This is your brain, on bio: gonadotropin.

One LAST post (mid-laundry loads and packing). Here's the word stuck in my head this a.m.: gonadotropin.

This seems to be how my brain works. I learn a word (many specifically in college relating to biology). Then I don't use the word for years.

Then my brain spits it up, repeating it over and over, apropos of NOTHING, and seems to indicate: Look this up or I'm pitching it. We no longer have the definition, and it's covered in dust, so dust it off, or it's GONE.

Today's word repeating itself is gonadotropin. Apparently they are protein hormones produced by the pituitary gland in vertebrates, and included among them are hormones involved in human reproduction (lutinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone).

Now that I've looked it up, perchance it will return to the shelf?

If I DON'T look it up, I firmly believe my brain chucks it, and it's no longer part of me. And that's a waste of educational time and $, yes?

So, thank you wikipedia for the quick definition as I fly through the a.m. Hopefully gonadotropin is now in the "keep" pile.


Does your brain ever do this? (the process, not the specific word, of course) Do tell.

biobabbler

abstract photographs... Que?

                
In going through my pics, to assemble a few more abstracts to fulfill a blog visitor's request, I'm pondering what an abstract photograph is.

As a minimalist, things that are spare make me happy, and some feel to me that they're abstract, when in fact, they may not be. What I suspect is more truly abstract, is when the focus is the form of the thing, or color, versus the whole of what that thing actually is.

Some of my favorite nature pictures are those where you really cannot tell what you are looking at, initially, and especially if you cannot tell the scale. LOVE that.

Mind you, I've had basically NO liberal arts education, so, off to Merriam-Webster.com for a second opinion:

Main Entry: ¹ab·stract  

Pronunciation: \ab-ˈstrakt, ˈab-ˌ\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Medieval Latin abstractus, from Latin, past participle of abstrahere to drag away, from abs-, ab- +trahere to pull, draw

Date: 14th century

1 a : disassociated from any specific instance  b : difficult to understand : abstruse  c : insufficiently factual : formal 
2 : expressing a quality apart from an object poem is concrete, poetry is abstract>
3 a : dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects : theoretical  b : impersonal, detached Time>
4 : having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content 

What to you comprises an abstract photographic image? What is required to fulfill that definition? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

(meanwhile I'll keep sorting through pics to post)

the biobabbler