httafarad CH 8 through 10

chapter 8

1985 was awesome in America.  In the USSR it was a time of great tumult. They want an xray machine but with all the tumult they couldn't get one.  So they have to do measurements manually and they find that there are a number of physical differences between the tame foxes and the agressive foxes.  Berlin wall comes down in 1990.  Shortly after the USSR disolves and chaos reigns.  The fox farm has an immediate crisis cuase they don't have any money.  They somehow got enough funding to feed the foxes.  They aren't doing any science, but the foxes are ok.  The bottom fell out of the Russian economy in 1998.  She desperately sent a letter to the US magazine American Scientist in an appeal for money.  Foxes are dying from starvation.  She's going to need to sell some foxes for their fur to keep some of the foxes alive.  This is a horrible sadness.

March/April 1999 her article gets published.  People start sending her money.  It was a very hard/sad decade from the fall of the USSR til then.  But now they're pretty much up and running again.  

There's a hotshot geneticist named Anna that Ludmila is trying to get involved.  On January 4th 2000 Anna flies to Nova Subirsk.  They collect blood from all the foxes in record time.  We're doing some real hard core science now.

Chapter 9

Lots of talk about birds and their smartness.  Also more talk about chimps and bonobos and how social evolution in animals can be just as important as their genetic and intelectual evolution.  Brian Hare is getting his PHD and he is going to academdoravak to study the foxes.  

They're doing all sorts of studies of these tame foxes vs dogs.  Hare is now totally on board with the general idea that genes for tameness might go hand in hand.

A scientific hot shot named Sveta who's into animal communication is getting involved.  Sveta LOVES a fox named kfedra.  She's trying to see if tame foxes communicate different from the control group.  Lots of cool sounds got categorized.  The tame foxes did this thing that sounded like human laughter. The wild foxes absolutely did not.

Chapter 10

We're gonna try to map the fox genome.  That's a pretty big deal.

The trick is they're gonna try to use genetic markers from dogs, who's genome has already been mapped.

you've come a long way baby, 45 years ago they couldn't even call what they were doing a genetic study.  Now we're doing it out in the open and it's great.  Gordon Lark (looked him up, he died a month and a half ago) from the University of Utah is getting in on this.  It's a very different world we're living in.  That xray machine that was a big problem back in 1985, no problem now that they're getting donations from all over in the free world of 2005.  In 2011 we're doing even more genoming and we found Cromazome 12 is significant in that the tame foxes have that chromazome far more similar to modern dogs than the control group of foxes.  They're doing genetic test on the prefrontal quartex of the brain.  Big differences between the tame and wild foxes.  Ludmila and Anna are still working on mapping the genome of these foxes.  30 years after his death a lot of Boliath's theories are being proven.

httafarad CH 5-7

Chapter 5

This chapter is about the foxes that are living in the house.  Pushinka and her descendants.  They just have a few foxes living in the house.  Ludmilla stops spending the night at the house.  They talk about Jane Goodall.  Pushinka plays dead and kills a crow.

They're doing embriotic transplants between aggressive and domestic foxes.  We're gonna test nature vs nurture.  Nature FTW.  1977 was a bummer cause of the murder.

Chapter 6

We're getting into the eighties here and we're doing a lot more hormone testing.  One specific study was one where they had a control group of foxes that were simply out in the sun more often and they found those foxes had the hormones associated with mating more frequently than foxes that were hiding away more often.  This goes along with the overall program goal of trying to figure out why domestic dogs mate much more than wild wolves and foxes.

The Afghanistan war made it even harder to interact with the international science community even harder.  Even so, they were able to have Manning from the Scotland conference in 1971 come to visit the institute of science and genetics in Siberia.  It was a good visit.  Much eating and smoking and happy times with the foxes.  For his efforts Manning was interrogated by mi-5 about Soviet wheat.

Chapter 7

Coco the fox is beloved.  She was born weak and while she lived longer than they initially thought she would, she did die young.  She had adventures because she lived most of her life with a couple of scientists in their apartment in the city.

Now is the time for Belaski to openly discuss theories on destabilizing selection and domestication as they apply to human evolution.  Lots of talk about protohumans.  He presented this at.the genetics conference in India in 1984.  The basic idea in that once humans became social they very quickly started acting like modern humans.  Maybe that's why the missing link is so elusive.  Lots of talk about bonobos versus chimpanzees.

Beliath was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1985.  Don't smoke.  It's bad for you.

11 - 22 leviathan wakes book report

Chapter 11 Holden page 111:
They get picked up by the big martian ship and it's big and martian
it's largely uneventful, everyone is behaving themselves and getting along
Holden gets interviewed by an intelligence guy and it's largely good times
The most interesting thing was finding out Holden was raised by a wierd hive family with a bunch of moms and dads
Then there's missles getting launched and we feel like the next thing we're gonna hear is that the six ships that were following them have been turned into dust and they're sending out space vacumes to pick up the spare parts.  BUT NO!!!  There's sirens and stuff and Holden is escorted back to the room where everyone else from the shuttle is hanging out.  The other ships are returning fire.
Something happens to Shed.  Who's Shed?  Shed's dead baby shed's dead.

Chapter 12 Miller page 123
Miller wants to go after Julie Mao even though his boss has told him not to bother.  He tells his earther partner to cover for him for a few days.  Say he had a run in with his ex and now he's on a bender.  Better to be seen as a screw around than a try hard.  He talks to her taekwondo instructor and doesn't get a lot of useful info, but mr. taekwondo says he'll ask around and tell Miller what he finds.  The guy from the OPA comes to visit Miller.  Tells him to stop looking for Julie, tells him she was on the Sculopi and that the OPA is looking for her and they need to be the one to find her, not Miller.  Miller tells him to take a hike.  Miller calls his Earther partner and tells him it's time for a vacation.

