Just saying...

 The ABC's of life

by Lori Roberts

Some beautiful Florida skies, sharing with Skywatch Friday.

Downtown Tampa, and one of the mid-size buildings in the middle was designed by the architectural firm I worked for, and I did preliminary interior design for the board-room. That was in the 70s.

Among the views I recognize in St. Petersburg FL, this movie theatre's plaza (and shops)..

Wish I knew what kind of tree this might be, blooming in December in FL.

Many many apartments/condos going up in St. Pete FL. Fence pic shows what it's supposed to look like when finished.

And a bit of bare knee to show the circle of teeth marks from the dog which bit through my slacks this morning when I walked closer in hopes of getting to know my new neighbor, while his dog continually barked. It was a tiny little thing, white with black nose and eyes, and on a leash. I reported it to the management. He's (dog's owner) been living in another apartment and just moved across from me, and the dog barks constantly when he's outside. My peace and quiet has a limit now. I am surprised by how shook-up I felt from this small creature's attack.

I found out after reporting this to the management, that the dog used to belong to someone else here before, who had died.  I remembered the dog would mostly obey her and sit at her feet on her electric chair, but if it got off the leash it would be really hard for others to catch. And the dog's name is Barkley. I was cautioned to just stay away from the dog.

Hope you have a wonderful peaceful healthy weekend!

Today's inspiration (perhaps having to do with Christmas shopping)

We all want to provide our children with a good and happy life, but most of us know deep down that material possessions play a very small role.

A scientist who dealt with racism

 Dr. Ernest Everett Just, (August 14, 1883 – October 27, 1941)

 "Since history is not the factual record of events but the dramatic narrative our species superimposes over events, it is historical irony, in the classic Ancient Greek literary sense, that [Dr.] Just was among the biologists whose work laid the foundation for genomics and its sobering revelation that we share 98% of our DNA with a head of broccoli, dwarfing to absurdity the sub-negligible biological differences on which humans peg the artificial othernesses of their senseless biases." 

[Dr] "Just felt increasingly stifled by the swell of racism in his nation’s bosom, which kept him from obtaining a teaching position at a major university worthy of his talent and credentials."

Source: BrainPickings Newsletter 5/23/21

Ernest Everett Just (Marine Biological Laboratory Archives)

Dr. Just "...admired as the “black Apollo” of science by the Italian women working at the Neapolitan laboratory for which he left Woods Hole, is the subject of The Vast Wonder of the World  by librarian-turned-author Mélina Mangal and Colombian illustrator Luisa Uribe — a lovey addition to the growing corpus of picture-book biographies of cultural heroes to foment young hearts with inspiration for growing vast minds and tenacious spirits.

Dr. Just "...believed that "life as an event lies in a combination of chemical stuffs exhibiting physical properties; and it is in this combination, i.e., its behavior and activities, and in it alone that we can seek life.".^[31] He also wrote: "[L]ife is the harmonious organization of events, the resultant of a communion of structures and reactions",^[11] and "We [scientists] have often striven to prove life as wholly mechanistic, starting with the hypothesis that organisms are machines! Living substance is such because it possesses this organization--something more than the sum of its minutest parts"^[32] He argued forcefully that the "ectoplasm," the outer region of the cytoplasm, and not the nucleus, constitutes the heart of the dynamic cell. He was convinced that the surface of the egg cell possesses an "independent irritability," which enables the egg (and all cells) to respond productively to diverse stimuli.^[33]

Source: Wikepedia

1.  Just, Ernest Everett (1988). The Biology of the Cell Surface (Facsimile ed.). New York: Garland Pub. ISBN 978-0824013806.
2.  Just, E. E. (1933), "Cortical cytoplasm and evolution". Am. Nat. 67: 20–29.
3. ^ Newman, Stuart A. (2009), "E. E. Just's 'independent irritability' revisited: The activated egg as excitable soft matter" Archived 2016-01-18 at the Wayback Machine. Molecular Reproduction and Development 76 (11): 966–974.