SEN...

En güzel hediyem

 Gözlerimin ışığı

 Kalbimin tek aşığı...

Ruhumdaki ince sızı

Alnımdaki en güzel yazı

Gecelerimin ayazı

Gündüzlerimin telaşı...

Yollarımın tozu

 Aşk'ın bana oynadığı son kozu...

October Update

Just a little update of how the shop's looking at the moment....

Knitted scarves by Alison Dupernex,

 linen toiletry bags with original screen printed designs by Helen Round,

little driftwood boats with vintage fabric sails made by Ruth Browning,

Ruth also makes these delightful driftwood gulls....(so cute)

Wendy's handmade baby shoes...

 and her gorgeous bonnets, all lined with Liberty cotton. Patsy's little notebooks have Liberty covers too...

New into the shop today are these Dorset Posy Brooches by Lizzie Moore, which I have mounted onto  images of a 1950's Vogue coat pattern...

Some of my cards sit alongside a collection of original dress patterns by Simplicity, Butterick and Maudela amongst others (such stylish illustrations!), and below them Patsy's fun bunting all  made from original fashion magazines and patterns from the 50's...

 Dare I say it but a few Christmas things have found their way into the shop this week, as it's half-term and a lot of visitors down here at the moment will not visit again before the big day.

Ooohh I love old baby shoes!

Hope you've enjoyed the little tour 

xxx

HİÇBİR YER

Hülya Koçyiğit’in bir filmi vardır adı ‘’Almanya acı vatan’’

Bilmem izlediniz mi hiç ?

Filmde Hülya Koçyiğit Almanya’ya çalışmaya gelmiş genç bir kadındır. Almanya’da onlarca kadınla aynı dairede yıkık dökük bir bir apartmanda yaşamaktadır. Tatillerde memleketine gönüp Alaman’dan aldıklarını köydekilere satar. E tabi biraz farkla. Tek motivasyonu para kazanmak olmuştur. Maksatı memlekette bir kaç kat alıp belki de bir dükkan açıp rahat etmektir. Ama köyünden birinin Alaman’a işçi gidebilmek için ona formalite eviliik teklif etmesiyle düzeni bozulmaya başlar. Film içinde Hülya Koçyiğit’in bu robotlaşmayı, hipnotize edilmişcesine yaşadığı tutsaklığı sorgulamasını görürüz.

  ****

Yola çıkarken niyetim hikayeyeydi. Hep söyledim, hissettim. Yok ben yapamayacağım deyip içimi ateşe verdiğim anda da telefonun karşısındaki en şahanelerim bana aynı şeyi hatırlattı. Hikayeyi…

Ama aklımın ucundan bile geçmeyen, yıllar öncesinde yazılmaya başlanmış, belki çoktan alışılmış bu gurbet hikayesinin içinde buldum kendimi.

 Alaman’da çalışmak, orada çok sıkıntı çekip sonra ülkeye döndüğünde bir ev bir arsa almak durumu aslında çok sık karşılaştığım bir şeydi. Anneannemin ev sahibi karı koca Alaman’da çalışıp yapmışlardı o apartmanı mesela. Ben bunu neredeyse yedi yaşımdan beri biliyordum. Ama hiç fark etmemiştim yanımdan geçip giden hikayeleri.

 Almanya’da  23 yaşımın son yarısını tamamladığım bu aylarda fark edebildim.

 Burada Almanya’nın hemen hemen her şehrinde ülkesiz köksüz kalmış Türkiyeliler.

 Ne Türkiye’ye ait  kalabilmiş ne Almanyalılaşabilmiş.

 Her daim öteki olmuş. Üstelik her iki toprakta da.

 Ağızlarda bir adapte olamadılar lafı almış yürümüş. Daha ucuz ve sağlıklı iş gücü olarak kabul edilmiş trenler dolusu insanın sadece çalışmasını isteyip hiç hissetmesin, düşünmesin beklemişler sanırım. Gelen işçiler Alman olmak için değil para kazanmak için gelmişken, birden bire kendilerini sapsarı bir Alman kültürü içine atmalarını beklemek çok insafsızca değil mi?  Kendi gelişlerinin ardından ailelerini de buraya aldıran Türkiyiyeliler yavaş yavaş kendi yaşam gettolarını oluşturmuşlar. Bence bir çoğu yeterince para kazanıp dönmeyi düşünmüştü. Ama işler öyle olmadı hayat devam etti çocuklar doğdu. Doğan çocuklar büyüdü okullu oldu. Bir taraftan Alman gavurdu. Adetleri farklıydı asla onlar gibi olunmamalıydı. Çocuklar korunmalıydı. Diğer taraftan hayat her zaman olduğu gibi ileriye aktı. Her şey değişti. Tek kelime Almanca öğrenmeden Türkiye'ye dönme ümidi ile yaşayıp gidenlerin çocukları aslında bilmedikleri, sadece yıllık izinlerde gördükleri bir yere ait olarak Almanya’da büyüyordu. Almancasının arasına sıkıştırdığı Türkçe sözcüklerle Türk, Türkçe konuşurken araya sıkıştırdığı almanca kelimeler yüzündense hep Almancıydı.

  Almanyalılar ötekileştirdikçe daha çok Türklüğe sığınan Türkiyeliler, kültürlerini siyasi bir tavır alarak haddinden fazla sahiplenmiş durumdalar şimdi burada.

