#ALSO we got our microbiology papers back today

[minsstem]

18/10/23 wednesday~

did you know? our liderazgo teacher still hasn't finished grading our midterms! even though it's been 2 weeks and he's running out of extensions ! how nice :)

anyways, the only big thing today is that i went to this talk thing that i don't know how to say in english about washing our hands and food. it was decent. and also funny bc every single person there were biotec students, and everyone knew the speaker, bc he's one of our teachers. it was fun :]

finished some slides for a fisicoquimica presentation

nothing else really :)

[spookysanta]

The TA - two. (h.c., c.e.)

Summary: everything about this situation is...weird.

Pairings: Professor!Chris Evans x Black!Reader, student!Henry Cavill x Black!Reader

WARNINGS: none

here’s part two! she’s a bit lengthy, fyi. enjoy! :)

UNEDITED

After a couple of days, she’d gotten used to the formality that is Professor Chris Evans (and company). She’d gotten used to the emails that open with, “I hope this message finds you well”, even though it rarely did.

So thanks, Chris, for the well-wishes but no thank you.

The first day of Fall classes was stressful, to say the least. She woke up later than she intended for her 8 a.m. class, then she got lost on her trip from one lecture hall to another, and by the time she had to get to Franklin for Chris’ class, she was practically running across campus. She burst into the lecture hall two minutes before class was set to begin. Walking to the main podium where Chris stood preparing for that day’s lecture, she breathed out, “Sorry I’m late.”

He turned to her with a smirk. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just a bit of a rough day is all.” She waved him off, completely ignoring the loud slam of the lecture hall’s doors. A figure emerged next to her holding a tray of coffees from The Bistro.

“Good morning!” Henry greeted, clearly having a better day than she was. He offered Chris a cup, then set the tray down on the desk that sat adjacent to the presenter’s podium, taking the other two and offering one to her. She thanked him quietly. “You ready?” he asked Chris.

Chris laughed. And for the first time, she laughed along with him. And seeing it firsthand, she could tell they had a good relationship by the way they interacted. She could tell that Chris genuinely enjoys Henry’s company as his TA, and not just for the things that he does to be helpful—they have a good thing. “Yeah, I’m ready—I’m excited. Thank you for the coffee, by the way.”

“No problem. It was on my way here.”

She felt out of place as they engaged in banter.

She looked around the steadily filling classroom and saw students from all walks of life; she’ll admit, that’s one of the only perks of college in her mind—there was always someone for everyone. There are all kinds of people from different races, religions, creeds—all gathering to pursue higher education. In that respect, she found college to be interesting. But in any other regard, she hated it.

Henry took note of her silence, “Are you excited, (Y/N)?”

She turned to him sharply, not having anticipated him addressing her so suddenly. She nodded curtly, “Yep.”

“You don’t sound like it.” Chris retorted as he set up his laptop to broadcast a slideshow on the projector screens that took up nearly all of the space on the wall behind them. “C’mon, this is going to be fun!”

She offered them a dry chuckle as she watched the screens illuminate with a bright white background and black lettering that read:

WELCOME TO CHEMISTRY 120, SECTION D346-0

PROFESSOR CHRIS EVANS, D. SC.

HENRY CAVILL AND (Y/N) (Y/L/N), GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE TAs

Yeah, that’s totally not intimidating. “Ooh,” Henry nudged her with his elbow, “look at that—you’re official.” He turned to her, pointing an index finger at the screens. “Listen, this is going to be no big deal.”

“You sound like him.” She pointed to Chris, who was hooking up a small microphone that he would connect to his shirt.

“Well I mean it. You’ll be fine. The most we’re going to have to do is pass out papers and introduce ourselves—easy peasy.”

She hummed in understanding. “Mhm.” She took a big gulp from her coffee cup, its liquid now only warm from Henry’s commute. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Henry shrugged, “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Good morning, class.” Chris spoke into the microphone, his voice projecting through the speakers in the room. The chatter among students died down quickly. “I’m Professor Evans and welcome to Chemistry 120, section D346-0.” She noticed that he was like her—he fidgeted, too. His hands were behind his back, but she could see him fiddling with the remote that was in them. One hand was wrapped around his opposite wrist, and his free hand twirled the remote between his fingers.

“I’d like for my TAs to introduce themselves. They’ll be helping you a lot this semester.”

He took a handheld microphone from behind the podium and turned it on, handing it to Henry. “I’m Henry, I’m a graduate TA studying microbiology.” He stated with a muted wave. “I’ve been working with Professor Evans for about four semesters now, so I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.” He handed the microphone to her, his thumb brushing hers when she took it. Their eyes met briefly.

“Hi, I’m (Y/N). I’m an undergraduate student studying bio. This is my first semester as a TA for this class so I’m very excited to work with all of you.” There. That was easy enough. Henry looked to her with a small smile.

“Alright,” Chris spoke up after she handed him the microphone to be put away, “so I’ll be quick with the introductory stuff—I know no-one wants to hear me drone on about safety procedures for the next ninety minutes.” He gestured to a stack of papers that sat on the desk. “Could you pass those out?” he asked Henry and (Y/N) politely.

Henry nodded, effortlessly picking up the large stack of papers. He approached her and instructed in a whisper, “Take half.” She grabbed a substantial stack of papers, making her way across half of the lecture hall and handing students a sheet of paper going by rows, mimicking the movements that Henry made. They both made it to the middle; there they stood on a walkway that connected to the path that led to the front of the room. He followed behind her back to the podium as they awaited their next tasks.

“So, what you just got are information forms. We’re going to read them, go over the most important stuff, then at the end, you’ll sign them, and they’ll be collected.” Chris cleared his throat, beginning to read from the page, only really emphasizing the important aspects of the course.

She took a page off the stack, reading as he spoke. 

COURSE POLICIES:

No food/drink/snacks in the lecture hall or lab (water in a clear container is allowed)

No electronics of any kind are allowed in the lab

Late work will not be accepted in any capacity

All paper assignments must be turned in at the end of each class to TAs

Online work must be submitted before deadline—pages will close after the assigned time

Attendance (especially on lab days) is mandatory

All absences are considered unexcused unless otherwise authorized with a note or confirmation e-mail

Now it’s all come full circle for her. She can clearly see why a lot of his previous students called him a hard ass. And majority of the policies he listed, she doesn’t even plan to uphold herself. So how could she expect three-hundred students—freshmen, at that—to comply?

The policies were reasonable, sure, but hard to enforce.

He made sure to emphasize the dress code, late work, and attendance policies; it was apparent that those were real issues among his classes over the years. “Additionally,” he continued after having spoken without stopping for twenty minutes, “this is the only introductory chemistry class I’m teaching this semester, which means everything you submit will be read and graded. There are no grades for completion or participation.”

She heard several students groan. She leaned to Henry, “Wait. He teaches other classes?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered back, “He also teaches upper-level biology and organic chemistry, and he taught a statistics class last year but I’m not sure if he still does.”

Damn. No wonder he was so organized.

And she found that interesting; that definitely explained why he would have her and Henry do a lot of the grading for this class’ assignments. He probably didn’t have time to breathe in between classes, let alone grade three-hundred lab reports.

By the end of his class that seemed never-ending, she was absolutely exhausted. She was having daydreams of her cozy bed when Henry approached her after he finished collecting signed forms from his side of the classroom. “You alright?” Henry asked.

She stifled a yawn, “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Good class today, guys. I’m really excited for this semester.” Chris gushed, visibly happy with their help.

“Me, too.” Replied Henry. “I think this batch will be better than last semester’s.”

“Ugh. Don’t even get me started on last semester’s class.” He shook his head as he began to gather papers and his laptop into his bag. “I’ve never wanted to rip my hair out more than I did last semester.”

Henry laughed. “Trust me, I know.”

The two assistants prepared themselves to leave. Before they said their “goodbyes”, Chris asked them to meet with him in his office (as there was another class filing in).

“So,” Chris closed the door to his office, muffling the bustle of the room outside that was quickly filling up with the literature class that started right after theirs. “I wanted to know what you’ll be doing this weekend.”

“Um…” (Y/N) was confused. “Why?”

“Because I want to get a head start on grading these papers and entering everyone’s information into the database.” He pulled the stack of forms from his bag and clamped them together with a binder clip. “So, if you and Henry are free this weekend, that’d really help me out.”

“I’m not busy,” Henry shrugged. “I keep my weekends open anyway.”

She wasn’t busy either, but the weekend to work? This couldn’t wait until later?

“I’ll be free this weekend.” She kept her voice cheery but really regretted not lying when she had the chance.

“Great.” He clapped his hands together. “We’ll plan for a time for you to come over and we’ll knock it out in an hour or two.” Come over?

“Come over where?” she asked.

“Oh! My house.” Chris clarified, “When Henry and I had a lot of papers to grade, he usually comes over to my place early in the morning, we grade papers, and we go about our day. That’s not an issue for you, is it?”

“No, not at all.” It was a bit odd, though. But she’ll be honest in saying that she found all of this…odd in one way or another.

“Cool.” Henry looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going, I don’t want to miss tonight’s game.”

Chris’ eyes widened in realization. “Dammit.” He swore, “I forgot there was a game on tonight.” He stood and grabbed his things, going around his desk to the door, and ushering us out of his office. He shut and locked the door behind them. They walked swiftly and quietly across the front of the classroom and out the door to converse in the hallway. “Alright, you guys. Have a great rest of your day, and don’t hesitate to call me if you need me.” He waved, then turned and left through the faculty doors.

Henry looked at her. “You ready?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” Together, they walked leisurely down the stairs and out of the lecture hall, through the hustle of the “afternoon class rush”.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked for what seemed like the thousandth time today. “You’re quiet.”

“Do you think…” she paused, wanting to pick the right words to say. “do you think it’s—I don’t know—odd that Chris wants us to meet at his house to grade papers?”

“What would make you think that?”

“I don’t know, it just seems weird to me.” Someone who was on their phone bumped into her causing her to drop the books she was carrying. “Shit.” She went to grab her book, but Henry picked it up for her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He opened the doors to the lecture hall, where they looked outside and saw that it was pouring. “Wow, it’s really comin’ down out there.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t bring an umbrella.” She groaned out loud. “Fuck my life.”

Henry laughed at her misery, “You need a ride?”

“Your car’s fixed?”

“Yeah.” He fumbled in his pocket for his car keys. “I took it to the shop after our meeting. Obviously I had to call a tow truck before I could get it to the mechanic’s, but I got it there eventually. It’s doing great now in case you were wondering—it almost runs perfectly.”

“I wasn’t.” she gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks for the information, though.”

