kept mentioning how much it looked like cells under a microscope, so I found some images of cells in mitosis, or cell division, and discovered that they did indeed look a lot like what I was doing.  After looking at the images I began actually trying to paint cells, but I guess I’ve been painting them for about a decade.

Last winter, when DC was buried under several feet of snow, I decided to finally make a move into online art sales, opening up a shop on Makers Market, a juried online marketplace with a scientific bent.  The cell pieces were instantly my most popular, so I’ve been making more and more cell images.  I’ve been showing my work, mainly at art festivals around DC, for about 10 years.  Selling online connected me to a whole new audience and provided a creative shot in the arm. A bunch of biologists bought my work, and some of them suggested new subjects, like bacteria or blood cells.  One buyer pointed me toward “brainbows” – a series of images of mouse brain cells dyed in bright colors.  I loved them, and the images inspired me to begin painting brain cells.

I was talking about this new work with an artist friend, Sean Hennessey, who mentioned that he was having a show of his work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and suggested that my cell paintings would be a good fit. The curator at NIH agreed, so I started to conceptualize this show. I decided that a whole show of mitosis paintings would be a little boring, and I wanted the exhibit to have a stronger theme.

I got to thinking about how activity at the cellular level underlies major upheavals in our lives, like falling in love, giving birth and dying.  I decided to divide my paintings into two groups – love and death.  It’s a kind of ridiculously grandiose theme, but I’m a lover of opera and Russian literature, and heck, go big or go home, right?

I learned a whole lot of anatomy and biology while painting these pictures.  I looked up microscopic photographs in books and on the web and did many practice paintings, trying to get the balance right between accuracy and artistry.  The “love” paintings focus on the cells that are involved in attraction and desire – the skin, eyes, and ears, the brain and the circulatory system.  I’m very proud of my blood vessels, especially my abdominal aorta.  (That’s not technically a cell, but ok, too bad.)

For the “death” paintings, I depicted three microscopic killers – bacteria, viruses and cancer.  The cancer piece really hit home, because I lost both my parents to pancreatic cancer over the last decade, and I had never really approached it in my art before.  And I included two mitosis paintings, because cell division underlies the whole process of life and death.

I’m really happy with the work I’ve put together for this exhibit, and I feel like it’s opened new doors for me creatively. The exhibit opens January 14^th and will be up through March 5, 2011 at the NIH Clinical Center West Gallery (10 Center Drive, Bethesda MD 20892.) For more info about getting to NIH, see:http://www.nih.gov/about/visitor/index.htm

(Originally published in BourgeonOnline)

Short answer:
Yes, of course it is.

Long answer:
Let’s consider the life, or rather the death, of a lobster. In nature lobsters begin very small and die a million horrible deaths in a million horrible ways. As they get older the death rate drops. We have ample evidence that lobsters do not go gentle into that good night, dying peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. Instead, once mature, a lobster that doesn’t go into the pot might face off with cod, flounder, an eel or two, or one of many diseases.

Considering that one of the natural deaths a lobster may face is to be torn limb from limb by an eel, getting tossed into a pot of boiling water doesn’t seem quite so gruesome. But there is a big difference between death by eel and death by human, the eel is not human. And now we have hit upon the broader question that must be answered before we can understand the short answer given above: Are humans a part of nature, or apart from nature?

We have an enormous amount of evidence that humans are a part and product of the Earth. Humans are a naturally evolved species related to all other forms of life on Earth, physically shaped by the abiotic parameters of our planet, like gravity, temperature, humidity, partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen, etc., and physiologically dependant on other forms of life for essential amino acids. We are not travelers from a supernatural realm or from a distant star forced to bide our time in a foreign land before we can travel home again. We are home.

We are natural, and what we do is natural. This is our place. The cabin in the woods is just as natural as the trees that grow around it, and those trees are just as natural as cell phone towers.

We human beings, you and me, are a natural species that evolved and lives on this Earth. We have as much right to use resources and alter the Earth as any other species. We are on an equal footing with other species, not above, below, or beside. We do not have dominion over the earth as the creationists want us to believe, we are not alien invaders that should cringe at every footfall as the hippie vegans want us to believe, and despite what the conservationists say we are no more stewards of the Earth than dung beetles.