 

Hamburg’ta bir işim vardı ve tren garından inince şöyle bir etrafa bakayım dedim. Hiç fark etmeden o sokak mı bu sokak mı derken bir Türk mahallesine düştü yolum. Rengiyle, kokusuyla, insanlarıyla şehrin tükürdüğü o sokak hiçbir yerin resmi gibiydi. İçimin sıkıldığını hissedip, hızlı adımlarla gara döndüm. Sonra birden tepeden bu tren raylarını görünce aklımdan bunlar geçti. Film, o güne kadar konuştuğum tüm Almanyalılar, Türkiyeliler, işçiler, hepsi .... Tam bu fotoğrafı çektiğin o anda, trenlerin içine insanların ruhlarını doldurup gerçekten var olmak isteyecekleri bunu hissedecekleri yerlere dağıtmak istedim.

   Bunlar aklımdan geçerken koca puntolarla yazılmış bir sorum var içimde kendi köklerime dair ‘’Onlar sürüldükleri topraklardan geride binlerce ölü bırakmışken, işte sizin yeni hayatınız burası denildiğinde neler yaşamışlardı?’’  

Koşulsuz Ebeveynlik - Neden Olmasın?

Bir kitap okudum hayatım değişti derler ya, bir kitap okudum ve hayata bakış açım değişi diyebilirim ben bu durumda. "Koşulsuz Ebeveynlik - Ödül ve Cezaları Terk Edip Sevgi ve Akılcılığa Yönelmek" Kitabın ismini okuduğunuzda, "ah evet ben zaten çocuğuma ceza vermem ki" diye düşünüyorsunuz ya da " yemeğini yediği için ona sticker falan da yapıştırmam" ve tabii ki "ben çocuğumu zaten seviyorum." ama yanılmışım...
Aslında kitabın bana geliş hikayesinden kısaca bahsetmeliyim (evet geliş çünkü kitap bana gel-di, beni oku dedi) Yaklaşık bir ay önceydi, arkadaşım Yeliz Günün Çorbası, isimli blogunda ya da instagram hesabında ve tabi kitap kulübümüzde  bu kitaptan bahsetmişti. Benim de ilgimi çekti, ancak internetten sipariş verirken tükenmiş olduğunu gördüm ben de onun hesaplarından birinde tükenmiş alamadım gibisinden bir yorum yazdım. İşte bu olaydan bir ay bu yazıdan da bir hafta önce kitabın çevirmeni ve Görünmez Adam Yayıncılığın sahibi Yiğit Ataman bana mail atmış, kitabı bana ulaştırabileceğini, internet kitapçılarıyla ilgili bir sorun olduğunu yazmış. Sonuçta adresimi verdim ve kitap bana geldi. (Buradan da teşekkür etmek isterim)
Önce Asya ve benim ilişkime dair bir şey okuyacağım, diğer ebeveynlik kitaplarındaki gibi yöntemlerle karşılaşacağımı düşündüm. Ancak kitabı okumaya başladığımda artık ben çocuktum, kitabı kendi çocukluğumun gözünden okudum ve çok etkilendim.
"O halde şunu söyleyebiliriz ki, koşullu veya koşulsuz ebeveynlik arasında seçim yapmak, aslında insan doğasına yönelik iki farklı bakış açısı arasında seçim yapmaktır."
Sorgulamaya başladım "sevgi neydi" sevgi emek miydi gerçekten? çocuğumuzu neden seviyorduk ki ya da herhangi bir insanı neden? sevginin nedeni olur muydu? kalpten gelmez miydi sevgi? Sevgi bize ait bir şey miydi? peki bir çocuk hiç bir nedeni olmadan sevilemez miydi? Biz de sevgiyle yaratılmamış mıydık? Her şeyi iyileştirecek olan şey sevgi değil de neydi?
Bir çocuğu terbiye etmeye çalışmanın ne kadar da insafsızca ve sevgisizce olduğunu farkettim ve bunca zamandır beni eğitmeye çalışan insanları düşündüm. Neden ben, onların olmamı istedikleri kişi olayım diye çabalıyordum ve neden ben her kendim oluşumda beni sevmiyorlardı?
Ben ailesi tarafından cezalandırılan bir çocuk olmadım, çok sert kurallarımız yoktu ama sevginin geri çekilmesinin ne demek olduğunu çok iyi biliyorum. Sırf birilerinin (annem, babam, eşim, öğretmenim,patronum) bana olan sevgisi azalmasın diye kuzu kuzu onların istediklerini yapmanın ve "uslu kız" olmanın ne demek olduğunu da biliyorum. Bu bir toplum meselesi bence ve neden böyle yönetildiğimizin de kanıtı. Otoriteye sorgusuz sualsiz bağlılık, ailemizin bizi yetiştiriş tarzından geliyor.
Koşulsuz Ebeyenlik kitabı, bize bir hayat dersi veriyor. Öz saygımızı kazanmamız, başkalarına karşı saygılı olmamız , empati yeteneğimizi geliştirmemiz ve koşulsuz olarak sevmemiz. Biz ne zamandan beri çocukları küçük ve aptal insanlar olarak tanımlamaya başladık acaba? o yüzden mi çocuklarımız küçücük bir şey yaptıklarında onları alkışa boğuyor ve ne kadar zeki olduklarına şaşıyoruz? Çocuklarımıza iyi ana babalar olmamız için kendi çocukluğumuzu iyileştirmemiz ve kendi çocuk halimizi kabul etmemiz gerekiyor. Bu güzel kitabı anlatmayı, kitaptan bir cümle ile bitirmek istiyorum.
"Bir zamanlar bize neler yapıldığını farketmek canımızı çok yakar."

