One did not speak of dinner with Andrey Andreyevitch Markov, only the probability of dinner. And that probability might change, of course, depending on whether the great man had taken lunch, or gone without since his usual breakfast of black tea, unripe cantaloupe, and potato knish, or snacked perhaps on a thick slice of that Ukrainian poppyseed cake which Maria Ivanova baked with such flourish. That recipe alone would have made her name in St. Petersburg—if her husband had ever allowed a crumb to leave the house. But Markov was nothing if not meticulous. In my humble opinion, Poisson and…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By Peter W. Fong
Peter W. Fong is a writer, editor, and flyfishing guide whose first novel, Principles of Navigation, won the New Rivers Press Electronic Book Competition. He posts occasional stories and photos at peterwfong.blogspot.com.
EVOLUTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT
“Hiccups, hernias and hemorrhoids are all caused by an imperfect transfer of anatomical technology from our fish ancestors.”–biology professor Marlene Zuk in The New York Times (1/20/09) Don’t let’s go there. We all have our instinctual phobias and obsessions, a fear of sharp-beaked shadows, or a scarcely controllable urge to upgrade that in-home lap pool, again. Maybe I should have paid more attention before clicking “accept,” but I can never remember whether to stream downloads sequentially or fluvially. No excuses, but I was a botany major. And anyway, anatomical transfer was not part of the core curriculum at my school.…