Only when we understand that will be we begin to realize that the environmental issues we face today have less to do with what is good for humans and more to do with balancing the rights of our species with the rights of the rest of life on Earth. (For what it’s worth I favor a future with taller buildings and vast swaths of the earth blessed with benign neglect.)

So yes, it is perfectly alright and natural to boil your lobster… but then again, we did naturally evolve the capacity to think that boiling lobsters might be wrong… so maybe you shouldn’t. What do I know?

Just don’t not do it for the wrong reasons.

Farzaan, eight-year old grandson of the senior author, is a regular viewer of ‘Backyard Science’ shows on television. Some months ago he dared his grand father, a university teacher of plant cytogenetics to coach him perform molecular biology experiments in their home in Kolkata, India.

The kid had jeered at his friend-grandpa: “You bore me incessantly with your books and bla bla about ‘jeans’ (genes), ‘Diana’ (DNA), ‘rana’ (RNA). C’mon, shut up and play with me now”.

Grandpa couldn’t figure out the course of action; he didn’t want to distance himself with either Farzaan or DNA. Could DNA be a kid’s play, the Professor wondered! The oldie knew to perform experiments only in well-equipped labs! He was neither trained nor did he ever train his students for molecular experiments outside the laboratories.

It was a virtually impossible challenge for the professional cytogeneticist@ until he stumbled upon ‘The MacGyver Project: Genomic DNA Extraction and Gel Electrophoresis Experiments Using Everyday Materials’ [1] through a Google search of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) sites. “Oh, no that cannot be true”, was the professional’s first reaction.

He hesitantly tried the procedure and, it did happen. Wow, it could be play! He then, successfully extracted genomic DNA from a leaf of betel (Piper betle L.) known as paan chewed by many Indians including himself. Once successful with the MacGyver protocol, the present authors began playing the DNA game. Both were happy with the novel eduplay.

They found the MacGyver extraction procedure to be the most handy and amenable to home-kitchen experiments among several inexpensive protocols available online.

A bulb of onion (Allium cepa L.) is a preferred material for demonstration of genomic DNA extraction in most protocols. The duo thought of doing something different. They used an onion flower-bunch known as inflorescence instead and obtained a substantial yield of DNA .

The experimental details are essentially and fundamentally similar to many other procedures already out there. However, items available at home and indigenous materials available in the local Indian market were used.

All items i.e. material, brass mortar-pestle, Aquaguard®-filtered drinking water, Vim® liquid dish washing soap, propanol or ethanol, homoeopathic vials etc, were pre-chilled in the icebox of a refrigerator.

Onion inflorescences attached to long stalks were purchased from a local vegetable vendor. The spathe (leafy wrap around the inflorescence) was removed. Flowers were, then, scraped from the tip of the stalk and put in a brass pestle for grinding.

One teaspoonful of water and a pinch of Tata® iodised table salt were added to flowers. The flower tissue was crushed by grinding and pulverised to make a viscous solution.

Two drops of Vim® detergent were added. The mixture was stirred gently with plastic ice-cream spoon for a few minutes.

The mixture was carefully poured in to a homoeopathic vial. Isopropanol, the rubbing alcohol, was slowly poured in the vial with an injection syringe to avoid disturbing the tissue suspension. Bubbles started rising almost immediately and in about ten minutes the DNA-cloud was seen between the mucky stratum of tissue-salt-soap mixture below and the clear alcohol layer above. DNA did not float as expected.

Absolute ethyl alcohol was added in place of isopropyl alcohol in our repeat experiments taking due care that all other steps remained unaltered.

A fascinating result was obtained (see figure below). Three vials represent the stages of precipitation and floatation of DNA.

The duo embarked upon a series of genomic DNA extraction experiments with whatever uncooked live eatables they could lay hands on. The two generations, separated by 55 years, enjoyed every bit of what they did. It was another matter that each experiment left the home kitchen messier and the ladies angrier. It was play!

Both are now among the growing crowd of MacGyver Project-inspired scientists keen to wipe the psychological fear of Molecular Biology from the minds of all interested persons in homes, students in schools, young freshers in colleges and enterprising researchers in small-time developing laboratories anywhere in the world.

