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You feel achy and sore, like every muscle in your body has been overworked or pulled. You can't focus; you've been having trouble sleeping and you wake up several times a night. It hurts to sit up in class, it hurts to move, and it hurts whenever someone touches your back or your shoulders. You've been experiencing mood swings and depression and, on top of all that, your stomach hurts. So what's the deal? It might be fibromyalgia.

Nearly 170 years ago, Darwin introduced the story of evolution. Darwinian evolution explains the small differences within the same type of individuals and how this variation creates competition for the best to survive and pass on the best genes (1). Now, 170 years later, Darwinian evolution still prevails, even in the household of every family.

It is no surprise to see siblings in argument, especially because of clashing personalities. But why is the fighting so common? Is it only due to differences in personalities? Or could this fight actually be Darwinian evolution in the works? Could this fight be a form of competition to seek superiority?

The days are getting shorter and darker, and, if you’re anything like me, it’s making you want to curl up in a little ball and, well, hibernate. Animals have the right idea—as soon as winter hits they burrow into their caves and settle down to wait it out. So can we do that too? After all, we’re not that biologically different. Could we, at one point, have been able to hibernate as animals do—storing food and sleeping for several months at a time? Have we lost our

Bone Marrow Transplants: The Search for a Match

A friend of mine recently presented me with a question to use as a place to begin research for this paper. She had been studying blood types in one of her classes, and after asking about my family’s blood types, she inquired, “If you and your brother have different blood types, how could you give him bone marrow?”

            Out of nowhere, while sitting in class the other day, a yawn escaped from my mouth. “Oh no,” I thought to myself, “I just yawned in the middle of class and my professor saw me! And I’m not even bored or tired…it just… happened!”

When I was young, I was that kid. I was the kid who everybody hated, and who hated everybody, and enjoyed it. My peers singled me out from as early on as I can remember. Having very few friends, I developed a hobby, bolstered by an overactive imagination, of sensationalism and overreaction; some time around the fourth grade I decided I was an alien from outer space.

The story was elaborate: my alien parents had switched me with the real Rachael, and used the human child's DNA to make me an exact copy of her. My real self, the alien, had blue skin and eyes on long stalks, and seven fingers on each hand.

I had been mildly unhappy with all the readings for Critical Feminist Studies, even the ones I enjoyed, without knowing why.  As my participation dropped off, my discontent, rather than diminishing, increased.  Cixous's call to hear from women had spoken deeply to me, and the volcanoes were churning down below.  Some of the things that were thrown out in the eruptions follow.

Now that I've posted "Sex in Flatland", I feel the need to elaborate on some of my own opinions that wormed their way into what I meant to be a lighthearted satire-- good fun for all, you know?-- but never would have found a place in their entirety. Specifically, I'd like to address the second-to-last paragraph, in which The Good Doctor dismisses the idea of Gay Pride.

I fully realize my position on the issue might warrant me my share of hisses and thrown tomatoes by many, but I must make it known: I agree with Dr. Pentagon.

By popular request, I've uploaded to Serendip the good doctor Pentagon's article on the mating habits of his fellow Flatlanders. Enjoy!

I wrote the attatched essay as a response to Abbott's Flatland, a novella that's risen to cult status among math geeks everywhere. Flatland is at once an exploration into the geometry of higher dimensions, a commentary on classism, and a dark caricature of Victorian prudishness and misogyny. But the one thing that Abbott never mentioned was sex. How would geometrical figures reproduce? Would they enjoy it? And what about sexuality itself-- is it as variable in two dimensions as it is in our three?