It's the last day of the year 2009, and the thing that most grabbed my attention was hearing that Tasmanian Devils are threatened by extinction from a contagious cancer.

You could try to picture what a Tasmanian Devil looks like, but you will probably keep coming up with the image of a cartoon devil .

It's their noise and the aggression which must have earned Tasmanian Devils their name. They might be called cute if their behavior was nicer.

It seems that the sound and the fury of the Devil is accompanied by biting. We aren't talking about the proverbial love bite which, at least in humans, doesn't break the skin, and in a state of arousal is considered enjoyable by some. No, we are talking about Devil confrontation and combat.

The cancer that afflicts the Tasmanian Devil, only one of two types of contagious animal cancers, is found in the Devils' mouths, because that is the weapon they use in their mating battles. Their teeth puncture a site, and the cancer is transferred by injection.

It is reported that approximately 70% of the total Devil population has already died from this disease. Scientists and doctors are not without a clue. They have found that it originates in the Schwann cells. These are nerve cells, and the problem involves the myelin sheath which coats the nerves like plastic on an electric wire. The myelin sheath protects the nerve. When the correct function of the sheath is disrupted, disease occurs.

Multiple sclerosis is one of many afflictions in humans caused by a disease process of the myelin sheath. If the sheath wears thin or is lacking in any way, the result is the jerking motor movements associated with these diseases.

Malnutrition, alcoholism, and other factors can play a part in demyelination. Babies are sometimes born with incomplete myelination. The choppy movments of their arms reveal this, but happily, most babies continue to form myelin as they develop, outgrowing their uncoordinated movements. This is another good reason to insure that pregnant mothers and babies receive superior nutrition.

In our long list of prayers for understanding and cures, let's add this one, not just for the sake of Tasmanian Devils, but also because research might uncover new information that could help humans as well.

On Grendel, the monster...

The term monster is subject to interpretation.

History is written by the victors, so Grendel's arch-enemy Beowolf is the protagonist, and Grendel is the antagonist. The name Beowulf means bee-hunter or bee-slayer and is a kenning for bear.

Some people think that the Grendel character from Beowulf was taken from the Biblical Cain tradition. Cain killed his brother Abel and became an outcast for the murder.

Others think that Grendel's character might be derived from the Berserkers: "berserks are often described as being fantastically ugly." The reason for that is much more than physical appearance.

According to the Cain tradition, Cain's mother saw him drink the blood of his brother Abel in a dream, and Berserkers were said to have drunk the blood of bears and wolves to gain their superhuman strength and battle fury.

A Grindle Stone is a grind stone by definition. It sounds a lot like Grendel, and if you remember "Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread" as a quote from the Giant in the children's story Jack and the Beanstock, you might think there was a connection.

The Biblical character Sampson was a man of superhuman strength who was captured by his enemies, blinded, and put to work at the grinding house of a mill. It seems possible that, because of his strength, he was tied in some way to the mechanism turning the grindstone, so that he took the place of a beast such as an ox or a team of oxen. His captors made fun of him, and in the end, his rage and misery caused him to pull the supporting pillars of the temple down, killing himself and his tormentors.

Fum and odur, Fume and rage: Odin's name meant rage, and fum from the Giant's rhyme probably meant fume, as in the sentence "He was fuming with rage", describing the Berserker and the Giant.

Whatever the case, Grendel was not like those that taunted him. He was probably mistreated all his life. Is it any surprise that he lashed out and ripped people limb from limb, biting and clawing like an animal?

Beowulf and his band of men crept up on Grendel on his deathbed and cut off his head. So much for monsters.

Peon Bees or Worker Bees, what would you call them?

I love the honeybee because of its irreplaceable link in the chain of life, just as I appreciate that the scientific principle of cell wall integrity enables a world of diverse and beautiful forms instead of a vast pool of primordial pea soup covering the earth's surface.

That's not to say I don't like pea soup, provided it can be eaten with a spoon and not a fork.

Today, as I browsed NPR's online web site, I was amused listening to There's A Fly In My Urinal. In this story, I found out that the men's (Need I really say men's when I speak of urinals?) urinals in Schiphol, the Netherlands, have small etchings of a fly, one per urinal, embedded in the porcelain. There is a practical reason for this, although some urinals are designed as objets d'art.

These designs are not a trademark like the Izod alligator. They are there for a psychological reason. It seems that men need to aim for something. Without a specific goal or target, things can get messy.

In their radio program, NPR does not use the word piss. They say pee so as not to offend the sensibilities of their listeners. As an example of piss, I offer pissoir, a word taken from the French. It means a public urinal. Lots of Americans would prefer not to pronounce this word, probably because it relates to a bodily function, an uncomfortable subject for some.

Consider the Middle English word Pes meaning something like this or that. Imagine having to read out the conjugation of this word:

Case Masc. Fem. Neut.

Nominative pes peos pis

Genitive pisses pisse pisses

The Latin word pes means foot in English.There is also the expression the fly on the wall. Can he hear you? Aren't you glad that fly can't see you? He can't, can he?