“Whatever.” He scoffed playfully. “You want a ride or not?”

She really shouldn’t. This guy, as holy as he is in the eye of the Almighty Chris, could be a monster. He could be a serial killer. He could be plotting to attack her—she’d lost count of how many news stories she’s read about kidnappings on college campuses—and who knows, she could be on his list.

But then again, it was pouring outside, and the walk back to her apartment was long. The air was getting cooler and combined with the darkness of the sky and the time of day, she’d end up with the flu by the end of the afternoon.

“Fine.”

He took his jacket from his shoulders and handed it to her. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Put it on.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You need it more than me, okay? So put the jacket on.” He commanded.

She didn’t like that he didn’t ask nicely, but she did it anyway. And she wouldn’t tell him out loud, but goodness, his jacket smelled good. Like every kind of good smell that someone would want on a man combined with the smell of men’s shampoo in the hood, she was in heaven. She tried not to let it show but she made sure to take deep inhales through her nose as they journeyed to his car.

They exited the lecture hall, running down the slippery cobblestone sidewalk like the rest of the students in their avoidance of getting wet from the impending storm. He guided her to his car, opening the door for her, then climbed in the driver’s seat. “Whew,” he breathed, buckling his seatbelt. “that was interesting.”

His car was quite nice. She’d expected it to be really junky and out of shape—because of the godforsaken breakdown—but it was surprisingly clean and smelled good, too. Not in a cologne way, but in a “detailed car” way.

“Yeah, it was.” She replied, also trying to catch her breath from running, “You have a nice car.”

“Thank you. I was trying to tell you that earlier, but you didn’t want to believe me.”

“No, I didn’t.” she laughed. “You proved me wrong.”

He revved the engine. “So, where to?”

“Brookwood Heights.”

“Shut up.” He all but exclaimed, his eyes widening to the size of Mars. “I live there!”

Oh, that’s great.

“Really? That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, that’s so funny!” he pulled out of the parking lot, turning onto the busy street. “What a small world.”

They managed to get to their apartment complex without issue. He helped her get all her belongings out of the car, then grabbed his and locked his car before they went inside, the cool air of the complex’s lobby almost smacking them in the face. They trudged to the elevator, entering the small box and leaning against the guardrails in exhaustion. She pressed the 3 on the keypad. “What floor?”

Not looking up from his phone, he mumbled, “3.”

Are you kidding me?

“That’s my floor.”

His head snapped up. “So, we’re floormates, huh?” he smirked.

“I guess so.”

The elevator dinged and they stepped out. It seemed like they were deliberately walking slowly down the hall so that they could see where the other person would drop off, but they just kept walking side-by-side until they got to the very end of the hall. She stopped in front of her door. “Well, this is me.”

He stood at the door across the hall from hers and pointed at the number, “This is me.”

So, they’re neighbors.

They’re co-workers…and now they’re neighbors.

Because of course, life can’t get any more cliché than it already is.

“See you around?” he called to her once he unlocked his front door.

“Yeah, see you around.” She waved with a small smile, opening her front door and stepping into her abode.

Damn, she missed her apartment today. She tossed her keys in the bowl by the door and took off her wet shoes. Then she set her bag on the adjacent counter. She shuffled off her jacket—

Wait.

This wasn’t her jacket. She didn’t wear a jacket today. It was Henry’s jacket.

She wanted to yell. She didn’t feel like being social anymore today. She decided to set the jacket on the coat rack by the front door; that way she’ll be able to bring it to him in the morning. She went to her bedroom and stripped from her wet clothes, going into the restroom and starting a shower.

Finally.

*

The following days were surprisingly good. She didn’t gripe and moan about the weather—it was rainy every morning that week—Henry rapped on her front door at the same time and offered to drive her to Franklin Hall. Some days, she accepted, and they even stopped at The Bistro if they had the time. Some days she didn’t, and those were the days where Henry seemed more on edge, only to visibly settle when he saw her enter the classroom or laboratory.

Today was Saturday; today was the day that she had to meet at Chris’ house to grade the lab reports from Tuesday and Thursday’s classes.

She wasn’t particularly excited about it.

She had to get up early because Chris wanted to get started at nine a.m., which was ungodly early for a Saturday—or any day, really.

Three knocks sounded sharply on her front door, “You ready?” Henry’s voice bellowed through the wood.

She rushed, opening the front door. “Almost.” She shuffled on a hoodie over her t-shirt, stepping aside. “Come in.”

He entered wordlessly and sat on the first chair he saw, which just so happened to have his jacket laying across the back. “So, I’m assuming this is yours now?”

She looked at the item he was holding. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “I meant to give that back. I’m sorry.”

He chuckled at her demeanor, “It’s fine. It’s bad out today, so I don’t mind if you need it.”

“I should be fine, thank you,” she forced her feet into a pair of sneakers, fighting to get her index finger from between the shoe’s fabric and the heel of her foot. “plus, I don’t want to hog your stuff.”

“You’re not hogging anything. If you need it, wear it.”

“But it’s yours.” She threw on her backpack, grabbing her keys, phone and wallet from the bowl by the front door. “Take it.”

“No.” he laid it back in its original position on the chair. “Give it back once the storm passes, okay? I’m just looking out for you.”

She rolled her eyes, but it made her smile anyway, “Fine. Thank you.” She opened the front door and practically shoving him out of her apartment and down the hall.

“You’re welcome.”

She’s not sure what’s happening. She’s started to like Henry’s company. Her goal when everything started was to remain polite and formal, and now…she thinks of him as a friend—which was not her plan.

They rode in a comfortable silence to Chris’ house. He could tell she was stressed. “Are you okay?”

“I guess.” Her shoulders shrugged, the fabric of her hoodie rubbing against her seatbelt. “I still think going to Chris’ house to grade papers is weird.”

“Nah,” he retorted, “it’s really casual. He makes a pot of coffee, and he even made me breakfast once. It doesn’t usually take long either—in and out.”

“So, I have nothing to be worried about?” she asked, their eyes meeting when he stopped at a red light. “This isn’t a setup for the two of you murder me, right?”

“If I wanted to murder you, I’ve had ample opportunities before today to do so.”

As if that’s reassuring.

“Thanks for sparing my life, I guess.” She muttered.

“Seriously, though. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. And if you get uncomfortable, I’ll say my apartment flooded and we’ll leave. Okay?”

She snorted, “Flooded?”

“Flooded. On fire. Intruder. My cat died. I’ll make something up.” He turned into a neighborhood of houses, pulling into a driveway behind a blue SUV, and shifting the car’s gear into “park”. “Say the word and we’ll leave, no questions asked.”

She nodded. She felt the slightest bit better about the situation. She didn’t really know if it was because he was so willing to drive her home, or if it was because he was so willing to drive her home just to keep her comfortable. Nonetheless, she appreciated it. “Okay.”

He reached behind him and pulled his shoulder bag from behind her seat. “And then, when we’re done, we can go to The Bistro and load up on cookies.”

“Their cookies are good…”

“Easily the best cookies I’ve had in a while. So, don’t do this because we’re required to, do this for the incentive of sugar.” He looked at her. “Lots and lots of sugar.”

They got out of his car with their bags and trudged up the driveway’s pavement, him following behind her to the front door. He emerged next to her and rang the doorbell.

Chris opened the door with a smile, “Hey.”

Not to mention, he wasn’t dressed like a professor at all. He was wearing grey sweatpants along with a cobalt blue zip-up jacket that was opened, showing off the white tank top he had on underneath.

And let’s not forget about the cross necklace—a minor addition, but still very important to the outfit.

“Good morning!” Henry cheered.

“Morning.” She greeted timidly.

Henry allowed her to step into the threshold of Chris’ home first. He entered, too, commenting, “Ooh. It smells good in here.”

“You caught me while I was making myself some pancakes—are you guys hungry?”

“I could eat.” Replied Henry as he plopped himself onto the couch in the front room, setting his bag on the coffee table before he sat down.

Chris looked to her, “Pancakes?” he asked simply with a point.

“Sure.” She shuffled off her backpack and sat next to Henry on the opposite end of the couch. “Let’s get this over with.” She muttered to herself. She unpacked her bag and set her laptop on the coffee table.

Not a few moments later, the two of them heard Chris shout from the kitchen, “Pancakes!”

Henry hopped up from his seat. He held out his hand in front of her, “C’mon.”

She took it and allowed him to pull her up…his hands were soft. Calloused at the knuckles, but soft, nonetheless. She almost hesitated to let go. But she did, regrettably. She followed him into the kitchen and took a plate from the stack on the counter next to the stove. Henry wasted no time in stacking his plate high with pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, drowning everything in sticky maple syrup.

She, however, was a bundle of nerves, so she didn’t grab much—only two pancakes and two strips of bacon for herself. Henry balanced his plate, a handful of silverware, and a cup of coffee in his muscular arms and walked carefully back to the living room.

“You sure that’s all you want?” Chris asked, pointing to her plate as he poured the hot coffee from the carafe and into a large mug. “There’s plenty to go around.”

She shook her head politely, “I think I’m good for now.” She took a mug from the counter and held it out to him. “Could you pour me some, please?”

“Of course.” He poured the coffee into her mug a bit more than halfway. He offered her milk from the refrigerator, and she took it, pouring into her mug leisurely. He watched her and said almost in a mumble, “So…how are you liking things?”

“What things?” she replied.

“The position. The class itself—hell, your classes. How are you getting on?”

“Good, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I like the job a lot, and working with you guys. My classes are hard this semester—I don’t know what it is, but for some reason, Calculus seems so much more difficult than I remember.”

“Who do you have for that class?” he took a long sip from his mug, leaning his back comfortably against the countertop. “Mackie?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “He assigns so much work, I can barely keep up. And his class is in Jackson Hall—on the other side of campus—so I basically have to run to his class in order to get there on time if Henry doesn’t drive me.”

“Henry drives you to class?”

Out of all she said, that’s what he clung to?

“Yeah, most days. Apparently, we’re neighbors in the same complex, and he has a class in Jackson at the same time as mine. I don’t have a car and he does, so it just made sense.”

Chris hummed. “Well, I’m good friends with Mackie; he and I were actually roommates in undergrad. So if you need me to, I can put in a word.”

“A word?” she repeated.

“Yeah. Your studies are important, but so is your job. So if you need to be excused from his class every now and again, or you need help catching up, I can help you.”

“Oh.” She pondered for a moment. She needed this job, yes, but not so much that she feels the need to fall behind on her schoolwork to keep Chris company. “Well, I think I’m fine for now, but thank you for the offer.”