As well, the senior author has since standardized the protocol and has shown (in to-be-published work) that genomic DNA as obtained shows exact banding when electrophoresed alongside DNA obtained by standard ‘professional’ protocols and is of equal PCR quality. He is aware of the ethical debates about DIY Molecular Biology by anyone interested anywhere. However, he firmly believes that the outreach of Molecular Biology to outside of costly laboratories, as is the case with agricultural technology and information technology, shall attract billions of minds to understanding and application of New Biology to the well being of global citizens at low costs. He is including the inexpensive procedure in course curriculum and research project work of his current students. Good luck to all MacGyverites!

1. Yas Shirazu, Donna Lee, and Esther Abd-Elmessih (2009) The MacGyver Project: Genomic DNA Extraction and Gel Electrophoresis Experiments Using Everyday Materials. Accessed here.

At some point during Thanksgiving, my mother asked if they “needed to be on the countertop” and when I said “no” they were moved to this photogenic area. Remarks were made about the apt proximity of fruit to fruit flies, the galosh representing the Earth and Nature, etc.

Overall, they were a hit. So don’t be embarrassed to bring a model organism home for the holidays– it can add so much.

Since then, I’ve found myself fully immersed in the web tool, and feel like I can say a few intelligent things about it, especially if you’re reading this as someone who is resisting signing on, or someone who just wants to know a little more about it.

It might help if I first start off with a bit of context.

For instance, my lab sort of already has a twitter account, listed under @sciencescout. Here is an example of type of tweets this account routinely throws out.

All in good fun, since the “jargon in capitals” usually refers to some interesting thing on the internet that has a link (often tenuous) with the word itself. Plus, it’s meant to spur on a scientific drinking game (to quote, “everytime you say the word whilst glass is hoisted, the table must drink”), although I’ve yet to hear about whether folks actually do this or not. Mind you, with almost 800 followers, I’m more than a bit hopeful.

Still, I wouldn’t say the @sciencescout account is “useful.” Good for a chuckle maybe, and for general camaraderie with the Science Scouts, but it doesn’t set itself up well for proper networking or real viral linkage to things of note.

Which is why, I thought it was a good time to set up the personal account (I used @dnghub because there are a LOT of David Ng’s out there!) Actually, I set it up the night before heading of to the TEDxVancouver conference, thinking that if there was a crowd that would be fully embedded with this technology, it would be the crowd at TEDxVan.

Which all leads to the big question: WHAT IS TWITTER GOOD FOR EXACTLY?

Here are my thoughts, many of which I’m guessing can be found elsewhere on the net and described much more eloquently by people cleverer than me, but here goes nevertheless.

1. It is excellent for informal first query type virtual networking. Especially, if you’re hoping to network with the sort of people who are already fond of the social media tool. It’s a bit like how it’s already easier to talk to someone who happens to read your blog, or talk to someone whose blog you happen to read. Except that it takes way less effort. You can begin casual discussions like the drop of the hat, since twitter facilitates this marvelously with its tags: “@” (directed correspondence) and “#” (crowd source type discussions).

I can’t stress how incredibly useful this has been to me already. For example, I have a project getting ready to launch in late January, early February (it’s this one, finally), which necessitated some initial networking with the local and non-local graphic design community. With twitter this has been surprisingly easy. It’s like you can effortlessly initiate an informal query, and folks on the other end can check you out quickly (you can leave your website on your account for instance) to gauge whether they should reply back or not. Much easier than trying to track down email addresses, or going to gatherings in the hope of making contact.

2. It’s a brilliant ice breaker device for meeting someone in person. Twitter was very useful in this context. For instance, at the TEDxVancouver conference, I was an active tweeter (especially around the whole Patrick Moore debacle). Anyway, because there was an active feed around the hashtag #tedxvan, I inadvertently made myself incredibly accessible for discussion when discovering face to face contacts. I found this really cool – a real nice community feel to it all. Plus, your twitter handle works well as a virtual business card, which is nice for a doddering academic like me, who forgets or refuses to get business cards for himself.

3. It is great for receiving pieces of real time information relevant to you. What I mean here, is that if you pick your twitter friends carefully, you’ll get an information feed that is well suited to your needs and personality. For instance, I’m finding it’s wonderful for staying informed with interesting science news, environmental issues, the arts community in vancouver, interesting graphic design bulletins. And this is on top of just staying in touch with some interesting friends, and having the odd chuckle from that “witty” tweeter. For instance, yesterday I found out about “The Danish Text” pretty quick after it came out in the Guardian because of twitter. Sometimes, I even just take a gander at the “trending topics” column for breaking news. Even though most of it is celebrity orientated, you know it must be big when something non-celebrity is seen there.