YOLU TUT

Tut yolu, bırakma... 

Ağaçları ve gökyüzünü ekle hikayene 

Yol yorgunluğunu teğelle özlemine 

Kavuşmayı dile

Dönmeye niyet et 

Sonra yeniden yola çık

Tut yolu bırakma

Özle ama nasıl bir özlemek 

Gökyüzü kadar, ağaç kadar, orman ve yıldız kadar 

Özle ama yolu tut 

Bırakma

Hisset...

Ruhum sana  sağanak yağıyor... 

her yer buram buram toprak kokusu...
 hissediyor musun?

Why is the human vagina so big?

We are obsessed with penis and testicle size. Yet, we can barely say "vagina" and when we do we're usually talking about the vulva.

Everyone's come across some article somewhere on-line that is thrilled to share how big human penises really are, for primates, and to explain why they evolved to be so big. It's not really the length, but the girth. Alan Dixson is your go-to on this. He's conservative in his assessment of the literature on penis size and even he concedes that human penis "circumference is unusual when compared to the penes of other hominoids (apes)" (p. 65 in Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems).

A favorite explanation for the big phallus is female mate choice, that females selectively make babies with males who have larger and, presumably, more pleasurable semen delivery devices. This is backed up by studies. When life size projections of naked men are shown to female subjects, they say they find the ones with bigger ones to be more attractive. [This is exactly how mate choice works where I live, how about you?]

Other explanations include male competition. If you can deliver your package to the front yard but the other guy can deliver to the front door, his is more likely to be carried inside the house first. Or, if he can steal away what you just delivered, then, again, his package has yours beat. Thanks to his big penis he's more likely to pass on his winning penis genes than you are to pass on your loser penis genes. Loser.

All this is just terribly fun to write about and I'm not even going nuts (gah) like they do. And they do. They really do. And all over the Internet they do: "Evolution of human penis" gets 53,000 hits just on scholar.google alone, and about 832,000 on Google.

But doesn't it make sense that for a penis to be somewhat useful it has to be somewhat correlated to vagina size?

I'm talking about all penises in the universe and all vaginas too. Sure there's variation, but a penis can't be too wide. It helps to be long, probably, but it can't be too long.

So neither pleasure nor psychology need matter at all, just function associated with some sort of fit. Pleasure and psychology are never invoked to explain penis morphology in other animals. If anything, it's the cornucopia of horrifying, not pleasing, animal penises that begs for evolutionary explanations.

Wouldn't you explain the size and shape of the key by the size and shape of the lock? So wouldn't it be a little more scientifically sound to hypothesize that the human penis is sized and shaped like that because it fits well into the human vagina?

Sure, it gets chicken-and-eggy or turtles-all-the-way-downy, but c'mon. Isn't it a bit obvious that the privates that fit inside the other privates are probably correlated? You'd think that even the people who have never had intercourse would default to this explanation for the evolution of the human penis.

Figure 2. Examples of genital covariation in waterfowl.

(A) Harlequin duck (Histrionicus histrionicus) and (B) African goose (Anser cygnoides), two species with a short phallus and no forced copulations, in which females have simple vaginas as in Fig 1a. (C) Long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis), and (D) MallardAnas platyrhynchos two species with a long phallus and high levels of forced copulations, in which females have very elaborate vaginas (size bars = 2 cm). ] = Phallus, * = Testis, ★ = Muscular base of the male phallus, ▹ = upper and lower limits of the vagina.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000418.g002

But we're rarely, if ever, told that human penises are relatively girthy because human vaginas are. It's always about male competition or female preference.

Sure, we may be a little weird compared to our close relatives for not having a baculum (penis bone), and maybe that's the sort of thing you want to explain for whatever reason, but does human penis size and shape need a uniquely human story?

Assuming it's correlated to the vagina like it probably is in many other species,* then no it doesn't... unless the size and shape of the human vagina has an exceptional story.

Does it? We wouldn't know. There are zero (look!) articles titled "Why is the human vagina so big?"

Until right now.

Here we go. If we were going to answer it the same way we've long explained the human penis, and other animal penis shapes, then we've got a few ideas...

Because walking upright made the vagina conspicuous and males thought a bigger vagina was better. Because big vaginas outcompete small ones at catching sperm. Because of male pleasure from coitus with a big vagina. Because of heat dissipation or thermoregulation. Because of a tradeoff with brain size.

And of course, we'd need to demonstrate that the human vagina is in fact larger, relative to body size, than the vaginas of other primates. Regardless, a sound answer to the question of vagina size and shape focuses on childbirth, wouldn't you say? She's got to be big enough to push out a baby and, for humans, it's a great big baby. 

So if there's an exceptionally human story for the great big human penis, that exceptional story originates not in a woman's orgasms, not in her pornographic thoughts or her lustful eyes, but in her decidedly unsexy "birth canal."

