redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Redbird ([personal profile] redbird) wrote2005-07-22 08:45 pm
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On being real

Real women--and real men, but maybe not real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri--have pores in our skin. We come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and all of us, in all those shapes, have pores.

By this--not by weight, shape, or age--may you tell the real woman from the airbrushed model.
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brooksmoses: (Default)

[personal profile] brooksmoses 2005-07-23 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
I find this post amusingly ironic, given that this month seems to be the one in which I am annually reminded that many of the pores in my hands do not work. The results are somewhat itchy and unpleasant.

(Meanwhile, I would think that if the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are indeed furry, they'd have to have pores for the fur to come out.)

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
That would depend on precisely what the structure of the fur was. While "fur" is one of Dr. Jack Cohen's "four univeral F's" -- the four things that have derived independently multiple times over Earth evolution, and thus might reasonably be expected to show up in extraterrestrial life -- the "fur" structures are very different in mammals, tarantulas, honeybees, pussywillows, and kiwis. Now most of those do involve some sort of pore, on Earth, but I could imagine a fur being a direct outgrowth of skin or exoskeleton, rather than poking through.

Irrelevant, but I'm curious

[identity profile] almeda.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
What are the other three?

Re: Irrelevant, but I'm curious

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
The "four F's" are "flight, fur, photosynthesis, and mating".

("Mating", here, is defined fairly loosely as "a process in which portions of the genetic code of two or more individuals are mingled to create new individuals.")

fur and pores

[identity profile] lynnal.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I could imagine a fur being a direct outgrowth of skin or exoskeleton, rather than poking through

Quite right. I'm not sure about the fluff on pussywillows, but the normal "hairs" on leaves are direct extensions of epidermal cells (called trichomes). Plants have pores on their leaves, but they are entirely separate structures from the hairs.
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