“Sure. Anything to help.” He patted a hand on her shoulder, squeezing her flesh, then left the kitchen.

She sat back on the couch next to Henry and timidly ate her breakfast while he and Chris engaged in conversation about the upcoming events in the area.

We do shoulder rubs now? She asked in her brain. He seemed almost…flirty? And when I mentioned Henry driving me to class, he visibly almost tensed. What was that about?

“Yeah, I think it’s a great idea for the two of you to go.”

That’s when she started to pay attention. “Go to what?”

“There are student tutoring sessions in Hampton Hall for all undergraduate classes. Generally, I don’t make my students attend because there aren’t any undergraduate TAs in my class. But now, you’re here, so my class is on the roster.” Then, he muttered, “And Henry can take you.”

She nodded, taking her planner out of her bag. “When are they?”

“Thursdays at three. I’ve been told that they usually run about an hour, so it won’t take up all your afternoon. Then, you and Henry can do…whatever.”

Henry raised an eyebrow, eyes glancing to her, then back to Chris.

That was strange.

She didn’t question it. She was eager to finish grading her set of papers so that she could shove Henry out the door, get their cookies—that he suggested, and thus, will pay for—and head home to sleep the rest of her day away.

It took them a total of two hours to finish grading that week’s lab reports and put them into Chris’ online gradebook, and put the students’ information into a spreadsheet. After they cleared their trash and put their plates and silverware into the kitchen sink, she all but threw her belongings into her backpack. Henry put his bag over his shoulder, bushing a piece of hair behind his ear. “Well,” Henry began, taking his car keys from his front pocket and twirling the keychain around his index finger. “we should get going.”

“Sure. I don’t want to keep the two of you busy.” Chris replied as he ushered his two assistants to the front door, his tone not displaying any care for taking up the early part of their afternoon. “Have a great weekend, guys. See you Monday.”

They left and walked quietly side-by-side to Henry’s car. He backed out of the driveway and sped out of the neighborhood and down the street. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked her.

“I guess.”

“You guess?” he repeated, “What makes you unsure?”

She almost hesitated to mention it. But there was no logical way Henry didn’t pick up on Chris’ comments throughout their time there. “Chris was just acting weird, is all.”

“Define weird.”

“He kept saying things about you and me carpooling, and he even offered to excuse me from my Calc class with Mackie.” She suddenly found her fingers much more interesting to look at than the road in front of them. “And he touched my shoulder. He squeezed my shoulder, actually.”

“You think he was acting out of the ordinary…because he touched your shoulder?”

“No! Well, yes, but he seemed upset when I told him that you and I carpool, and that’s what caught me off guard.”

Henry shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t think it’s professional.”

“If he didn’t think it was professional, he would’ve said so, instead of making snide comments.”

He parked the car in front of The Bistro, then turned it off and turned to her. “Maybe he doesn’t like us hanging out.”

Hanging out? Is that what he called it?

The two of them got out of the car and walked into the cold coffee shop, standing in line behind the last patron. “I don’t know,” she said lowly so as to not disturb the other customers with their conversation. “I just think that it doesn’t make sense for him to be so…intrusive.”

He looked at her. “Do you want me to say something?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “If it’s not what I think it is, he may get offended.”

“I don’t think he will.” It was soon their turn to order. “Six chocolate chip cookies, please.” He pulled out his wallet and paid for their snacks in cash, then moved to the other side of the counter to pick them up. He handed them to her, “Here.”

“Thank you.”

The two sat at a table—a similar table to the one they first sat at together, but this one was by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He opened the parchment bag the cookies were in and handed her one. “I will say,” he started with his mouth full, “he seemed off today.”

“See? I knew it—”

“But that doesn’t mean he’s being gross, alright? Everyone has an off-day every now and then.”

The two sat in silence after that. He watched students and professors alike walk past The Bistro, some of them entering the café to enjoy pastries and coffee like they were. He began to bounce his leg on the ball of his foot; something, she noticed, that he couldn’t help but do when he was deep in thought. Either that, or sitting cross-legged and wiggling his foot back and forth.

He cannot sit still. Neither can she usually—but it’s apparent that since she’s met him, he made her feel more comfortable…safe, even. She doesn’t pick at her fingers nearly as much.

“Does he make you uncomfortable?” he asked her after a few moments of them silently people-watching. “Are you uncomfortable around him?”

“Not really.” She replied, not knowing exactly how she felt about Chris. She was intrigued by him, yes; she found him attractive, certainly; but she still didn’t know him. And because of that, she seemed to be more on edge when speaking to him. Henry wasn’t anything like that.

“A part of me just has a feeling that he’s coming onto me.”

He coughed, almost choking on his lemonade. “Like, romantically?”

“Yeah. That’s what it seems like.”

He hummed in response. He got up and threw away his trash and hers, offering a hand to help her stand. They soon left The Bistro. He opened the car door for her, then pulled out of the parking lot.

The atmosphere shifted. She knew that there was some form of attraction towards him from her, but was it reciprocated? She didn’t know, but judging by the way his eyebrows were persistent in their angry furrowing, there was something wrong with what she said at the restaurant.

They eventually got back to their complex. He didn’t say a word to her on their trek from the lot to their hallway. “G’night.” He said simply, unlocking his front door and shutting it behind him.

***

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[solvetheworldtranscripts]

Solve the World Ep. 1: Meet Jennifer Dash

What you're about to begin is an epic. It's an epic because it features the conquest of the impossible. Full of myths and legends, from microbiology to Minotaurs, from the depths of evil to the heights of possibility. Starting now, and for the next 100 episodes, we'll follow a young woman, as she follows her own intuition into the deepest mysteries of life. Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? How's it all gonna end? Have patience, dear listener. What begins with a whimper, won't end that way. This is not a story about a quiet life of desperation. No, no, this is Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Jennifer Dash's quest. Welcome, and brace yourself. It's a bumpy ride.

[Winding, a child sings in a foreign language, a bell tolls]

Solve the World, Episode 1: Meet Jennifer Dash

[Deep, echoing bell toll, the child sings again]

Let me present to you Jennifer Dash. Seventeen years of age, 5'9", dirty blonde hair that falls just to the small of the back, undeniably pretty. But the type of pretty that doesn't stand out in a crowd. Her charm is as such that in one moment she could easily pass for a tall fourteen-year-old, and then the next pull off that college grad look. You would like her immediately if you met her. And you should, Jennifer Dash is a wonderful human being, full of youthful exuberance, naïve charisma, childish glee, and a curiosity that could rival Nikola Tesla.

Today she is wearing an orange shirt, cut-offs, and seventeen dollars wadded up in her pocket, and, as is her style, she sports knee-high socks with matching coloured sketchers. But we get ahead of ourselves. We really do hope you like her. You're stuck with her now, you're stuck with her for quite a while. This is how it goes.

[Thunder cracks]

Awoken by a sound, perhaps a distant thunder, Jennifer became aware that she didn't understand life. She got up, grabbed her favourite old, mouldy black backpack, and pushed open the front screen door, letting it slam on her rear on the way out.

Okay, let's pause right there. We want everything to go well here. The beginning of an adventure, it's gotta hook you, it's gotta get you involved. How is that best communicated? What could possibly draw you into this massive journey, led by a young girl none of us know. It's a daunting task. Focus. Focus on Jenn. She's the valuable one here. She's worth the risk, worth the hours and hours and years spent with her. She's the girl for you.

And she knew, even then, walking out that door, that this understanding of life, it's not the same as figuring out one's own purpose in life or the cliché phrase "I'm going to find myself", none of that business, no. Jenn somehow understood the fallacy of searching for her own special purpose or destiny or whatever you want to call it. To do so would to center all of human history around herself. And that, friends, seemed quite far-fetched to our young protagonist. That's part of what makes Jenn interesting, what makes her unique, and precious in our eyes. For a teenager to see beyond herself like that, in this modern age of distraction? Who does that?

So again, Jenn pushed upon that screen door, uncaring as it slammed her on the rear on the way out. Off. Off to solve the world, somehow. As Jenn walked those first few steps past her door, she began to reason that she needed some sort of system of organisation. She would acquire data, lots and lots of data. Surely one needed facts and figures in order to categorise and therefore digest the world as a whole. But how on earth was she to organise all that stuff the world had to offer? While submerged in these throws of contemplation, Jenn reached the neighbours mail box. She stopped, stared at it, and with little hesitation, opened the box, taking the mail along with her. And so she walked, away from her past, away from her home turf, away from that screen door with someone else's mail in hand.

"But what am I walking toward?" Jenn pondered. There was no sidewalk on this street so she instinctively followed the dotted line in the middle of the road. Perhaps, if she had seen the movie, Jenn would have blurted out, "Follow the yellow brick road!" But alas, she was blithely unaware of that story. So she continued along the dotted line free of any analogous musical melody. What Jenn did think in that moment, as she perused her recently-acquired stolen mail, was this:

"Ok, so, a system. How to devise a system. Perhaps the mail has some insight for me. Mail... mail... mail... how did I come to know this as mail? Somewhere in time, someone taught me about the postal service. And therefore, I assume these papery items found in certain flagged boxes were deliver by men from various far-off lands. And I called this mail. Hmm, I see it now, oh it's so clear! Up until this moment, up until this dotted line, I've built my life upon stolen information. I trusted that this mail service was real, based on the word of others. Why should I accept that information? There! That's a starting point: no belief without direct experience! Ok, ok ok ok. But I shouldn't become a doubter of others. I don't wanna be a skeptic. So... I'll believe the experiences of others, but not their second-hand knowledge. Again, that's a starting point something to build from, a base. Only accept experience as data, or the first-hand experience of others I choose to trust. If I'm to believe that this paper in my hands is mail, then I must meet, someone who delivers the mail and can vouch for the mail system. Or as a second option of intake, I must myself become a mailperson in order to fully embrace the idea of mail. But as far as I know, I haven't met a mailman that I trust. So logically then, I can't accept this mail as mail! Wonderful, Jenn! You're getting it, old girl! I shall call these papers in my hand that I picked out of the box with a metal flag on it: Humphaliandra!"

