Biology
animal - bio horror - biomorphism - body - life - nature - reproduction - rhizome - science - sociobiology - tree
Green Man depiction from British Cathedral
image sourced here. [Mar 2005]
Cross-fertilization
Interbreeding, or inter-breeding is breeding between different, albeit closely-related species. The term is related to hybrid. Sometimes it is erroneously used in the meaning of inbreeding.
The possibility of natural interbreeding is an indicator of genetical closeness of the species.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding [Jun 2004]
The term crossbreed or crossbred refers to a domestic animal where the breed status of only one parent or grandparent is known. Crossbreed may also refer to a hybrid animal of two purebred parents.
A dog of unknown parentage is called a mongrel; a mongrel cat is often referred to as a moggie. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbreed [Jun 2005]
see also: cross-fertilization - hybrid - pure
Green man
The Green Man is a symbol of uncertain origin common in the British Isles. Classic examples are most frequently found among the stonework in and on churches, though it is more likely pagan in nature. It depicts a man with foliage for hair, usually with either a leafy beard or with leaves growing out of his mouth and nose. A similar nature spirit is the wild man of the woods, the woodwose. Other possible references to him are Green George, Jack-in-the-Green, John Barleycorn and the Green Knight.
The image of the Green Man is popular with modern Wiccans and other Neopagans.
The name "Green Man" was a term coined by Lady Raglan in 1939. It appeared in her article The Green Man in Church Architecture, published in the Folklore Journal. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man [Mar 2005]
Books
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Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World - Kevin Kelly [book, Amazon US]
[FR] [DE] [UK]
In many ways, the 20th century has been the Age of Physics. Out of Control is an accessible and entertaining explanation of why the coming years will probably be the Age of Biology -- particularly evolution and ethology -- and what this will mean to most every aspect of our society. Kelly is an enthusiastic and well-informed guide who explains the promises and implications of this rapidly evolving revolution very well. --Amazon.com - The Origin of Species (1859) - Charles Darwin [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com
- The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins [Amazon US]
Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since. [...] --Rob Lightner
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