And I dug up a nice little note to explain this to us all written by Dr. Bowman, a gynecologist, back in 2008 for the Archives of Sexual Behavior

That note is magnificent. It starts out giving the only vagina-size-based, not to mention childbirth-based, explanation for human penises that I can find in the literature (which is thankfully cited by Dixson in his book mentioned above). But it still manages to bring the explanation beyond the vagina and onto another proud triumph: "In sum, man’s larger penis is a consequence of his larger brain."

After you clean up the coffee you just spat onto your computer screen, you can read it all for yourself up there in the figure.

Guess who didn't read it? That study in PNAS, mentioned above, that showed women naked penises, got a high attractive score for the big ones, and thinks that's evidence for mate choice now, today, let alone back when (I'm going to speculate that) women had a tiny bit less of it.

Point is, the literature rages on with the special explanations for the big penis with nary a big vagina in sight.

But you heard it here, at least.

Childbirth is why the human vagina is so big and, consequently, why the male penis is so big. It's pretty straightforward. Yet we're still left scratching our heads as to why the penis question endures.

Is evolutionary science averse to big vaginas?

Does nobody love a big vagina?

Because that's just ridiculous. Everybody came from one.



*Unfortunately a few scholar.google searches led me to find no cross-species comparisons of mammalian vagina lengths or any vaginal measures. It may be out there, but I haven' t found it. I found some measures for bitches... DOGS! And some heifers... COWS! So I've got to compile some data if I'm to do this properly. Baby size might be a way to do this.

**UPDATE. p. 73 in Dixson has Figure 4.3 with nine primate species' penile and vaginal lengths plotted. Thanks Patrick C for reminding me where I'd seen something like this and where to point readers!

My grandmother's dementia and me

My father's mother had Alzheimer's disease, or dementia of some sort, as did her sister.  Both lived with us at different times when I was a child, my great-aunt until she died in the bedroom upstairs, and my grandmother until she was impossible for my parents to care for, at which time they found a very kind, very patient woman with a big house in the country, and she went to live there.

These two sisters, the only children in their family, were always close.  They both worked all their lives, and were extremely competent and very kind.  My great-aunt never married; her fiancé had gone off to fight in the Spanish-American war, but died during an outbreak of yellow fever in Florida before he ever got to Cuba.  But, she lived with a cousin for many years.  When my parents finally cleaned out the apartment after my great aunt died, one of the things they found in the attic was a skull that must have once been used for teaching anatomy.  No one had any clue how it ended up in that attic.  My parents have displayed in their living room for most of my life.  My mother's theory, after years of living with it, is that this is the skull of a poor man who was suffering from an abscessed tooth, and he shot himself in the head because he couldn't stand the pain.  Here's a sketch.

Sketch by A Buchanan

My grandmother married and had one child, my father.  My grandparents, my great-aunt and her cousin all lived perhaps half an hour from us, in the town where my father had grown up, and my grandfather drove them all to visit us on Sunday afternoons.  He loved driving -- he enjoyed taking my sisters and me for drives in the country. What I remember most about these drives was the overwhelming odor of his strong cigars.  (He used to enjoy shooting woodchucks, too, happy to be doing farmers such a favor.  I remember going with him and my grandmother once on such an outing, but I refused to take a shot, which disappointed him.  He would steady his gun on the roof of the car, aim and shoot.  He draped the one woodchuck he killed the day I was with him over the gate into the field he'd shot it in, so that the farmer would take note.  One Sunday when they came to visit, there was a bullet hole in the roof of the car, over the passenger side -- I don't remember that that was ever explained.)

Dementia does unpredictable things to people.  My great-aunt -- Aunt, we called her, as my father had -- was always cheerful and sweet, if a bit confused.  Every morning she would ask where she was, but she was still able to play cribbage with us, she loved having us comb her long thin hair, past grey, now yellowed, and pin it into a bun.  I don't remember that she ever fussed about anything.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was distraught with worry from the moment she woke, to the moment she went to bed, and probably long after that.  She would sit at the kitchen table all day every day, every few minutes asking the same worried questions in the same frantic way.  She was miserable.  Occasionally she was able to access a part of her brain that reminded her that she was confused, and that made things even worse.

Apart from being two different versions of the same heart wrenching story that could be told by so many people, this raises several questions.  Was this two sisters with very different forms of the same disease?  Or, did they have two different diseases?

And, did the fact that both his mother and his aunt had dementia mean that my father was at higher risk of dementia himself?  Apparently not, as he is now in his late 80's, still very active, very engaged, mentally and even physically.  In turn, does this mean that my sisters and I don't have to worry about dementia ourselves?

Or is it secular trends in Alzheimer's disease that we should pay attention to?
One measure of a condition's impact is its prevalence.  That is the fraction of the population at a given point in time that is affected.  A recent BBC Radio 4 program, More or Less, discussed changes in Alzheimer's prevalence over time, after a paper reporting (among many other things) decreased prevalence of dementia in the UK was published in The Lancet ("Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 306 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE) for 188 countries, 1990–2013: quantifying the epidemiological transition," Murray et al.). According to the study, prevalence of dementia in British people over age 65 has declined by more than 20% in the last 20 years; it's currently about 7 percent of that segment of the population.