[Bell tolls]

At that thought, Jenn suddenly held out the mail with both her hands and announced to anyone in earshot, "Hello, humphaliandra! Pleasure to meet you! Pleasure to hold you in my hands like so!" Jenn thought "But wait, I can call this humphiliandra all I want but that doesn't negate my memory. I still know this as mail. I've just given it a new name, but it's still mail. I can't simply erase what I've learned." It came to her then in a flash, in one word: MYTH. Jenn reaslised then that of course she couldn't undo 17 years of life education. She couldn't un-mail the mail. But what she could do, is recatagorise it. Mail became, in an instant, along with all the other lessons Jenn had been taught, a myth. There was data and there was myth. Data was humphiliandra, myth was mail. That's just how it was. Jenn thought, "Ok old girl, everything you've been taught is myth. Everything you've learned from experience is data useful to solve the world. I don't need to write it down, these are commandments to be memorised. This is important. This is vital. What I wanna talk about the process of sending and receiving papers of information using the postal service, I refer to these things as the myth of mail. It remains myth because I have no way, at this time, to be sure that this system of delivery works as I have been told. Therefore: myth. When I simply want to refer to the papers that have appeared inside metal boxes with flags, I refer to humphiliandra, which of course, being observed from my own experience, is not myth but solid-as-a-rock data."

As Jenn now strolled down the center of the street, she sighed. Pleased with herself that after merely traveling a few paces down the road, she'd already grown so wise, and made such dramatic inroads into solving the world. Not knowing where to take her mind next, she drew her attention away from her new-found commandments to the humphiliandra in her hands. A bill from a credit card company, due payment of $174.71, addressed to Red Jeb Heller. "Red Jeb", what a funny name. Address: 300 Room St, Jennings, Louisiana, 70546. Also included in the loot was a Macy's catalogue. Flipping through, the Halloween section caught her eye. Page 67 had a little boy in an astronaut costume. On his left chest, his blue jumpsuit showed off a big ol' NASA insignia stitched in.

Jenn thought, "NASA... When was I first taught that men had walked on the moon? Can't remember. Seems like a fact of life. Every American child is taught their ABC's, their 123's, and that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and that other guy went to the moon in 1969, officially showing the Russians that capitalism is awesomer than communism. It sure showed them! Look at how Humpty Dumpty's walls fell down, ha! But why should I believe that story? How can I count this as data, as something I know to be true? Maybe the Russians tell their people that they got there first. Maybe they call it Soviet Moon. Or Moon Union. For that matter, how do I know that Russia exists? Never been there. Have I met anyone who's been there? Eh, kibbles and bits, it's too hard to remember the past. New commandment I declare: only people I meet from this moment on count in this hunt to solve the world. Let the past lie down and sleep a while. Who cares for it anyway. Can't help me now. So there's a myth of man going to the moon and a myth of Russians, and Russia. Just like, as I see now on pages 70 and 71, there is a myth of vampires and a myth of zombies. I should treat all these ideas as equal, all things are myth and I need to prove them, one way or the other in order to treat them as data.

A third envelope contained a hand-written letter. It read:

"Hi Red, how are you? I'm okay. You haven't come over lately, have you? Why is that? Is it me? Are you ignoring me, or just the world in general? Yesterday they voted off Tony. I know, crazy. These are treacherous times we live in, old man. You just can't trust people to make the right decisions anymore. Isn't that right? See, you're rubbing off on me, even when you're not around. This pessimism thing, it's kinda cute actually. I miss you. Is it the communists? Has your paranoia grown? You can be honest with me about that stuff. You know that, right? I'm trustworthy. And reliable. Well, perhaps not so reliable, but yknow, I'm trustworthy with secrets and stuff. Even if the Reds-"

Note the plural rather than the honourable singular form of the word.

"Even if the Reds were to bang down my door and torture me for 47 hours straight with voodoo and Chinese water torture, I'd still never give those scumbags your inner deep thoughts. Besides, even if I wanted to tell someone something, who would I tell? I'm not well connec-"

Jennifer Dash turned her gaze mid-sentence from the paper in hand to a bird whistling in a nearby pine tree. Her mind was on the Russians. She thought, "Commies are on everybody's minds, I guess. Even the Macy's catalog! Why else would they have those big, bad, NASA emblems on the outer space outfits? I'll tell you why, old girl. They wanted the whole world to know they're selling good old-fashioned capitalist American astronautic gear, rather than cosmonaut corduroys. Cosmonauts and astronauts, funny words. Two more myths to ponder. I'm hungry."

Jenn stopped walking. Two simultaneous thoughts vied for control of her will. She was dreadfully hungry, and she was well aware that not eating led to bad, bad paths of dark doom. Jenn certainly didn't want dark and doom, she wanted light, bright, and free. Therefore, her body required sustenance. Nevertheless, she had a mission at hand; to solve the world, and the world wasn't about to just solve itself. And at this particular moment, she found herself entering into the first deep debate her adventure would lead her on.

As she continues down the road, to nearly endless physical wonders, this mental quandary will continue to rear it's ugly head. We shall ask this question now, knowing that Jenn won't come to a peaceful conclusion today. Many of Jenn's upcoming perils will be from physical attacks and strange occurrences. This mental moment, however, provides a subtle uncertainty that will continue to lie as a herrang??? for Hennifer and perhaps, for you. The question is this: Can the written word, now read, be included as data, or is it relegated to myth? The Halloween costume of the young astronaut brought this question to stunning reality for Jenn. Does the picture of the boy validate the existence of that costume? Can she trust that picture? What tools does she have to reach a consensus within herself? This small question instantly multiplied and divided itself into thousands of individual quagmires. Jenn pictured vast walls full of books, books full of stories of days gone by, experiments tried, battles fought, knowledge won. But can they be trusted? Any of them? Jennifer was overwhelmed. She took a big breath, and recited aloud what she knew.

"I know I'm holding humphaliandra, also known to me as the myth of mail. I've learned about many myths in my past life. I accept none of them as truth as of yet. They're neither true nor false, they are merely ideas, yet to be realised to me. I see a picture of a boy in a space suit, I do not know whether to believe that he exists or not. I have seventeen dollars in my back pocket, and I am hungry. I will try to feed myself now, using the seventeen dollars as a bartering tool, as the myth of money teaches me. I am hungry, and I will be fed." Jennifer took another big breath, smiled, and started walking again. She saw a fast food shop in the distance. She would test the myth of money next.

Content with her new system, she named the question of books 'flagatorindor'. Jennifer Dash liked to name things. She would dispel the question of flagatorindor one way or the other, by venturing to Macy's in search of the costume. Then, she would hunt down a supposed mailman, and solve the myth of mail. But first, she would quiet her stomach. Food ahead.

Solve the World is produced by me, Dante Stack. I'd like to thank the many generous artists at (freesound.org) and (freemusicarchive.org) where I found all the music and sound effects for the show. Full attribution for those sound effects are located on my website at (dantestack.com/solvetheworld), under 'Show Notes'. If you like the show, then please, express your support and write a review on iTunes, that's the biggest way anyone can help out the show at this point in the game. Besides that, you can also join our Facebook group at (Facebook.com/solvetheworldpodcast). Also, if you're interested, check out my other podcast, 365 Honest Questions, which is on iTunes, Stitchr, or at my website (dantestack.com) Thanks!

Please, continue with us. Continue with Jenn Dash, as she builds off her humble beginnings and uses all her capacities to make sense out of this planet. Next time, Jenn gets more than she bargained for when she exchanges her back-pocket money for fast food, and what she hears just may, just might, lead her forward in her self-proclaimed destiny... to Solve the World.

[zannolin]

📖 and 🌈(I'm going to get cracking on some lovely microbiology in a moment but I wanted to catch you before you went off to zzzz)

Ah microbiology. I could barely handle the normal stuff.Tell you a story? How about the time I started writing?I actually can't remember my exact age when I got into writing. I can remember when my sister was 13, she wrote this entire book with elves and another planet and space travel; it was really cool. I have the original copy still (she says I should burn it). She wrote a little teaser and taped it to our bedroom door, where anyone could read and write down what they thought. I was...6, I believe. I read it and I was totally spellbound. I needled at her until she let me read some of her other stories. When we moved to our new house and I began to figure out how to use our desktop (I think this was about age 8) I tried to write a story about the plastic animals I would take with me into the bubble bath. It was called Bubble Horse Stories. I lost my original version (hazards of having an old computer that goes kaput) but I have the entire concept and a revised prologue in my documents. And I still own all the plastic toys ;) After a while, I hit my first writer's block, and, being the flighty child I was, I dumped writing and moved on. When I was 10, my mom entered me in an essay contest and made me write for that. Of course, I had no clue how to do that, and I failed spectacularly, was overall miserable, and decided that writing SUCKED and I'd rather die than do that anymore.That lasted me a year, until my best friend dragged me kicking and screaming back into it. It only took 3 hours running around our church building during reach group for her to talk me into trying it. So then I started again, except, well....this thing I started writing was actually a fanfiction for the 39 Clues book series, before I knew it was fanfic. I was mad that the authors were killing all the characters left and right, so I made my own, Lilac Galhi, Hazel Rubye Trice, and Lily who I can't remember her last name for. (Fun fact: those're anagrams of my doll's name, Gail Cahill, and my bestie's doll's name, Elizabeth Curry) it actually stretched on pretty far before I started branching out into other books. I went and looked through my folder on our desktop today, and dang, have I got some old stuff in there. My wolf book I forgot the plot to, my mermaid book where I was freewriting and the entire story changed, the book that was basically me and my friend making up ridiculous titles to go with marbles....For a year or so I've been dormant in my writing because I've had blockage and really dead inspiration, plus I had depression for several months. Also I'm a plot-out-loud-with-your-best-friend kinda girl, and that's hard when you don't have time for calls and your best friend lives halfway across the country. So I started back tentatively last year with some Harry Potter fics, and some disinterested smatters of Star Wars fics. I also did a LOT of Doctor Who. I didn't really get serious until I found FanFiction.Net and made an account. Then I found the Silent Song, and it was basically WHOA HELLO TEARS AND INSPIRATION OKAY. So now I'm trying to be better about that. One thing that did keep me intrigued in writing was my sister's stories, which really started it all. Unfortunately, she recycled most of them. I can remember watching like a hawk for when she would take a load to the paper recycling, then I would sit myself on the kitchen floor and haul it all out on my lap to read. She would get really mad at me, though, so I only managed to salvage a few. Her first, and its sequel, plus the Mrs Salty comedy sketches, and of course her elf book. But I can remember the thrill of sitting there, reading what my older sister had crafted, and just getting so swept up and thinking "Wow! I wish I could write like this."Dang, this was supposed to be the story of how I STARTED writing, not my complete history of writing.

[rofics]

Writing Challenge: Day 7

prompt: fireflies

I always wanted to go camping but never had enough friends willing to go and camping by yourself sounds dangerous. At my university a group of seven transfer students walked into my class and introduced themselves. They all had different styles and auras. There was Mark, Jaebum, Jackson, Jinyoung, Youngjae, BamBam, and Yugyeom. I guess the one named BamBam liked using his nickname but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Youngjae. A lot of students previously transferred out of the class so the only open seats were by me so the teacher directed them to me. 