This stream of information, of course, is best managed when you follow folks who tweet interesting things, tweet with an interest to write well, but also tweet at a somewhat sparing frequency. i.e. you’re not always receiving an onslaught of stuff from one or two profilic users. Anyway, I remember for a while thinking that I’ll just follow anyone who happened to be following me, but then quickly discovered that such a tactic made the stream of information too distracting and too much like white noise.

I should also note that when using twitter, it is really handy to use some third party software to help organize it all. There’s a number of them out there – currently, I’m using Tweetdeck, which seems to work well.

4. Making contact with individuals of significant influence. This is also kind of interesting. The community that uses twitter has an interesting cultural take on how to interact. I mentioned in the first point, that casual networking is easy, but it also seems to be orders of magnitude easier when dealing with folks you might normally never be able to get a word in at all (i.e. important people). This might be because: (a) you don’t have the contact info to initiate a conversation, (b) even if you do, they’re much too busy to give you the time of day, or (c) in the real world, you’d be corresponding with the “office” and we all know how much fun that can be.

I’m not sure why, but things just seem very friendly in twitter land. I’m guessing this has a lot to do with how easy it is to use and fire off snippets of communication.

Twitter correspondence, for example and just to show that my point is valid, has resulted in a special Science Scout badge – just for Ms. Atwood.

5. You’re kind of also doing it to attract readers, and therefore have some influence over what content they might want to look at. This is where there’s a bit of that vanity thing going on here. Much like a website or a blog, twitter probably represents the easiest way to develop a readership. Plus, the stats or your “online clout” are easily noted because your number of followers can be clearly found. And people do follow a variety of different types of twitter writers. Some write purely from a biographical angle (“I’m pouring my coffee right now”) although this is not the most interesting thing read, nor the most effective way to build a readership. I think a way around this is to put a bit of effort into it and write with a bit of humour. Here is an example of the sort of thing I’ve been writing if it has to do with my day to day activities:

Alternatively, the “venting” tweet is pretty interesting to read.

More important, I suppose, is to also try to highlight things of interest to you. Since I’m all about the science and art angle, with a healthy does of environmental concern, if anything intriguing comes my way, I can quickly “RT” or retweet it. Here, I resist always showcasing the stuff coming out of my lab (was doing that initially with the @sciencescout account, but not anymore), because then it all gets a little promotional for my (and presumably) others’ tastes.

Of course, at the end of the day, I’m guessing the best way to build a readership is to think really carefully about who (not your friend or relative or a celebrity) you would follow. Then with that analysis in mind, sit back and consider offering a similar yet personal take on how you would use your twitter account.

Anyway, I’m at about 100 followers right now. Not a lot by any means, but no longer the void I guess.

(You can follow David’s twitter account by clicking @dnghub)

(If you want to leave a comment about the talk, please do so here).

Topic: Alex discusses the influence of gender in his own life in this TEDx talk, describing both medical and social perspectives of gender in our daily lives and the impact and consequences these perspectives bring to every individual.

Links:
Transgender Health Program, VCH, TEDxTt09

Filmed by Craig Ross at TEDx Terry talks 2009 (October 3rd, 2009). Video edited by David Ng.

Well, let’s think about this for a second. There are paintings of unicorns. And there are movies about them. Also unicorns have shown up on tapestries, in novels, poems, songs, video games, tattoos, little sculptures made of plastic that children play with, etc. In fact there are many, many depictions and descriptions of unicorns out there, but are these real unicorns?

No, not at all.

So, with this realization I should like to amend my question to read:

What color is a REAL unicorn?

This is more difficult to answer isn’t it? To answer the original question you were probably thinking to yourself, unicorns are white, or silver, or perhaps even golden. Not many of you thought of a black unicorn or a green one. Although I’m sure someone out there said plaid just to be a smart ass. Indeed, if we could use descriptions of unicorns as evidence, then we could have hardy discussions citing this text or that cartoon. But alas, I wish to know about REAL unicorns and just as some depictions of, say, bears resemble the genuine article, others are a bit more fanciful. So we are best to confine ourselves to the real deal and consider only REAL unicorns when trying to discover their color.

But now that we have restricted our question to REAL unicorns, everything changes and this brings up other questions:

1) What makes a unicorn a unicorn?