This is in striking contrast to a recent report in the UK that estimates that 1/3 -- 33%!-- of the British children born in 2015 will have dementia in later life.  Tim Harford, presenter of More or Less, pointed out, though, that it's odd that this number was taken seriously by anyone, given that it is equivalent to thinking that predictions made 100 years ago, when AIDS wasn't known, antibiotics not yet discovered, and so on, would have any credibility. And, the 1/3 estimate was based on 20 year old data.  (A quick check of prevalence of dementia in the UK is a bit confusing -- many sites caution that the number of people with Alzheimer's disease is rising rapidly.  It's an Alzheimer's time bomb, they warn.  But, given that the population is both aging and increasing, this isn't, in itself, a surprise, or very meaningful in relation to individual biological risk because, again, it's the fraction of the population that is affected that is the significant statistic.  To be clearer, if more people live longer, even the same age-specific risk of getting a disease will lead to more people with the disease, that is, higher prevalence in the population.  Of course, the number of affected individuals is relevant to the health care burden.)

How predictable is dementia?
Carol Brayne, one of hundreds of authors on the Lancet report and interviewed for More or Less, speculates that the reported fall in prevalence has to do with changes in 'vascular health', as incidence of heart attacks and stroke have fallen as well.  She suggests that it seems as though the things we have been doing in western countries to prevent cardiovascular disease have been working.

But of course this assumes we know the cause of dementia, and that it's in some sense a cardiovascular disease.  But, we don't understand the cause nearly well enough to say this, and in fact, like most chronic diseases, dementia is many different conditions, with many different causes.

The genetic causal factors related to Alzheimer's disease include mutations in a few genes, but these account for only a fraction of cases.  Mutations in the two presenillin genes can lead to early onset Alzheimer's. The most commonly discussed genetic risk factor has to do with the E4 allele in the ApoE gene, whose physiology is related to fat transport in the blood.  It seems to be associated with the development of plaque in brains of people with late onset (60s and over) Alzheimer's, but the association is complex, people without the E4 allele also develop plaque, and people with plaque may not have dementia, and the causal mechanisms are unclear.  Risk seems to depend on whether one carries one or two copies of the E4 allele, and seems to be higher for women than for men, and is apparently affected by environmental factors, but it does seem to raise risk from something like 10-15% in people over 80 to 30-50%.

What this means, even if the statistics were reliable, the risk estimates stable, and environmental contributions minimal, is that it is obvious that even having two copies of the risk allele is not a guarantee of Alzheimer's disease. And, in some populations having two copies isn't associated with Alzheimer's at all (Nigeria, e.g.).  In addition, while the association with increased risk has long been described, the physiology is still not understood. GWAS have reported other genetic risk factors, but not nearly as consistently as ApoE4, nor as strong.

The reported decline in dementia prevalence is not new; we blogged in 2013 about dramatically decreasing rates in the UK, as well as in Denmark, as reported by Gina Kolata then.  So, how can it be declining rapidly, but the strongest risk factor we know of is genetic -- and the frequency of this variant is not changing enough to even begin to account for the data?  Or, is Carol Brayne right that dementia is a vascular disease, and vascular diseases are on the decline, so Alzheimer's is, too?

Indeed, even the definition of whether you 'have' Alzheimer's or not is changeable and not precise, and researchers don't even agree on what an Alzheimer's brain looks like.  A good discussion of these various factors, including social and economic aspects and the history of studies of Alzheimer's, is a book The Alzheimer Conundrum, by Margaret Lock, a fine medical anthropologist at McGill in Canada (and friend of ours).  

Can Alzheimer's be prevented?
The causes of Alzheimer's disease are so poorly understood that it's said that the best prevention is to exercise, quit smoking and maintain a social life.  Very generic advice that could apply to a lot of things!  If we don't know what causes it, and there are probably environmental risk factors, which we don't really understand, relevant past environmental agents are unknown, future environments impossible to predict, and genetic risk factors not good predictors, then we certainly don't know how to predict population prevalence rates, not to mention who is most likely to develop the disease.  (NB: this is pertinent to late-onset dementia; early-onset is more likely to have a genetic cause, and is thus more likely to be predictable.)

Given the experience of two generations in my family, should I or shouldn't I worry about developing dementia?  If my grandmother and great-aunt had the ApoE4 risk allele, my father may or may not, and my sisters and I may or may not.  If they did and my father does, it's a good example of an allele with "incomplete penetrance," for which either genetic background or environmental risk factors or both are also necessary.  Which makes predicting dementia difficult, whether or not we were to have the risk allele. If they didn't have it, something else caused their dementia, and we have no idea what that was.  Indeed, they were both social, never smoked, and walked to work for decades.

To me, as to most people, dementia is frightening.  But, obviously, my family history is useless in terms of determining my risk -- my grandmother had it, my father doesn't.

Still, every time I forget someone's name, I think of my grandmother.

İç Ses - 19

Özlemek ..

Herkes yani özleyen kişi dışındaki herkes özlemenin alışmakla, bir düzen kurmakla ilişkisi olduğunu söylüyor. En azından benimkiler öyle söylüyor.