“Y/N please raise your hand so the transfer students know where you are” she states and I raise my hand. 7 eyes lock onto me and I suddenly feel extremely shy, they walk up the few steps and I introduce myself quietly. Luckily I was studying Korean and could converse with them and I was met with relief when I learned that Jackson and Mark spoke English. While sitting next to them I became close with everyone and a crush started to develop on Youngjae. One day it was too much and I confessed to Jackson because I was desperate but he ended running his mouth and told everyone except for Youngjae...or so I hope. 

After a semester with them we were inseparable and Jackson thought that going on a group camping trip would be fun. I agreed because it was my opportunity to go camping with friends and I don’t think I’ve ever see Jackson be that happy with me

“See! Y/N agrees, now we have to go” he says matter of factly and everyone else breaks down so I cheer. 

“I haven’t gone camping before because none of my other friends wanted to go with me” I pout and JB pats my head

“Well now you get to go with friends” he says and I smile at him. Jb had a great presence about him, like an uncle that always believed in you. Today was a Friday so we decided to go over the weekend. After classes were done for the day we all split up and I went home to pack and finish some homework. I was working on a paper when my phone chimed with a message

‘Are you going to tell him?’ it read and was from Mark

‘I guess?? I don’t think it’s healthy to hide it anymore’ I send back and get another chime

‘Tell him or I will *evil smiley face*’ BamBam threatens

‘Do it and I’ll burn all of your shoes’ I retort 

‘So mean! ><’ he whines and I chuckle to myself. 

With my phone to the side I finish the paper and pull out a Microbiology worksheet and pamphlet that went with it. I had to answer all of the questions and then was done with all homework! About an hour and a half later I was done and put the papers into my book bag. I stretch and go onto Netflix to watch some Criminal Minds to pass the time. About mid episode I realized that I needed to pack so I headed into my room and got a spare book bag out of my closet. I got three pairs of pants out, one as a backup. Four shirts, also back ups along with some jackets. I threw in pajamas, socks, and other undergarments I needed. I went into the bathroom and got my deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, and hair brush. I put a spare pair of boots in my bag as well just in case we decided to walk somewhere so I wouldn’t get my normal shoes dirty. I also wanted to be cautious so I packed band aids, ibuprofen, and rubbing alcohol. I know it was too much but you never know! Those boys are pretty clumsy so it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them got hurt. I go back to the living room and continue watching Criminal Minds until it’s time for sleep

Next Morning

I woke up early because someone thought it would be fun if we went in the morning time. I got ready in some clothes and grabbed my bag, waiting for the group to come and get me. About 10 minutes later I hear a honk outside and get up to look out the window, there sits two cars with them split up. One car had Jinyoung, Jabum, Jackson, and BamBam. The other had Mark, Yugyeom, and Youngjae in the back so I assumed I was to join the car with Youngjae in it. I slide into the back seat and greet everyone warmly. Our car pulls out first and we end up heading to Starbucks for a coffee stop before our camping trip. I guess they found a small cabin in the woods a few hours away and we were going to stay there for the weekend. We all got our drinks and then headed off, both cars had food and drinks because these 7 can put some food down between all of them. Yugyeom was given the aux cord and he put some kpop on, VIXX, BTS, Seventeen, Big Bang, B.A.P, SHINee ad many others blasted through the speakers as we all sag along..except for Mark because he was driving. I couldn’t help but have my heart flutter at Youngjae’s singing voice, I could listen to it all day. Taeyang’s Eyes, Nose, Lips came on and we all three began to sing. Three different pitches seemed to mix together as we sang recklessly. Soon we arrived at the cabin and got out, stretching from the long drive. The others pull in behind us a minute later and we all grab our bags, food and drinks. I do a complete spin, taking in the scenery. I wasn’t watching where I was going and ran straight into Youngjae who was right in front of me. I stumbled a bit and my face landed right on his chest and his hands grabbed my arms

“Are you okay?” he asks and I nod, blushing bright red. Jackson laughs loudly and claps

“Get a room you two!” he cackles and Mark slaps him on the arm. BamBam makes kiss faces at us with Yugyeom joining in but mama Jinyoung scolded the two and pushed them towards the cabin. 

“Ah those jokers” I mumble, trying to lighten the awkward mood

“Yeah..come on, let’s see the inside” Youngjae offers and gently grabs my hand. A jolt runs through my body but I don’t pull away because I feel all light and fluttery inside. Youngjae gives me his brighter than the sun smile and I can’t help but smile back. We walk in together

“Oh you confessed finally!” Jackson cheers 

“I bet Y/N asked, pay up Yugyeom!” BamBam states and Yugyeom whines

“I believed in you Youngjae hyung” he pouts and I sweat drop

“Nobody confessed...and you guys placed a bet?!” I shout and they all stop. 

“Then why are you two holding hands?” Jaebum asks and I shrug, looking at the ground. 

“Because I like Y/N and they didn’t pull away when I took their hand” Youngjae states, standing his ground. I blush even brighter and clear my throat

“I like Youngjae too..that’s why I didn’t pull away” I mumble and fell his hand grip mine tighter

“Ha! Pay me back hyung! Youngjae hyung confessed first!” Yugyeom demands and BamBam hands the money back in defeat. Jackson pulls out money and gives it to Yugyeom as well

“You failed me Y/N” Jackson cries and I shake my head at him. With that settled we all put the food and drinks up, next is dealing with sleep arrangements. There were three rooms so Mark, Jaebum, and Jinyoung grouped up. Then Jackson, BamBam and Yugyeom which left Youngjae and I to share a room. Nothing was going to happen but the thought was a bit weird. The day was still young so we sat around and played games until night began to fall. Of course we had to go outside and make S’mores because it was a camping tradition. As it got even darker, fireflies began to show up. They were just flying around us, we reached up and tried to grab them and they glowed on our hands. We spent around an hour outside with the fireflies until the mosquitoes came out and began to bight us. We put the fire out completely and went back inside for actual food. We sit around the table provided and eat while making conversation. Outside, you could still see all of the fireflies and I was filled with happiness. A strong group of friends, a boyfriend, and the beauty of bugs that emit a yellow light with their butt’s

-Ro. I didn’t like this one’s end but I just took sleep medicine so I’m going to be out like a light soon. I have tomorrow off as well and will make the prompts for days 8 and 9^^ i hope you all enjoy~

[juniperpublishersna]