2) Are there any REAL unicorns?

3) Depending on the answers to the above questions, can we say anything meaningful about REAL unicorns, or can we only speak about the descriptions of unicorns that came from people’s imaginations?

1) What makes a unicorn a unicorn?

I don’t know. Most descriptions of unicorns look an awful lot like a regular old horse with a pointy (usually spiraling) bone sticking out of the center of its forehead. It’s that bone, a single horn that is supposed to make the unicorn special. But I don’t know if it’s a true horn (like a cow or goat has that never falls off), an antler (like a deer or moose has that falls off and is replaced every year), or some sort of pseudo-horn (different from the other two, like pronghorn or giraffes have). Perhaps it’s not made of bone at all but is a hair-like growth, similar to a rhino’s horn. Is a rhinoceros a unicorn? There are two species that possess a single horn, and indeed some early explorers proclaimed to have found REAL unicorns when they first encountered rhinoceroses. And what of narwhals? Here is a beast with a single horn growing from its “forehead”. The horn even spirals, although it’s actually made of modified teeth. There are numerous insects with single “horns” upon their foreheads. Can an insect be a unicorn?

Let’s take it easy on ourselves and say that a unicorn is a furry beast with the general body shape of a horse (this includes goats, gazelles, deer, etc.) with a hard pointy projection sticking out of its forehead, and move on.

2) Are there any REAL unicorns?

In true scientist fashion I have to say, “I don’t know”. Why? Well the short answer is, you can’t prove a negative (i.e. There are no unicorns). There was a philosopher of science named Karl Popper that helped us with that. The long answer is; we can come up with tons of scenarios where unicorns do exist. Let your imagination run wild:

1. The loose definition of unicorn could include insects, etc.
2. There could be an entire planet of unicorns (presumably with grass, waterfalls, and rainbows)
3. Perhaps unicorns are in some valley in the Himalayas we haven’t checked yet.
4. Maybe unicorns went extinct 1000 years ago and we haven’t found any fossils yet
5. Maybe unicorns do exist, but their horns are actually antlers that grow in 5 seconds and fall off 5 seconds later and decompose 5 seconds after that. And this happens only in the light of a full moon that has been filtered through the leaves of a 100 year old oak tree. The rest of the time they just look like regular horses.

So, yes, there could be REAL unicorns (and leprechauns, and trolls, and fairies, etc.).

3) Can we say anything meaningful about REAL unicorns, or can we only speak about the descriptions of unicorns that came from people’s imaginations?

No, we can’t say anything meaningful about REAL unicorns. Why not? Because we lack that all important thing, that one thing that separates natural from supernatural, real from imaginary, existence from nonexistence: Evidence.

There is no evidence that unicorns exist. Not a body, not a photograph (that didn’t turn out to be fake), not a hair. We have absolutely no evidence of the existence of unicorns. They are indistinguishable from any imaginary item.

No one knows anything about REAL unicorns (I know, can’t prove a negative, but I’m trying to make a point here…). But we can say this another way: Everyone knows all there is to know about REAL unicorns (which is nothing), AND everyone knows exactly as much as everyone else knows about REAL unicorns (again, nothing).

This isn’t to say there aren’t people that can expound for hours on the subject of unicorns in literature or epic poems. I’m not discounting any arguments a scholar may have over the pure whiteness of any given unicorn on any given tapestry or postcard. I’m talking about REAL unicorns, and on the subject of REAL unicorns until some REAL evidence comes our way we are all experts and know all there is to know about REAL unicorns: Nothing.

I was able to hold back the tears when my fourth grade teacher asked this question. My best friend and first real crush raised his hand with rest of my class and shot me an apologetic glance. During my fourth grade year, the No Child Left Behind act was passed, resulting in a survey of students in my Illinois elementary school to locate and highlight common stereotypes about black people. Stereotypes were read aloud and I watched as my classmates raised their hands again and again to show their belief in the statements. I was the only brown student in my entire class and for a whole week I watched as my classmates revealed the stereotypes they had of black people and all of the conditions that came with the label. I disappeared behind a category. During our discussions I wasn’t seen as a kickball captain, doodle queen, or avid reader, I was the black girl.

At the end of the week I came home with a note for my mother, stating that it was imperative for me to choose a race. Even now, almost a decade later, the fury my mother felt on that day would be obvious over a bad connection on the telephone.

