I was just thinking about this platform and how not every discussion has to be about a book or a philosophy or something like that so I’m coming in hot with a fantastic discussion opening: I like frogs.
I know a lot of people like frogs, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people probably aren’t fans, but personally I think they’re very cool–they can breathe through their skin, for example, which is part of the reason they have to keep it moist. They also use their eyeballs to swallow food, by sucking them into their skull and pushing said food down their throat, which is just… wild.
I don’t know if anyone here is familiar with glass frogs in particular, but they’re one of my favourite kinds of frog for several reasons.
They’re tiny. Like, fingernail-sized.
They’re called glass frogs because their undersides are transparent, allowing you to see their internal organs.
They’re all gorgeous.
They do this thing where they squish all their limbs in until they’re just a green oval with eyes and I love it.
I may continue this thread with further opinions on frogs, but if anyone has a favourite type of frog of their own, cool frog facts, or pictures of frogs, get your butts in here and talk about frogs with me. Here are some pictures of glass frogs, because they’re rad.
You sent me down a ribbit hole on this song… a few renditions:
That said—or, that sung—I think real frogs are even more miraculous than muppet frogs; for example, how some frogs put out their making calls in unison to avoid detection by predators.
Now look what you’ve done. You distracted me from the subject of frogs and redirected me into Julie Andrews mode, and suddenly I’m watching the Sound of Music again.
This is not quite so pleasant, but as part of my illustration courses I had to illustrate a pre-dissected frog. It had to be colorized in watercolor which I wasn’t particularly familiar with, so it got muddier than it might have if I’d had done this after taking Watercolor I.
I’ve never actually dissected a frog personally because in high school it coincided with an extra credit for conscientious objection/protest for another class. So a friend and I sat outside the classroom and chanted “Hey, hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down. It’s frogs.” I think because we were good/engaged students and our biology teacher was bit of a character herself, she just laughed and signed our extra credit forms and told us to be sure to tell our other teacher it was signed under duress.
I genuinely think that’s an awesome painting! And it sounds like your teachers (at least some of them) were rad. I made the terrible mistake of taking my high school biology requirement freshman year, which was the year I was doing school online. Acquiring and dissecting animals by yourself is way less pleasant than doing it in a room of other people who are also dissecting animals. I got past the trauma eventually but when I had the choice between AP Bio and AP Chem, it wasn’t even a choice and I went with Chemistry immediately.
(It didn’t help either that all of our classes were my biology teacher slowly reading out her PowerPoint slides)
In addition, I would not have thought your watercolour was the least bit muddy until you mentioned it–it’s a great painting, and far better than anything I might have done. My talents lie more in wordsmithing than visual art. Speaking of, I haven’t actually read any Mark Twain in.,… an extremely long time. I should go reread that story.
What?! That’s insane! During the pandemic the public school homeschooling program our kids participated in didn’t have any of the kids doing dissection at home. However, the first year back they had every science class (middle school and older) doing a dissection day because the pre-pandemic-aquired frogs weren’t going to last another year and they didn’t want them to go to waste.
I feel fortunate to have missed powerpoint presentations almost entirely. But we did have overhead projectors which sometimes did include bullet points dramatically revealed one at a time through the magic of an overlaid piece of opaque paper. However, there’s a certain point at which such tricks could no longer stay balanced on their own, and not many teachers were willing to stand there holding it in place just to prolong the effect.