Mechanisms of AMR: Mdr Genes and Antibiotics Decoys Retard the New Antibiotic Discovery against Superbugs-Open Access Publishers Many microorganisms cause lethal diseases in human causing loss of lives and property worldwide. Many antibiotics are used to cure deadly infections for the past 75 years with no difficulty. Recent outbreaks of multi-drug resistant bacteria have caused millions of death every year and physicians do not know how to cure KPC2 Klebsiella kneumoniae, NDM1 Escherichia coli or MRSA Staphylococcus aureus and XDR Acinetobacter baumannii infections. Sadly once used ampicillin, streptomycin, azithromycin, tetracycline, and chlormphenicol are useless against those bacteria. Combination therapy using colistin, imipenem, amakacin, ceftizidime and investigation drug ovibactam sometime are giving good clinical efficacy but not sure. In such a situation, heterogeneous phyto-antibiotics and gene medicines have been welcome by medical authorities but AMR calamity remains as mdr genes (amp, bla, tet, cat, aac, aad, aph,sul etc) moved to conjugative plasmids and chromosome of bacteria with target specific alterations in rRNA and porins genes. Keywords: Mdr genes; Anti-microbial resistant; Gene medicine; Phyto-antibiotics Introduction Past 75 years are the golden era of drug development and several types of antibiotics are in centre stage of such discoveries since the discovery of penicillin drug by Alexander Flaming from slime mold Penicillium notatam in 1928 targeting peptidoglycan cell wall biosynthesis of most Gram (+) and Gram (-) bacteria [1]. Since then 1000 derivatives were made alone for penicillins (ampicillin, cefotaxime and imipenem) for better drug usually called penicillinases resistant drug. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University, Dr. Selman A. Waksman discovered over twenty antibiotics (a word he coined) and introduced procedures of antibiotic production (streptomycin) that led to Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952. However, such dream could not last long as more potent penicillinases called, oxacillinases, cefotaximases, carbapenemases were appeared in bacterial plasmids [2]. New era of biology was begun in 1953 with the discovery of structure of DNA, gene structure, regulation of gene expression and advancement of DNA sequencing, chromosomal structure and RDT work (Figure 1). Profound impact was found by biomolecules separation by ultra centrifugation and HPLC with chemical structure analysis by Mass, NMR and FTIR. Invitebly we got many life saving drugs with known target site although basic DNA, RNA and protein composition in virus to bacteria to human were same [3]. [Click here to view Large Figure 1] Semi-synthetic drugs and anti-microbial resistance Naturally, semi-synthetic drugs were made without choice to overcome the action of multi-drug resistant class located in bacterial plasmids that inactivate the antibiotics by different mode of actions. As for example, ampR cell extract was discovered as early as 1940 and amp gene which produces an enzyme, Beta- lactamase was sequenced in 1965. Now one in three bacteria in river and sea water contained amp gene in large conjugative plasmids that also carry 5-10 other mdr genes and 10-15 Tra and Tnp genes [4]. So journey from 1940-1960, described the isolation of tetracycline, streptomycin, sulfa-drug, ampicillin, amoxicillin, cefoxitin, cefotaxime, erythromycin, nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin, neomycin, polymyxin, enoxacin, norfloxacin (Figure 2). However, at the almost same time, resistant bacteria to all these antibiotics were developed creating pressure to drug industry for more and more new drug development. However, it is not very easy to develop a drug for human use because it needed at least one billion dollar to develop a drug. What happen to investor if a developed drug is good for few years and then drug resistant microbes appeared when no one want to prescribe that antibiotic because uncertainty of cure of such infections and also delay in treatment and also taken of repeated different antibiotics surely toxic to health and time and monetary loss [5]. [Click here to view Large Figure 2] Drug screening from bacteria against bacteria-a wrong message In fact, now R & D Industry screening new drugs everyday and also computer-guided graphics design and stimulate artificial drug-target interactions have accelerating the new drug development. Screening of new drug from fungi was favourable in sense that in soil and water there is a battle between bacteria and fungi and so fungi will produce anti-bacterial to kill bacteria. That type of selection is good having different genus but what we did that we introduced the battle between actinomycetes and bacteria like neomycin (1946) and actinomycin (1940). And then we introduced the battle between bacteria against bacteria as for example streptomycin is produced from soil bacteria, Streptomyces griseus and also chloramphenicol that eradicate typhoid disease in early decades. What has happened in life of bacteria that all want to destroy it and as a result bacteria are forced to re-arrange its genes to save its life, Hypothesis is not so easy as its own counterpart is enemy and bacteria created many new entity like transposons, integrons, R-plasmids and many DNA rearrangement enzymes like transposes, resolves and integrases and also many topoisomerases and restriction end nucleases [6]. In 1960-1980, we produced 1000 tons of antibiotics in industry and 7000 millions of global peoples now taken antibiotics almost every day or every month to remove the bacteria from intestine and blood to keep healthy. Doctors have forgotten that bacteria needed for human development and intestine should stay (10)12 bacteria for normal synthesis of vitamins which human could not synthesize itself . When such discrepancy was noticed, then probiotic bacteria were used as supplement after each antibiotic therapy. In other word, we used many unnecessary doses of antibiotics as for example, for viral infection, for pain and in food animal growth as well as in agricultural land [7]. Conjugation plasmid-a safe guard of bacteria to transmit genes without failure However that is too late, as bacteria developed another armour against antibiotics by using its very urgent plasmids used in conjugation (marriage) that means bacteria could form a sex pilus using Tra proteins coded by 62kb plasmid called F'- plasmid which usually did not carry MDR genes. What bacteria did that combined R-plasmid with F'-plasmid and such plasmid is known today as conjugative MDR plasmid which could be large as 100-500kb and such plasmids are hard to purify by plasmid purification method for molecular biological study being contaminated with bacteria chromosome (2000-5000kb) [8]. Never the less CsCl density gradient centrifugation and Pulse Field Gel Electrophoresis have help to isolate such plasmids with purity and also fully sequenced. What we see that such plasmids carry most Tra and Tnp genes including localized mdr genes. What is the advantage of bacteria then? Very advantage for life because such plasmids are very stable in bacteria during cell division and also could donate the non-MDR bacteria of mdr genes to save from deleterious effects of antibiotics and toxic chemicals in water. What is a toxic chemical? Well large industry like mineral Industry, Paint industry, drug industry, paper industry, petroleum industry and excreta from 100 million peoples in many big cities (New York) releases tons of chemicals, antibiotics and heavy metals into sea water that are very harmful to bacterial central dogma enzymes like those involved in replication, transcription and translation. What exactly bacteria did Bacteria simply made 100 different enzymes that destroy antibiotics once it entered into bacteria. But that is not sure as 100 chemicals and detergent in sewage water and bacteria made drug efflux genes (known as tetA, acrAB, mexAB/CD/EF, and ABC genes) that could remove drugs and chemicals from cytoplasm into outside keeping save its cellular enzymes and nucleic acids (Figure 3). That mean whatever the high concentration of pollutants and antibiotics outside water where bacteria live no toxicity because once a chemical enter into bacteria acrAB/C proteins pump it back into environment keeping bacteria safe. What is the consequence? Well bacteria in our body stay alive and divide most to cause sepsis and trauma but condition not likely going to improve by taking prescription drugs because no achievable concentration of the drug would be happen in bacterial cytoplasm (to stop protein synthesis) due to bacterial drug efflux pumps (Figure 4). [Click here to view Large Figure 3] [Click here to view Large Figure 4] Bacteria moved mdr genes into chromosome to increase gene dose further Did any other genetic changes happen that we should be worry? Yes, bacteria also made safe guard by combing mdr genes into their chromosome and few bacteria like Staphylococus aureus and Acinetobacter baumannii and also household bacteria like Escherichia coli genome-MDR-islands were sequenced confirming the calamity (Figure 4). That is not the end, porin membrane proteins are also mutated in such a way that antibiotics receptors altered and no drug could enter into bacteria at low drug concentration giving MDR. Further, ribosomal ribonucleic acids (23S, 16S rRNAs) gathered few mutations (usually very conserved) and many ribosomal proteins and drugs interactions did altered causing MDR. On one word, bacteria have achieved many shrouds against antibiotics and drug companies did not know where to start [9]. As for example, we discovered at least twenty types' bacterial beta-lactamases (mdr genes) that were sequenced. Again in each type beta-lactamase gene, hundreds of mutations were discovered that sometime gave high drug resistance increasing drug MIC or totally resistant. Gen Bank analysis clearly showed that each conjugative plasmid in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella kneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhi have many mdr genes giving resistant to 5-10 antibiotics from different groups with different mode of ations (Table 1). Interestingly such plasmids carry mdr genes in one locus with activation by transposon promoter-enhancers and Tra genes are located in clusters (Figure 5). It is very easy to isolate MDR bacteria in water by adding antibiotics in media at 50μg/ml and then isolate plasmid DNA by alkaline lyses method and then do PCR reactions in presence of mar gene specific primers as shown (Figure 6) where Escherichia coli KT-1_mdr bacterial plasmids were amplified with mcr, tet, bla VIM and acrAB mdr genes specific primers. Such PCR product could be confirmed by di- deoxy DNA sequencing as shown in (Figure 7) where blaTEM gene was found in every ampicillin resistant bacteria we have isolated from Ganga River water of Kolkata [3,10]. [Click here to view Large Figure 5] [Click here to view Large Figure 6] [Click here to view Large Figure 7] [Click here to view Large Table 1] Conclusion It is very evident that superbugs were highly contaminated in water resources of India similar to other Asian and American countries [11,12]. WHO warned that if alternative to antibiotics were not discovered, very fatal human loss might be occurring in the future? Likely herbal antibiotics research has given priority in India as there is enough medicinal plants and spices available as described in Sanskrit books Charaka Samhita and Veda [8]. However, gene medicines (ribozymes, miRNA, antisencse RNA, and DNA nanotechnology have benn welcome to stop the horror of MDR bacterial pathogenesis. MDR phenomenon is ancient and also universally have detected in viral pathogenesis, cancer cells and parasitic diseases [13,14]. More sadly, bacteria have acquired promoter induction system by antibiotics and many transcription factor repressors (tetR, acrR) have been accumulated in conjugative plasmid. What it mean that if you take imipenem then it will activate MDR genes causing more AMR and simply patient will die on antibiotic treatment [15].

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Urinary Tract Infections Affect Millions. The Cures Are Faltering.

For generations, urinary tract infections, one of the world’s most common ailments, have been easily and quickly cured with a simple course of antibiotics.

But there is growing evidence that the infections, which afflict millions of Americans a year, mostly women, are increasingly resistant to these medicines, turning a once-routine diagnosis into one that is leading to more hospitalizations, graver illnesses and prolonged discomfort from the excruciating burning sensation that the infection brings.

The New York City Department of Health has become so concerned about drug-resistant U.T.I.s, as they are widely known, that it introduced a new mobile phone app this month that gives doctors and nurses access to a list of strains of urinary tract infections and which drugs they are resistant to.

The department’s research found that a third of uncomplicated urinary tract infections caused by E. coli — the most common type now — were resistant to Bactrim, one of the most widely used drugs, and at least one fifth of them were resistant to five other common treatments.

“This is crazy. This is shocking,” said Lance Price, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University, who was not involved in the research. The drug ampicillin, once a mainstay for treating the infections, has been abandoned as a gold standard because it is so often resistant to multiple strains of U.T.I.s. Some urinary tract infections now require treatment with heavy-duty intravenous antibiotics. Researchers last year reported in a study that a third of all U.T.I.s in Britain are resistant to “key antibiotics.”

Certainly, the day-to-day experience of having a U.T.I. is growing less routine for many women.

Carolina Barcelos, 38, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley, Calif., said she had several U.T.I.s as a teenager, all successfully treated with Bactrim. When she got one in February, her doctor also prescribed Bactrim, but this time it didn’t work.

Four days later, she returned and got a new prescription, for a drug called nitrofurantoin. It didn’t work either. Her pain worsened, and several days later, there was blood in her urine.

Her doctor prescribed a third drug, ciproflaxacin, the last of the three major front-line medicines, and cultured her urine. The culture showed her infection was susceptible to the new drug, but not the other two.

“Next time,” Dr. Barcelos said, “I’m going to ask them to do a culture right away. For eight days I was taking antibiotics that weren’t working for me.”

Usually, it is people with weakened immune systems or chronic medical conditions who are most vulnerable to drug-resistant infections, but U.T.I.s have a dubious distinction: They are the single biggest risk to healthy people from drug-resistant germs.

Resistance to antibiotics has become one of the world’s most pressing health issues. Overuse of the drugs in humans and livestock has caused germs to develop defenses to survive, rendering a growing number of medicines ineffective in treating a wide range of illnesses — a phenomenon that is playing out worldwide with U.T.I.s.

The World Health Organization, while noting that data on urinary tract infections and drug resistance is “scarce,” said the fact the infections were so common strongly suggested that increasing resistance would lead to more severe illnesses and fatalities.

The solution, researchers and clinicians say, includes a continued push for more judicious use of antibiotics worldwide. But more immediately, a partial solution would be the development of quick, cheap diagnostic tools that would allow an instant urine culture so that a doctor could prescribe the right drug for U.T.I.s.

But whether to wait the several days it usually takes to get lab results before prescribing presents a tough dilemma for doctors and patients, who frequently are desperate for relief. Plus, depending on a person’s insurance, getting a culture can be expensive.

Generally doctors still do not order a urine culture before prescribing an antibiotic.

“In the old days, the list of antibiotic options was short but by and large they would all work,” said Dr. James Johnson, an infectious disease professor and leading researcher on urinary tract infections at the University of Minnesota.

Some women have U.T.I.s that the body fights off on its own without using antibiotics, while other women may have a different low-level ailment that feels like a U.T.I., but isn’t. The safest course is to see a doctor and make an informed decision that includes a judicious determination of whether antibiotics are warranted. The science does not support the efficacy of some popular remedies like cranberry juice or cranberry pills.

Officials from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that U.T.I.s acquired by otherwise healthy people were a growing concern and one poorly studied. They are not tracked nationally.

In older people, urinary tract infections can be deadly, but tracking in the United States is so weak that there are no reliable estimates on the numbers of deaths related to the infections. The C.D.C. published an estimate of 13,000 per year, but that figure comes from a paper looking at 2002 data and refers only to U.T.I.s acquired in hospitals.

Dr. Clifford McDonald, associate director for science in the division of health care quality promotion at the C.D.C., said the government planned to expand its research.

“If we don’t do something soon,” Dr. McDonald said, “it’s going to push all our treatments to more advanced antibiotics that finally put a lot of pressure on the last-line treatments.”