“I felt like it was unfair for the school system to claim you as black because you have the influence of so many other people in your life.” She let my brother and I choose our own identities, but saw no right answer. If I checked white, I would miss out many college scholarships and ignore the undeniable hue of my skin. If I checked black, I would be abandoning half of who I was and the struggle of my black ancestors for equal representation. My mother was determined to ensure that the school board would make the reforms necessary to provide an equal education to all children; she made it clear to my brother and me that the goal would not be accomplished through choosing sides.

Despite my mother’s indecision, I chose black. All that is left of my weeks of deliberation is a letter in my file at Unit 4 school district headquarters voicing my mother’s despair at how emotionally torn I was after the entire race choosing ordeal.

I understand now that the motivation for the humiliating classroom survey was to collect data for research of ways to lessen the racial performance gap in schools. As honorable as that motivation was, the survey had a major misapprehension; despite any number of children polled, the data would be inaccurate. The traditional definitions and ideas we have of race in the United States completely disregard the racial barriers that have been crossed since the day they were instated. Race mixing has happened forever and on every continent. The racial categories that society upholds today exclude millions of people with mixed heritage and the mixed privileges that come with them. Forcing people to describe themselves as one race, to align themselves with millions of people with whom they might only share a skin tone interferes with the recognition of the individual.

It can be argued that the unique experiences that come with skin color are what form the strong bonds between members of the same race. To that, I answer that I have not bonded with anyone over the topic of race more than I have with my white mother, whose pale skin has always and will always contrast the golden brown of my own. She has cried with me in moments of injustice, pain, and frustration. She does not have to be black to understand me, that bond that seems to be one of association is actually one of compassion that a person of any color is capable of.

The mandate to assimilate oneself into one of four optional race groups extends to all Americans, even to our current president. As a nine year old I was forced to understand that, yes, I am half white but that’s not the first thing you see. It won’t stop people from using racial slurs or withholding job opportunities. There is not a single checked box that will alleviate my mandated presence in the race battle, no label that will reconcile my inheritance of my mother’s face with my father’s complexion. I am forced to choose every day just as Barack Obama was pressured to give an unprecedented speech about his race and choose a side during the presidential election of 2008. Yes, the election of a biracial man shows some continued success of the civil rights movement in the United States, but is that bit of success worth perpetuating the application of labels and thus perpetuating the divide in our population?

I understand the value of using racial statistics to monitor the progress being made toward an equal opportunity society. Race is so deeply entrenched in our history as a nation, that it would be virtually impossible to immediately stop using racial labels. However, the decision to move toward is one that can be made on a personal level; each person can make a conscious effort. In order to eradicate racism and move toward a less constant focus on race, we need to consciously decide to begin eliminating racial labels as forms of categorization from our vocabularies. There are ways to describe and represent people without referring to their skin color – a genetic aspect that says nothing about their potential as a living human being.

Barack Obama was raised by a white family and therefore indirectly benefited from white privilege. His mother was never denied a job because she was black, never denied a fair education or countless other luxurious yet deserved rights because of her skin color. At age 10, Barack Obama moved to live with his white grandparents in Hawaii. With their financial support he went to Punahou School, one of the best private preparatory schools in Hawaii, and then continued on to attended Columbia and Harvard. With 24.5 percent of the black population below the poverty line in 2008, Barack Obama’s opportunities for privileged schooling were far from those afforded to the average Black American.

Barack Obama is a unique individual; it is ridiculous to group him with millions of people that may not share anything other than skin color in common. In fact, people share more similarities when placed together by blood type than by race. None of Barack Obama’s accomplishments can be credited solely to his skin color; so why then does the world focus on his race so much? It is absurd that the world would expect him to explain his genetic make-up, a choice his parents made some nine months before he was born. During the race for the presidential nomination and throughout the entirety of the presidential race, Barack Obama was forced by the masses to choose a color, to choose a parent.

On November 4, crowds of people gathered on Yale University’s Old Campus and shouted a roaring, boundless cheer. Barack Obama had won the presidency and the atmosphere was one of euphoria. The majority of his supporters were white students. Is Barack Obama not white like them? Can he not be mixed like me? Is he only black like my father? The problem with labeling Barack Obama at all –or any other person for that matter –is that you not only exclude people that might otherwise have a lot in common with him, but that individual also loses some of their own history in the process. Even if the world cannot relinquish the need to categorize using ethnicity, we must recognize that racial groups are outdated and in no way representative of the people they include.