Oysa özlemek alışmanın dışında bir durum . Ben de bilmiyor muşum aslında. Özlemeyi nedense güçle, güçlü olmakla ilişkilendirmişim. Akıllı ve güçlü çocukların özlememesi , özlemini ifade etmemesi gerektiğini düşünmüşüm. İlk günlerdeki özlemimin içinde - itiraf ediyorum ki - biraz da utanma vardı. Yapmak zorunda olduğum şeyi yapamamışım gibi hissediyordum. Özlememem gerekiyormuş ama ben özleyerek - hem de daha ilk günden başlayarak- anlaşmayı bozmuşum gibi.

 Şimdi durum  biraz değişti. İçimdeki özleme hali diğer bütün duygulardan arındı daha yalın ve daha gerçek bir özlemeye dönüştü. Bu özlem fiziksel olarak yaşayamamak değil, mental olarak kendini kaptıramamak. Kaptırmak zorunda kalmış olsa da bunun asla tam manasıyla gerçekleşemeyeceğini anlamak. ( Burada devreye Almancılar giriyor ki o konuda da söylemek istediklerim var.Bir ara..  )

 Tabi bir de çağımız tepeden tırnağa etiket çağı olduğundan, eğlenceli,  karizmatik duygu ve durumlar dışında kalan şeylere karşı ‘’ Yo yo yo….  Öyle düşünme, ciddiye alma, ya daha gençsin bunlara takılma .. ‘’diyen akıl hocaları da oluyor etrafta. Belki de olumsuz olan her şeyin hızla  yapış yapış bir acıtasyona dönüşmesi bu tavrı destekleyen bir detay. Bilemiyorum. Herkesi bir dakikalık ağlama törenine de davet etmiyorum. Söylemeye çalıştığım şey, başlangıç noktası aynı olan  yolculuklar  hiç bir zaman aynı seyretmiyor. Ben bu değişim sürecinde içimdeki özleyebilme gücüyle tanıştım mesela. ( Belirtmeden edemeyeceğim iyi özleyebiliyormuşum, gayet çokmuş bende :) )

Bazen durup dururken, bir sesle, bir duyguyla ya da bir kokuyla   zihnimde filmlerdeki gibi zamanda geri dönüşler oluyor mesela. O dönüşlerden  birinde yıllar önce okuduğum bir otobiyografi kitabını hatırladım. Yazarı siyasi karmaşa yıllarında Türkiye’den sürülmüş ve soğuk kuzey Avrupa’da yaşamak zorunda kalmış. Okurken zihnimde yalnızca estetik bir kare belirmişti, bir film sahnesi gibi. Kuzeyin karanlık ışıları, puslu karlı kayınlar… Şimdi ise yazarın anlattığı daha sonra da bestesini  yaptığını o duyguya karşı gerçek bir empatiye sahibim. onlarca yazar, onlarca sanatçı, onlarca şair…

 Yolu belki kaderle, belki kederle buraya düşen her Türkiyelinin gözünde o empatiyi görüyorum. Sınırların devlet eliyle yasaklanmamış olması, onların içindeki sürgünlüğü ve özlemi dindirmiyor. Belki farkında değiller ama hepsinin gözünde Nazım’ın anlattığı karlı kayın ormanlarının sisi var. Özlemek deyine şöyle bir iç geçiyorlar…

  Yurdundan  uzak olmak, bir daha büyüdüğü güneşin altında yürüyemeyecek olmak sahiden ölümcül bir duygu. Ve bu duygu da tıpkı aşk gibi birbiriyle hiç alakası olmayan iki insanı aynı noktada buluşturabilir.

  Bir ülkeyi başka bir ülkeye bağlayan etrafı yemyeşil otobanda ilerlerken hiç tahmin etmediğin bir anda , arabadaki  uzun yol cdsinin içinden yayılan Ahmet Kaya’nın sesi değil, işte bu ortak duygudur aslında.

Özlemle ….

Unknowns, yes, but are there unknowables in biology?

The old Rumsfeld jokes about the knowns and unknowns are pretty stale by now, so we won't really indulge in beating that dead horse.  But in fact his statement made a lot of sense.  There are things we think we know (like our age), things we think we don't know but might know (like whether there will be a new message in our inbox when we sign onto email), and things we don't know but don't know we don't know (such as how many undiscovered marine species there are). Rumsfeld is the subject of ridicule not for this pronouncement per se (at least to those who think about it), because it is actually reasonable, but for other things that he is said to have done or said (or failed to say) in regard to American politics.

Explaining what we don't know is a problem!  Source: Google images

The unknowns may be problems, but they are not Big problems.  What we don't know but might know are at least within the realm of learning.  We may eventually stumble across facts we don't know but don't yet even know are there.  The job of science is to learn what we know we don't know and even to discover what we don't yet know that we don't know.  We think there is nothing 'inside' an electron or photon, but there may be if we some day realize that possibility.  Then the guts of a photon will become a known unknown.

However, there's another, even more problematic, one may say truly problematic kind of mystery: things that are actually unknowable.  They present a Really Big problem.  For example, based on our understanding of the current understanding of cosmology, there are parts of the universe that are so far away that energy (light etc.) from them simply has not, and can never, reach us.  We know that the details of this part of space are literally unknowable, but because we have reasonably rigorous physical theory we think we can at least reliably extrapolate from what we can see to the general contents (density of matter and galaxies etc.) of what we know must exist but cannot see.  That is, it's literally unknowable but theoretically known.