What makes these infections so dangerous, and commonplace, is human anatomy. In women, the urethra — the gateway to the urinary tract — is in proximity to the rectum. This can lead to easy transfer of bacteria in fecal residue that otherwise resides harmlessly in the gut.

In reproductive years, women are 50 times for likely than men to have a urinary tract infection; later in life, the ratio drops to 2 to 1, as men wind up having surgical procedures on their prostate, or catheters, that more easily expose their urinary tracts to infection.

There are multiple germs that cause U.T.I.s, and their resistance levels to drugs vary both by strain and by where a patient lives. By far the most common cause of U.T.I.s today is E. coli, and, in general, those infections have seen sharp rises in resistance to gold standard treatments over the past decade and a half.

New research shows that one crucial path of transfer of germs that cause U.T.I.s is food, most often poultry. The consumed poultry winds up in a person’s gut and can get transferred through fecal residue to the urethra.

A study published last year by the American Society of Microbiology, funded partly by the C.D.C., found 12 strains of E. coli in poultry that matched widely circulating urinary tract infection strains. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Lee Riley, a professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley, said he was working on a C.D.C.-funded project to determine whether the urinary tract infection needs to be classified and reported as a food-borne illness.

Dr. Brad Frazee, an emergency room doctor at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., has been a co-author of research that adds another troubling wrinkle: Increasingly, E. coli is proving resistant not just to individual antibiotics, but also to a broad group of drugs known as beta-lactam antibiotics. These drugs share a way of attacking infection, and when a germ develops resistance to this method of attack, it eliminates several key treatment options all at once.

Recently, a woman carrying such resistance showed up at Dr. Frazee’s hospital, he said. She wound up with pyelonephritis, an infection in the kidney, and had to be treated in the hospital intravenously with a drug called ertapenem that can cost $1,000 a dose. A study found that around 5 percent of U.T.I.s at the hospital carried this resistance.

Doctors are now confronting cases of resistant urinary tract infections in their practices. Dr. Eva Raphael, a primary care physician in San Francisco, recently received notice that one of her patients, a healthy woman in her mid-30s, was back in the emergency room with another U.T.I. that was resistant to multiple antibiotics.

One of her prior U.T.I.s had failed to respond to two commonly used treatments and had spread to her kidney, requiring hospitalization to receive intravenous antibiotics. This time Dr. Raphael consulted with infectious disease specialists.

“It can be quite dangerous in this age where there is more and more resistance,” she said, noting that without effective treatment the infection can get into the blood. “It can be fatal.”

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Gender Paper

GENDER PAPER

           The world of fashion hasn’t always been perceived differently by the two genders. We discussed in class that once men in high society seemed to care about how they dressed as equally (if not more than) as women did. However, with the changing standards and social structure of society, things have changed. Although many men do care about how they dress, women seem to care significantly more. I think the apathy many men have towards fashion is fascinating. Today’s society is all about judging people by how they dress, but from my interviews I perceived that some men may not be as comfortable with this as women and that “dressing for yourself” may mean different things to each gender.

LAURA

Let’s start with Laura, my female interview subject. She is a microbiology major and her style is simple and cute but in a unique way that suits her personality. When I asked her about the importance of clothing to her, Laura’s first thought was, “Clothing is important because then I can go out in public.” She then spoke about how clothes are a very much part of one’s identity in modern society, which I’ve observed as a common reaction among the girls I know. Then she went on to say that she always wants to express herself through her clothing even if it isn’t trendy. Laura also admitted she thinks a lot about the tug of war within her about whether she wants to be trendy or if she just wants to be herself. She likes being unique and she said that what she wears definitely affects her mood throughout the day. Overall, Laura wants to find clothes that she enjoys and speaks to who she is rather than what other people think.

Laura said that she did not spend a lot of time and thought on her clothes on the day to day business, which is unique for a girl. However, she explained that she doesn’t need to think a lot about her clothes on the day to day because she spends hours in the store contemplating what she should buy. She runs through various outfits in her head and she really thinks about if she will enjoy wearing an item of clothing. The main effect that she wants her wardrobe to have is for her to look “polished” but still look “unique,” so she has to think a lot about it when she’s buying clothes.

Laura’s attitude towards clothing is full of love. She “like[s] it when people get creative with their clothing,” especially when people keep up a different aesthetic. She tries to keep up a “look” when she can like the people she admires, though she admitted she wasn’t nearly as successful at it as they are. Still, Laura decides this and all her other clothing decisions for herself. She likes compliments, but she said it’s because she’s “glad other people agree.”

NICK

           For my male subject, I interviewed my friend Nick. When I told him that I was interviewing him for a fashion paper, he thought that he “wouldn’t be very helpful.” This actually surprised me, as did the rest of the interview. His answers were not as extensive as Laura’s, so I will be just as brief.

           The main thing I got from Nick is that he does not think very much about his clothing. He doesn’t even think about his clothes for Sunday that much. He said the most complicated his decision-making process gets is the question, “what tie am I going to wear today?” Yet he still looks put together, even if he is just wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I thought he at least put some thought into his clothes but he doesn’t. His main thoughts on and desires from clothing are “not being naked,” “not being cold,” “it’s good,” covering himself, and dressing for himself. He truly has the simplest outlook on clothing I have ever encountered.

COMPARISON

           This process both confirmed and denied things I already knew. I was surprised that both male and female interviewees don’t put very much thought into their day to day outfits. I definitely put a lot of thought into my outfit every day, to the extent that I usually have to plan it out the night before if I know I’m not going to have time or want to plan it in the morning. I even sometimes wake up and spend 10-15 minutes deciding on a different outfit if I don’t like my original plan.

           I wasn’t surprised that Laura spends a lot of time shopping and thinking about her clothes because I am the same way. However, it is shocking that Nick spends almost no time on his clothes. Even my seventeen-year-old brother who adamantly claims to not care about fashion cares enough to maintain an aesthetic. It’s actually kind of obnoxious how much Nick did not care about the clothes he wears.

           I think the one thing that I and all my test subjects can agree on is that we all dress for ourselves, just in different ways. I think I care more about going against the trend and wearing stuff that I think is cute. I have been accused of following trends with embroidery and bell sleeves, but I always try to explain to people that I have been wanting to wear those things since I was a kid but no one made bell sleeved shirts so I couldn’t. It is nice, however, to see that my friends truly are dressing for themselves. I can see who they are through their clothes and that’s really refreshing when everyone in Utah dresses the exact same way.

           I do find Nick’s lack of a stance on clothing fascinating though. Compared to myself and my female friend, he does not care at all. I think this goes back to the idea we talked about in class where men are regarded suspiciously if they care too much about their clothes. I think Nick is a product of men being told to not care turning into men not actually caring. Their lack of caring is actually fascinating, because in some guys it’s obvious that they are not caring on purpose (showing that they actually care a lot) and others genuinely not caring. I think the standard for men has very much become for men that personality speaks louder than appearances.

           However, I think that status quo is changing. I know plenty of men that at least put some thought into what they’re wearing so they look good. I see it on campus every day. Men are starting to realize that they have to start selling themselves, not just their ideas, to be heard. Women have been doing this for centuries. We have always had to say what we want with our clothes because it would determine if we got listened to or not. However, in both men and women I see a growing acceptance of expressing one’s self through fashion, not just wearing the same uniform so we are taken seriously. For all its faults, society is definitely starting to accept people more for they are than for what they want.

[netmaddy-blog]

Little Mic and the Big Mac Myth

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Little Mic and the Big Mac Myth

A few of years ago I spoke to the owner of an evolutionist website who informed me that he no longer bothered updating it because the war against Genesis and creationism had been well and truly won. At the same time, Richard Dawkins had written so many books that they occupied one whole shelf at my local Waterstones bookshop. And also at the same time, the Human Genome Project was getting underway, and the evolutionary clamor was growing ever louder as they prepared to charge into their final battle of Armageddon, eager to crush creationism once and for all. Charge!!!…

… Oops! Oh dear! Armageddon has become Disarm-addon and the retreat is now under way. Or, to put it another way, evolution has hit the proverbial buffers.

As a result, we can announce today that Macro-evolution, personified here for fun as Big Mac, the driving force of Darwinism, has passed quietly away, having been made redundant and irrelevant. Although Big Mac had been a powerful evolutionary force for more than a century, helping make evolution ‘the most seductive theory in all science’, he has become superfluous, as will be made clear below.

Where we might ask, did the running Mac come from, and where did he go, and why? In fact, did he ever really exist other than as a cunning myth in the troubled mind of Charles Darwin?

Raise Your Right Hand

Such was the pervasive influence of Big Mac and his mentor, that scientist all over the world, were required to pledge allegiance to evolution in order to get and hold a good job or obtain a research grant. Raise your right and swear on this sacred copy of The Origin of Species that you will extoll the genius of the Great Lord Darwin in all books and research papers. I do, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

However, following Mac’s demise, a growing number of scientists are now coming out of the woodwork, admitting that they never actually encountered any real evidence of his existence. So Mac appears to have been a fictional entity, a cartoon character popular with the BBC, but in reality just some kind of mass hallucination.

So what really happened? Quite simply the world just accepted, as an article of faith, Darwin’s claim that the earth’s present flora and fauna somehow ‘evolved’ from the bizarre and now-extinct organisms whose fossils are found in the ancient palaeozoic and Mesozoic rock strata, evidence of a previous prehistoric age when the world was a very different place to what it is now. At the extreme, it was believed that every organism on earth had a lineage back to a ‘common ancestor’ in that ancient pool of slime. Computer programs were then developed to compare the structures of all organism, from the most simple to the most complex, and shuffle and sequence them (assuming evolution to be true) to form a notional ‘tree of life’, the technique of ‘cladistics’. e.g. your cat Tiddles and my dog Ollie both have four legs, and so must have evolved from a ‘common ancestor’, along with cows and horses, mice, etc.

As one top Cambridge evolutionists admitted, however, cladistics just don’t work because you can tweak the programs to prove anything you like. They can make it up as they go along. And they do.

‘The simple fact is that Darwin was a brilliant thinker with a vivid imagination, and nobody

else back in the 1850s knew enough science to argue with him. As a result, when he made this claim, a scientifically ignorant world, with a few exceptions, simply believed him and applauded and went out and bought his book. He moved in and took over. It was like the O.K. Corral, but with no gunfight. And we were the cattle.

Of course, the proverbial penny should have dropped when geologists failed to find all those zillions of imperfectly formed transitional forms that Darwin said were the essential proof of his theory. But it didn’t.