P.S. Don't forget to button your fly. Straighten up and fly right.

Maybe men are just trying to clean things up by washing the fly away.

If there is such a strong impetus of the male toward a goal, maybe a psychologist or even a team of psychologists could figure out a way to use this instinct to engineer a striving for world peace, target date 2011.

It seems that possibly, deep in the primeval cave known as the mind of man, there is an urge to keep things down by, well, by pissing on them. There is an expression to that effect.

The same action can be found in the animal kingdom in regards to scent-marking territorial turf.

Of course, this doesn't apply to any of the men I know. None of them live in man-caves formerly inhabited by bears who fled in terror, so there is no reason for them to be offended at the suggestion that some men are primitives.

It turns out that the genus Apis from the "tribe" Apini, known mostly as the bee, is also found in urinals. One source dates its origin as far back as Victorian times. By this, I mean the urinal with the bee in it, not the bee itself. Apis also means a sacred bull. Language can be so confusing.

An online picture of a urinal disguised as a large flower, maybe a poppy, tulip, or calla lily only complicates the subject, because flowers are supposed to draw bees. That will give the bees something at which to aim.

In the end, one must ask if men and boys are around, is your garden safe? How safe are the bees?

Ten thousand leaves. A thousand cranes.

From December 2009 National Geographic magazine:

"Each appendage consists of a folded flap of paper, and each flap, origamists realized in the 1990's, uses a circular portion, or a quarter or half circle, of the original square."

Scientists have solved the mathematical puzzle by algorithm that enable them to fold complex shapes such as telescope lenses into small spaces. "In 1995 Japanese engineers launched a satellite with a solar array that folded in pleats like a map...to fit into a rocket."
By intuition, the Japanese knew this all along.

From Stephen Crane's The Black Riders:

"IV

Yes, I have a thousand tongues,

And nine and ninety-nine lie.

Though I strive to use the one,

It will make no melody at my will,

But is dead in my mouth."

Crane's meaning probably reflects more on ancient folk beliefs, yet intrinsic in these lines is the idea that even in nine hundred and ninety-nine plus one, that only one is true or real. No matter how many origami designs exist, only one can be manifest in the intention of folding a single origami figure.

All Origami figures are contained in a single sheet of paper. Yes, all of them. That might add up to a billion. All the plans are in that one piece of paper and your brain. Of course, you may select only one per sheet.

Even a simple task like folding towels informs us that we are saving space or reshaping to fit a space.

Folding: Towels, space, paper squares. These three are already folded and ready to go. Yes, that towel is folded. You just can't see it yet. Yes, there is a crane in that sheet. You just can't see it yet, but you will when the right conditions are met.

If you think of it, a riddle has the answer in it, although you may not see it right away.

Some things arrive completely folded, a package tied with string, as it were. The blueprint for many things is hiding in some other form. It has always been and has always been there waiting for you to see.

A garden seed is formed with a tiny plan or blueprint in it.

The plan unfolds and grows by the addition of water and nutrients. You could think of a seed as a plan that is "bound so tight it cannot grow" until the right conditions are met.

A snowflake is a plan that unfolds with the addition of water and cold. As an amateur snowflake aficionado, I have not succeeded in creating snowflakes in the freezer compartment of my refrigerator. Sometimes there are ice crystals in there, but they lack the romance of the snowflake, close but not quite. I have created ice cubes, but I have yet to find a coffee table book filled with wondrous photos of beautiful ice cubes.

That means there is something unique about the snowflake even though it has the same ingredients as frost and ice cubes.

The frost chrysanthemums that bloom on my winter's window are gorgeous in their way, but still they are not snowflakes. They don't possess the same freedom of movement.

Where is the blueprint for a snowflake? Since it is a rain drop transformed, the plan must be in the raindrop, but that plan cannot emerge from its wet chrysalis without the additional elements of sky, light, space, and cold.

A snowflake is not a living thing, but it shimmers with light, a mirage of life.

How can a transition be made from discussing a snowflake to discussing a virus? A comparison could be made from the fact that they remain hidden or dormant until the right conditions are met for their transformation.

Interestingly, the archaic meaning of virus is venom. A spider often hides before its attack, and a snake is often coiled before it strikes.

A virus, a living entity, is a folded plan that needs help from a cell to replicate. Some viruses look like an alien unpacking its suitcase. To humans, viruses are rarely thought of as beautiful or good, but they do have a demonic appetite for survival.

A bacteriophage is particularly scary looking. It eats bacteria, an effective way of destroying them. Phages have been used in place of medicine. "They have been used for over 60 years as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.^[5] They are seen as a possible therapy against multi drug resistant strains of many bacteria."

In this way, it acts as a beneficial agent, if the bacteria that it eats is harmful to living things that we value.

A computer virus is like a biologic virus in that it is folded and appears small in a harmless way or seems inconspicuous at face value. It is plain and harmless looking and may go unnoticed for a long time, that is, until it begins to unpack its suitcase.