Sheer biology can only offer scientific information about an individual; it provides no real detail about salary, life experience or personality. My choosing black in elementary school provided the school board with no more information than if I would have chosen white. Neither category alone would provide a complete explanation for why I am who I am because biologically and culturally I belong in both. Furthermore, there is no clear definition of race. Debates go on daily about the definition of “Black.” Should African people be included with African-Americans? And how many halves, quarters, or sixteenths qualify a person for each ethnic label?

We are not two groups of people. We never have been. As Barack Obama himself said, “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” Race is a continuum of peaches, caramels, mahoganies, and chocolates. There is no real separation; each skin tone in connected to the next by a hue that is the compromise of the two. There are no physical lines drawn; we are divided only by social barriers that we choose to uphold.

There are similar experiences that connect many people of the same skin color. These experiences, however, rise from socioeconomic influences, not directly from one’s skin color, and certainly are not the experiences of every single person that shares African ancestry. For hundreds of years we have been squeezing ourselves into a middle school four square game. Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks. The lines of each square have become impermeable; have to choose a square to play the game. Pass the ball and follow the rules to be included.

One might argue that a measure of race is necessary to monitor and prevent discrimination. With that I agree. Minorities in the United States have had fewer opportunities for higher education, well-paying jobs, and the inheritance of financial prosperity and deserve the consideration of these deprivations when being compared to more privileged competitors. When race overshadows individual ability, this attempt at an equality of opportunity fails. Race should be recognized as it connects a person to a larger social history that inevitably affects who that person is – however, everyone deserves to be seen as a person rather than a color. We won’t stop fighting the war while we are forced to choose sides. Let Barack Obama be president. Don’t limit him to being black, white, biracial, or mixed. Don’t focus on what we can or can’t see in him. Focus on what we see him do. Without assigning him a racial label we can all see a little bit of ourselves in Barack Obama. He can inspire all Americans regardless of their skin color.

I recognize all of the benefits of one’s being aware of one’s racial background. With race come many elements of culture and tradition. Those benefits, however, can be enjoyed without the presence of a racial magnifying glass. I love the color of my skin, my possession of my mother’s voice and my father’s smile. I am happy to say that my identity cannot possibly fit in one box. We are in an age of new ideas: ever smaller cellular telephones, pocket sized computers and instantaneous communication via numerous electronic devices. We seem to be on the brink of cleaner fuel, hovering cars, and medical miracles. If we as the human race can accomplish all of that, we can surely free ourselves from the old fashioned labels that force us to give up a bit of who we are.

U.S. Census Press Release for 2008

Richard Bribiescas, Professor of Biological Anthropology at Yale University

Outside the city, on an empty access road, I get the best view I can afford, but even here in the prairies, I am resentful of all the things in my way. I’ve reaffirmed my vague ambition to drive to the desert and sleep under the stars sometime.

I can imagine the huddled masses of early humanity out on some ancient plain in the night, lying around a dying fire, and being right there, citizens of the universe in ways that we in the space age rarely manage. We all watch television instead and blot out near-infinity with crowded buildings and obnoxious streetlights.

For the first time I witness the Moon in all its violent glory. It mimics the sunrise in colour, but its raggedy scarecrow expression gives it the appearance of a morbid marionette. Yet I am captivated. It has only just begun to wane, and I am stirred by its impressive weight as it first enters the night sky. It dominates and subjugates everything else, and I’m amazed I’ve never once seen it quite like this. Powerful. Ancient. And still so indescribably alien.

The colour drains from it as it rises. Within minutes, the hue is more orange than red, then a wan yellow, and finally, the familiar pale ghost that we most often observe in its pilgrimage. As the moon becomes more its familiar self, I am increasingly distressed. It is like witnessing a colossal death. Within 20 minutes of moonrise, the face is of a bloodless corpse.

Beginning with its own violent end, the wraith of the moon haunts the night sky until the sun arrives to chase it away. With the return of nightfall, it arises to die once again, in an endless reverse phoenix cycle. I never knew it. I only ever saw the ghost. This nightly tragedy is the best-kept secret of our modern apathy. The drama of the heavens goes unsung. We don’t live in the universe anymore.