Of course, also, as Darwin actually admitted, those transitional forms should have dominated the fossil record. It should have been so obvious. But it wasn’t. However, on the contrary, every fossil ever found has been that of a perfectly formed and functioning organism. Oh yes, there were a few extinct organisms that bore some resemblance to present day ones in some way, such as having arms and legs or fins, but all attempts to construct a detailed and credible ‘tree of life’ connecting all together have failed. When you realize this, Darwin’s theory does become a bit of infantile nonsense. To Darwin, however, it became axiomatic, self-evident, no proof required, an article of atheistic faith. Thus the key problems got quietly swept under the proverbial carpet.

A Sticky Problem

Moving on, we can now add, the sticky problem of how one organism could possibly evolve into another anyway. Zealous British evolutionist Derek Hough, for example, admits that the idea of the complexity we now know about being created by the accumulation of DNA copying errors is just infantile. The chance of an explosion in a scrap yard creating a 747 aircraft is more likely. However, Hough remains an evolutionist, because he cannot accept God or magic, and so continues the search for some kind of credible evolutionary mechanism.

I suppose it was the great Human Genome Project that really put the kibosh on Big Mac when it was discovered that the DNA simply does not contain the ‘blueprints’ required to control the shape and structure of any tiny part of any organism, not even a nose or an eyelash. Top Harvard evolutionist Richard Lewontin happily admits this. Of course, the fact that all organisms contain DNA simply demonstrates the handiwork of a Master Designer, not errant evolution, not descent from a common ancestor. And as top evolutionist Carl Woese admits anyway, evolution cannot explain the origin of DNA. This is the kind of stuff that was swept under than carpet – but, confident of victory against Genesis, evolutionists have been coming into print and spilling the beans. Sorry to mix so many metaphors.

Speaking of the ‘exquisitely tuned’ genetic DNA code, Woese comments: ‘Darwinian evolution simply cannot explain how such a code could arise.’ Yes, Cannot explain! You cannot be serious, man!

If that’s not plain enough, he adds: ‘Nothing in the modern synthesis explains the most fundamental steps in early life’, such as ‘how evolution could have produced the genetic code and the basic genetic machinery used by all organisms’.

Complacency

As commented earlier, evolution had been taken for granted. No proof required. They just knew Darwin was right. As a result, says Woese: ‘It is a case of scientific complacency … biologists were seduced by their own success into thinking they had found the final truth.’ And so, they: ‘neglected to study the most important problem in science — the nature of the evolutionary process … Most biologists, following Francis Crick, simply supposed … ‘ They suppose! They assume! They lie!

Can you believe such nonsense? What a scandal! As a result of this criminal scam, our children have to study biology books that fail to point out these errors and are brainwashed by people like Richard Dawkins, evolutionists who cannot explain the origin of sex, and so avoids the issue! The problem is that, like Darwin himself, they take evolution to be axiomatic and obvious. So let’s snot worry too much about the messy business of proving it.

Although DNA was thought to contain the fabled pot of gold at the end of the evolutionary rainbow, and so prove Darwin right, there was no gold there. Just a lot of inanimate atoms and molecules waiting to be told where to go and what to do. So the simple question remains, how can any cell in a growing embryo possibly ‘know’ how to work in concert with millions of other cells to form tissues and organs and assemble them all into a functioning organism with arms and legs, heart, digestive system, all permeated by nerves and blood vessels? That is a simple question that cannot be answered, and you don’t need a Ph.D. in microbiology to pose it. The Morphic Field

The more research we do, the more incredible design we discover – and the more childishly inadequate Darwinism becomes. Whereas Darwin could get away with talking, for example, about small differences in a litter of pups making some more fit to survive the struggle for life and so get favored by the magic forces of ‘natural selection’, and so

evolve, science now has to deal with a complexity-within-complexity he never dreamed of. They should have kept it simple.

To solve these embarrassing problems, evolutionist Rupert Sheldrake has now revived the old idea that the growth of an embryo is controlled by an invisible and non-physical ‘morphic field’ which he compares to the field around a magnet that pulls iron filings into patterns. But what is a ‘non-physical morphic field’, where did it come from, and what does or can science know about such matters? Sheldrake’s weak answer is that the field ‘evolved’. Let us leave alone the question of mind, emotion, intelligence, and instinct.

But did you read that report recently claiming that when a flock of birds is flying in a formation, they take turns being the leader? Astonishing! And then the little limpet with tiny teeth composed of the toughest natural material known to man which it uses to scrape algae off rocks for food, taking over the title from spider web which in turn is stronger than steel. Wow!

Yes, science is gradually realizing that God’s creation is incredibly more complex and sophisticated than they previously imagined. That animal have emotions, for example, and are not mere machines as was once taught, in the days when Renee Descartes, for example, who would nail a dog to a board by its feet, then fly away the skin to expose the blood circulation system so he could study it. What a nice chap! Apparently poor old Darwin trembled with fear when he contemplated the complexity of just the human eye. If he knew what science has discovered today, I think he would have a heart attack.

So, how could we ever have been so stupid as to believe him? Excuse me as I bang my head on this door! The only mitigating factor in Darwin’s theory is that the earth is clearly very ancient, with a mysterious prehistoric age preceding this one.

The Self-developing Genome

In his search for a new evolutionary mechanism, the aforesaid Hough speculates that all organisms must contain a ‘self-developing genome’, a creative mechanism that he says will amaze us with its complexity, as it gives organisms the ability to sense their environment and mutate and adapt in a constructive rather than a random fashion. Despite an email from me, Hough fails to realize that what he is speculating about is precisely what Genesis means when it speaks of organisms having the power to reproduce ‘after their kind’, a limited variation. The kind of limited variation that Hough and Genesis are talking about is now recognized, reluctantly, as ‘micro-evolution’, which I have personified here for fun as Little Mic.

Incidentally, Hough, like many others, seriously believes that ‘life’ (which they cannot even define in a meaningful fashion) did not arise on earth, because it is too complex, and so must have arrived from a parallel universe, on a wayward comet! Would you buy a used fossil from these people? My theory is that it came on Number 47 bus from Putney.

Little Mic has been familiar to plant and animals breeders for thousands of year and is clearly a well-established fact of life. Dogs are the perfect example of Mic’s work, coming in all shapes and sizes, yet still clearly being ‘dogs’. Roses, likewise, show variation but remain roses. As does any animal or plant you care to mention.

The reality is that God engineered into every Genesis ‘kind’ of creation week the potential for limited variation so that they could adapt to the range of habitats and seasons the earth has to offer and so populate it, and also be bred to meet mankind’s needs. Mic and

Mac was first distinguished by Russian entomologist Yuri Filipchenko, in 1927, in a book entitled Variability and Variation.

Big Mac never really existed, which is why the fossils of those imagined zillions of intermediate forms could never be found. He was just a myth, a bizarre delusion in the mind of Charles Darwin that then spread like a contagious disease to unwary individuals reading his books. Mac was a massive con, a scam that sought to delude Jews and Christians alike into believing that the book of Genesis was nothing more than a hodgepodge of primitive error and superstition.

The Prehistoric World

Some decades before Darwin came on the scene, Oxford University’s very first professor of geology, Rev William Buckland, found himself confronted by the need to reconcile the findings of the new science of geology with the Genesis account of creation. Could the earth really be just six thousand years old, as Archbishop’s scriptural calculations had suggested – and how to account for the fossils of bizarre and often gigantic ‘Satan’s creatures’, a vast range of cannibalistic monsters, unearthed by the massive rail and canal building projects of Britain’s industrial revolution?

The Gap Theory

Assisted by Thomas Chalmers, Buckland was forced to go back and take a much closer look at the Genesis account, soon realizing, as had other little-known individuals before him, that although the Bible sets the history of man at about six thousand years, it does not ‘specify the antiquity of the globe’. It became glaringly obvious, when reading with an open mind, that according to Genesis, the heavens and the earth clearly existed in verse 1, before the six days of creation week had even begun – but is was in a devastated flooded condition described as ‘without form and void, with darkness on the face of the deep’. The clear implication was one of mass destruction, as is now plainly evidenced by the state of the moon and every planet NASA explores, as well as by the chaos of the rock strata in the earth’s crust.

As a result, it was suggested that there is a ‘gap’ at the start of Genesis, between the creation of the earth ‘in the beginning’ and the formation of a new heaven and earth as mentioned by Moses (Exodus 20) and describe in the following verses of the Genesis creation account. Incidentally, I know from correspondence with a top creationist site that the fact of the earth existing before creation week began does bother them. However, for various spurious scripture reasons they stubbornly continue to reject the ‘gap theory’ and stick to the young earth interpretation.

Come in, George!

Further support for the existence of a prehistoric world is provided by the observations of George Gaylord Simpson, said to be the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century. Based on his extensive studies of the earth’s fossil record, he commented that: ‘The most puzzling event in the history of life on the earth is the change from the Mesozoic Age of Reptiles, to the… Age of Mammals (i.e. the Cenozoic). It is as if the curtain were rung down suddenly on a stage where all the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs, in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new cast, a cast in which the dinosaurs do not appear at all, other reptiles are supernumeraries and the leading parts are all played by mammals of sorts barely hinted at in the previous acts’ (Life Before Man, 1972). Our simple scenario, below, provides an easy answer to that puzzle.

A Simple Scenario

From the gap theory point of view, all those bizarre creatures whose fossils populate the paleozoic and Mesozoic’s rock strata were simply a separate, earlier creation. As a result, they were not the evolutionary ancestors of the earth’s present flora and fauna. Ipso facto, Darwin’s theory of evolution becomes completely redundant. Although it is claimed that the fossil record shows evidence or more than a dozen ‘mass destructions’ of life, the prime suspect for reducing the earth, worldwide, to the devastated condition described in the first verse of Genesis must be the recently discovered K-T event, which, we are told, involved massive meteorite bombardment, worldwide earthquakes, volcanic eruption and tsunamis, The parallel is uncanny. See Google for more information. The moon and planets appear to have suffered the same devastation.

Here then is the very simple scenario that shows Genesis to be scientifically accurate, whilst eliminating evolution. As a result, Little Mic is alive and well and doing a great job, but Big Mac has gone the way of all myths or should have…

Keeping Evolution Alive

Sadly, because most creationists reject the gap theory, on the basis of specious scriptural arguments, and assert that the earth is just six thousand years old, they are seen by evolutionists, as well many school districts and courts, as plainly wrong, superstitious and scientifically ignorant, and repeating error of the bishops of Galileo’s day. Thus evolutionists are encouraged in their own errors, saying in effect: ‘We know for sure that those creationists are wrong – so we must be right