However, things like whether life exists out there are in principle unknowable.  But at least we know very specifically why that is so.  In the future, most of what we can see in the sky today is, according to current cosmological theories, going to become invisible as the universe expands so that the light from these visible but distant parts will no longer be able to reach us.  If there are any living descendants, they will know what was there to see and its dynamics and we will at least be able to make reasonable extrapolations of what it's like out there even though it can no longer be seen.

There are also 'multiverse' theories of various sorts (a book discussing these ideas is Our Mathematical Universe, by Mark Tegmark).  At present, the various sorts of parallel universes are simply inaccessible, even in principle, so we can't really know anything about them (or, perhaps, even whether they exist).  Not only is electromagnetic radiation not able to reach us so we can't observe, even indirectly, what was going on when that light was emitted from these objects, but our universe is self-contained relative to these other universes (if they exist).

Again, all of this is because of the kind of rigorous theory that we have, and the belief that if that theory is wrong, there is at least a correct theory to be discovered--Nature does work by fixed 'laws', and while our current understanding may have flaws the regularities we are finding are not imaginary even if they are approximations to something deeper (but comparably regular). In that sense, the theory we have tells us quite a lot about what seems likely to be the case even if unobserved. It was on such a basis that the Higgs boson was discovered (assuming the inferences from the LHC experiments are correct).

What about biology?
Biology has been rather incredibly successful in the last century and more.  The discoveries of evolution and genetics are as great as those in any other science.  But there remain plenty of unknowns about biological evolution and its genomic basis that are far deeper than questions about undiscovered species.  We know that these things are unknown, but we presume they are knowable and will be understood some day.

One example is the way that homologous chromosomes (one inherited each of a person's parents) line up with each other in the first stage of meiosis (formation of sperm and egg cells).  How do they find each other?  We know they do line up when sex cells are produced, and there are some hypotheses and bits of relevant information about the process, but we're aware of the fact that we don't yet really know how it works.

Homologous chromosomes pair up...somehow.  Wikimedia, public domain.

Chromosomes also are arranged in a very different 3-dimensional way during the normal life of every cell.  They form a spaghetti-like ball in the nucleus, with different parts of our 23 pairs of chromosomes very near to each other.  This 'chromosome conformation', the specific spaghetti ball, shown schematically in the figure, varies among cell types, and even within a cell as it does different things.  The reason seems to be at least in part that the juxtaposed bits of chromosomes contain DNA that is being transcribed (such as into messenger RNA to be translated into protein) in that particular cell under its particular circumstances.

Chromosomes arrange themselves systematically in the nucleus.  Source: image by Cutkosky, Tarazi, and Lieberman-Aiden from Manoharan, BioTechniques, 2011

It is easy to discuss what we don't know in evolution and genetics and we do that a lot here on MT. Often we critique current practice for claiming to know far more than is actually known, or, equally seriously, making promises to the supporting public that suggest we know things that in truth (and in private) we know very well that we don't know.  In fact, we even know why some things that we promise are either unknown or known not to be correct (for example, causation of biological and behavioral traits is far more complex than is widely claimed).

There are pragmatic reasons why our current system of science does this, which we and many others have often discussed, but here we want to ask a different sort of question:  Are there things in biology that are unknowable, even in principle, and if so how do we know that?  The answer at least in part is 'yes', though that fact is routinely conveniently ignored.

Biological causation involves genetic and environmental factors.  That is clearly known, in part because DNA is largely an inert molecule so any given bit of DNA 'does' something only in a particular context in the cell and related to whatever external factors affect the cell.  But we know that the future environmental exposures are unknown, and we know that they are unknowable.  What we will eat or do cannot be predicted even in principle, and indeed will be affected by what science learns but hasn't yet learned (if we find that some dietary factor is harmful, we will stop eating it and eat something else).  There is no way to predict such knowledge or the response to it.

What else may there be of this sort?
A human has hundreds of billions of cells, a number which changes and varies among and within each of us.  Each cell has a slightly different genotype and is exposed to slightly different aspects of the physical environment as well.   One thing we know that we cannot now know is the genotype and environment of every cell at every time.  We can make some statistical approximations, based on guessing about the countless unknowns of these details, but the numbers of variables will exceed that of stars on the universe and even in theory cannot be known with knowable precision.

Unlike much of physics, the use of statistical analytic techniques is inapt, also to an unknowable degree.  We know that not all cells are identical observational units, for example, so that aggregate statistics that are used for decision-making (e.g., significance tests) are simply guesses or gross assumptions whose accuracy is unknowable.  This is in principle because each cell, each individual is always changing.  We might call these 'numerical unknowables', because they are a matter of practicality rather than theoretical limits about the phenomena themselves.

So are there theoretical aspects of biology that in some way we know are unknowable and not just unknown?  We have no reason, based on current biological theory, to suspect the kinds of truly unknowables, analogous to cosmology's parallel universes.  One can speculate about all sorts of things, such as parallel yous, and we can make up stories about how quantum uncertainty may affect us. But these are far from having the kind of cogency found in current physics.