Chapter 13 Holden page 134
The ship is under attack like crazy.  They plug the holes in the wall and start coming up with ideas with what to do.  Some Martian marines show up with space suits for them to put on so they can escape.  They're gonna make their way to the hanger and get on a smaller ship and GTFO.  There's all sorts of gun shooting.  We're left with a bit of a cliff hanger as they jump toward the ship and then the head martian marine get smoked.

Chapter 14 Miller page 144
There's all sorts of shenhanegans that are pointing towards war.  Martian on Ceres as killed.  A ship out of Ceres was destroyed by the Martian Navy.  Everyone every where is unhappy about things.  Once again Miller is told to stop looking for Julie Mao.  First by his boss, then his new partner, then the OPA guy that comes to visit again.  The OPA guy has an honest to goodness book.  Good for him.  As Yous are all well aware, I am a fan of having a physical book.  I have five tablets I could read books on, but I always read a physical book.  This apocalypse is probably gonna change that cause all the libraries are closed down.  But I digress.  Miller tells the OPA guy he'll stop looking for Julie.  Then the second the OPA guy leaves, Miller calls Julie's dad.


Chapter 15 Holden page 153
This chapter is kinda like that Korean movie Infernal affairs.  Everybody dies.  More specifically, all the Martian marines die.  When we get through all the bullets and grenades and whatnot Holden is still alive and so is Naomi and so is Alex.  Amos is the name of the guy in the group that dies.  LEGITIMATE SALVAGE!!!!  They call Fred Johnson, yes THE, and he sends them a way to have the Martian ship send out signals like it's not a stolen Martian ship.  Also he tells them where to go to have a place to go and not get murdered super bad.

Chapter 16 miller page 163
Miller is told to drop the Julie case by the captain and the OPA guy again.  The difference now is that they're doing it together in the same room at the same time.  Miller goes to talk to his partner about it.  She tells him this story about how in her old squad there was this one guy that sucked super bad and they gave him all the cases they didn't want solved. Takes Miller a second to realize he's that guy.  Now he's super sad about it and he ends up super drunk.  He misses Julie.

Chapter 17 holden page 173

No plot here.  They pleasantly make the trip to meet Fred Johnson.  Yes, THE Fred Johnson.  He says "call me Fred"  there's food on the ride.  Flat bread and hummus and coffee.  Everyone is clean and they have space suits and guns and for just this one Chapter things seem OK.  There's all those dead martians, but that was chapter fifteen's problems.  Chapter 17 is all about feeling good for a bit.

Chapter 18 miller page 183
Miller's screwing up every more than normal now that he's aware that he's a screwup.  But he sobers up and gets to work.  He gets to arrest a rapist and that's nice.  He's concocting a scheme to figure out where the OPA has Holden.  Big bad news happens.  Earth is pulling out of Ceres.  But the cops are still cops and the chief expects everyone to do their jobs.  Guess who's not gonna do that job anymore?  Miller, he's been Jamesed.  Fired, I'm saying Jamesed instead of fired.  It probably won't last long.

Chapter 19 holden page 193
I love how every chapter is ten pages long.  They come onto the station in space suits with guns to show they're not fucking around.  Most of this chapter is them talking to Fred.  Fred's story/plan is convincing enough that they decide to stay.  The common goal here is that even though there's currently a war between Mars and the Belt, to track down the individuals that destroyed the two ships who's names I can't remember.  One of them was the Cant-somthing and the other one definitely started with an S.  It was like Scoliosis or something.  Anyway, if we can find the people that blew up those ships and put them on trial that will put an end to the war.  The four remaining members of the Cant get up to some shenhannegans on the station.  Holden decides to go sleep on the Martian ship.

Chapter 20 Miller page 203
Here I'm saying every chapter is 10 pages and this one is only 9.  Miller's hanging out being unemployed and trying to do the best he can with his very limited resources to keep investigating where Holden and Julie Mao might be.  He's looking at ships manafests and decides it's a ship that docked at Tycho, so he's gonna go to Tycho.  He's bought a ticket and everything.  But then he gets a call from his old earther partner telling him that ship he thought was HOlden's ship has put in a course for some other station.  Is he gonna get on the ship to Tycho or not?  Find out next time, on the exiting adventures of former detective Miller.

Chapter 21 holden page 212

Amos has been drinking and what not for a few days.  He comes back to their place and says he never wants to drink again.  They eat some sushi and then Holden starts talking about wanting to do something with his life and not just waiting around for two years while Fred tries to figure out who blew up the Canterbury and bring them to justice.  His idea is that they use their martian war ship to do some jobs and make some money of their own.  Everyone's in agreement that this is a good idea.  Enter Fred, he wants to borrow their ship to do do something on Eros.  Holden's counter offer is that they go to Eros and do whatever it is Fred needs done.  Fred is eventually amenable to this.



Chapter 22 miller page 223

Miller decided to go to Eros to chase after Holden's ship the Rocinante.  He talks to a missionary about going from Ceres to Eros and in the midst of that conversation decides he's left Ceres for good.  He gets to Eros before the Rocinante and so he's got some time to kill.  He ends up bumping into a cop he worked once when a smuggler he was trying to catch left Ceres for Eros and so some interdepartmental cooperating needed to happen to catch the bad guy.  They talk shop.  Miller sets up shop in the casino because he knows that regardless of where they park, the crew of the Rocinante is going to have to come through here.  If he's right, he should recognize holden.