Skip to main content

Spontaneous generation

A week ago Luke wanted to get from the porch to the garage without going through the house.  He said that there were too many flies in the house.  I scoffed.  "What are you afraid of?  There aren't that many flies."  How wrong I was.

All the next day we killed one fly after another.  Michael stopped counting after a dozen.  Amanda even killed two with one blow (although we did not have a belt made with that phrase on it, for fear she would be recruited by passing kings who wanted her to kill a giant).  Even the spiders got into the act---there were several flies in webs around the house. Yum!

Some flies even made it into Luna's (the betta fish) tank.  I'm not sure whether she ate any of them.  It's a good thing we have three flyswatters: the entire family can get into the fly swatting act.

I went from not seeing any flies when Luke asked about them to seeing tens of them the next day.  Spontaneous generation, a la Aristotle?  Michael says that it only counts as spontaneous generation if an open garage door can be counted as spontaneous.

The flies have calmed down in the past few days---perhaps they are dying out.  We'll see if we can keep the garage door closed enough to keep the population down this weekend.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My hero, Helen Parr

Otherwise known as Elastigirl , a.k.a Mrs. Incredible. She is a stay at home mom ( SAHM ), she clearly feels that what she is doing is important and is willing to give up a lot to do it (remember her comment in the intro: "I'm at the top of my game! Leave saving the world to the guys? I don't think so.") But she is finding fulfillment in leading her family from day to day, in doing a hard job well. She also knows that she is very talented, and that knowledge helps her see beyond the repetitive drudgery of staying home. My favorite scene is from the deleted introduction, where she talks with a "career woman" who is of the opinion that staying home is fine for people who can't do anything else. She responds that taking care of her kid is at least as hard as saving the world, and is valuable contribution to society. The point for me is that someone has to do the job that I'm doing, and it's not something that you could pay someone to do. I see...
8 comments
Read more

Things that are true

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.
8 comments
Read more

Why the world is frustrating

It is very frustrating to be 2. Michael and I have been teaching Luke about closing doors and turning off lights---both good habits. He really enjoys opening the refrigerator door. He knows how to turn out the light. But when I try to get him to shut the refrigerator door, he screams, "Turn out the light!" He keeps getting in the way of the door so that he can push the little button. As far as I know, he's trying to turn off the light before we shut the door, and the fact that it keeps coming back on when we move him out of the way so we can shut the door drives him crazy. He doesn't believe us that the light goes out when the door is shut, and after all, how do we know ourselves? We've never seen it, we use logic. But this makes any attempt to shut the door a battle, unless I sneak over there without him seeing.
5 comments
Read more