Our lack of comparably rigorous theory relative to what physics and chemistry enjoy leaves open the possibility that life has its own knowably unknowables. If so, we would like at least to know what those limits may be, because much of biology relates to practical prediction (e.g., causes of disease). The state of knowledge in biology, no matter how advanced it has become, is still far from adequate to address the question of the levels of knowable things that may eventually be knowable, but also what the limits to knowability are.  In a sense, unlike physics and cosmology, in biology we have no theory that tells us what we cannot know.

And unlike physics and cosmology, where some of these sorts of issues really are philosophical rather than of any practical relevance to daily life, we in biology have very strong reasons to want to know what we can know, and what we can promise....but perhaps also unlike physics, because people expect benefits from biological research, strong incentives not to acknowledge limits to our knowledge.

Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas grow so well in Cornwall, you find them in gardens everywhere. At this time of year they are beginning to curl and brown, but the colour also intensifies into deep turquoise, cerise and sky blue.

 In an attempt to preserve the colours I am glueing the petals under a layer of tissue paper,

and then cutting out heart shapes to stitch onto cards.

It's nice to be making again, now the busy season is over.

xxx

İç Ses - 18

Üç sene önce yine başka bir ülkede, hisleri benimkilerden çok farklı insanlarla bir aradaydım.  Dünyanın yalnızca Amerika’dan ibaret olduğunu zanneden o insanların arasından bakmıştım, kendime, ülkeme, hislerime, zamana, mesafeye, geçmişe, geleceğe…

 Orada beş kız bir evde kalıyorduk. Çalıştığımız tatil parkının içinde, amaca hizmet eden, pratik bir prefabrik evdi.

Biz -bahar.mu ile birlikteydim- sonra gidenler olduğumuz için en küçük odaya geçmiştik. Üç aya yakın bir süre orada, kapısından baktığında yemyeşil bahçenin ve mavi gökyüzünün görüldüğü o evde yaşadık. Bahçeden ceylanlar, tavşanlar geçerdi zaman zaman. Daha ikinci sınıf öğrencisiydim -üniversitede tabi- ilk defa yurt dışına gidiyordum. Büyük çabalar sonucu gerçekleşmiş bir fırsattı. Birbirinin aynısı gibi geçen onca günün ardından benim için imkansızmış gibi görünen şehirleri, sokakları gezdim.On günlük seyyahlık kısmının ardından, sanırım 21 Eylül’dü -Suzikonun doğum günüydü - İstanbul’a döndük.

Bugün bu hikayenin üstünden üç sene geçmişken ben yeni bir hikayenin içinde yuvarlanıyorum.

 Yine ucunda, başladığı yerde  büyük fedakarların olduğu bir hikaye.Bu sefer aslında aileme, yaşadığım dünyama, arkadaşlarıma, hayatıma çok da uzak olmayan, sokaklarında sıklıkla ana dilimi duyabildiğim ıslak bir Avrupa şehrindeyim. Küçücük bir odam var. Odamın penceresinden komşularımın pencereleri bir alıcı direği ; sisli, gri ve ruhsuz bir gök var. Üniversite öğrencilerinin katıldığı kültürel ve akademik değişimi ve paylaşımı hedefleyen bir programla geldim. Başkalarının ne hissettiklerini anlayacak kadar çok yaşamaya sabrım yok ama belki başka insanların ne düşündüğünü anlayabilecek kadar öğrenirim ortak dili diye düşünerek geldim.

  Beni en az ben kadar düşündüğüne emin olduğum insanlar sayesinde de kaldım bu ıslak şehrin ıslak sokaklarında.

   Şimdi küçük bir odam, tam karşı evimde kocasını dışarı uğurlarken dudaklarından öpen yaşlı bir komşum, bıraktığı kaosunu özleyen bir gönlüm ve her şeye rağmen sabretmemi ve kulaklarımı hikayeden yana açmamı söyleyen bir zihnim var.

Bir de hiç dinmeyen huysuz bir yağmur...

     

 

   17/10/2015

Islak bir cumartesi sabahı  

Autumn Bliss

Ah such balmy October weather! I have enjoyed two lovely days out with friends this week. I love it when it is warm and sunny at this time of year because

1. I have the time to enjoy it and

2. there are not hordes of tourists everywhere! (am I allowed to say that?) 

On Monday we went to Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens near Penzance; only we didn't have time to see the gardens themselves, only the cafe and the plant nursery next door, which had a nice selection of succulents, palms and cacti.

Out of the wind it was so hot I was just sitting in a short sleeved top! 

Each outside table at the cafe had a little wooden trough with succulents growing in it. My vanilla bread and butter pudding was divine. It is such a treat when you live alone to eat out. All the food was presented on these wooden platters; at other cafes recently I've noticed the absence of conventional plates. Food comes served on wood or a slate; I've even had a pudding in a kilner jar!

Today, after a delightful morning strolling around the antique shops of Lostwithiel, we headed on to The Duchy of Cornwall Nursery where there is another lovely cafe! (Food is one of my greatest pleasures.)

Again it was warm enough to sit outdoors....

Pan-seared scallops with pea and pancetta risotto - delicious!

After all that we needed a walk, so just a short drive away we parked at Respryn bridge and walked along the River Fowey through the woods and up to Lanhydrock House. All was quiet as it was past opening time at this lovely National Trust property. Even the gatehouse is splendid...

The gardens were in quiet repose in the fading evening light.

One last look back up the carriage drive before heading back to the van and home......

Autumn Bliss!