"Body Language" - March 25, 2022

[FKelly]

On shore Thursday, but very busy.
Classic Gaffney mechanism led to a quick solve.

The title reminded me of how my cat Alexandria would use body language to communicate to me the help she needed to catch a mouse. She mostly used her tail. When I told Michael Graziano of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, he remarked that it was generally thought that only large cats like lions and tigers could use decoys to catch prey. I checked that out and he was correct. There was only one instance recorded of a pride of lions using a decoy to catch prey and that was in Namibia in the early 1990s. I always knew Alexandria was ahead of her time. I'm proud to have been her decoy! She was a smallish domestic cat with a shiny black coat and beautiful green eyes.

Graziano studied the brains of macaque monkeys, but these days he seems to have moved on to Consciousness and the Social Brain.
https://grazianolab.princeton.edu/

[JAQT]

Ashore after more than a month of big fat nothings.

Unless I made an Al Sisti GHAC!

[Collegetowngirl]

Ashore. I hope. Feeling like I missed something.

[Bob cruise director]

Our final count for the week is 6 on the ship and 233 on the shore.

Good luck winning the mug

[SusieG]

I am ashore just in time for a nightcap. Good luck to all!

[DrTom]

On shore Thursday, but very busy.
Classic Gaffney mechanism led to a quick solve.

The title reminded me of how my cat Alexandria would use body language to communicate to me the help she needed to catch a mouse. She mostly used her tail. When I told Michael Graziano of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, he remarked that it was generally thought that only large cats like lions and tigers could use decoys to catch prey. I checked that out and he was correct. There was only one instance recorded of a pride of lions using a decoy to catch prey and that was in Namibia in the early 1990s. I always knew Alexandria was ahead of her time. I'm proud to have been her decoy! She was a smallish domestic cat with a shiny black coat and beautiful green eyes.

Graziano studied the brains of macaque monkeys, but these days he seems to have moved on to Consciousness and the Social Brain.
https://grazianolab.princeton.edu/

It does sadden me that Graziano moved to a more primitive brain. Monkeys make MUCH better decisions (and reward social interaction more richly).

[DrTom]

I know that political commentary on the forum is usually verboten, but I could not resist a comment on the newest song craze sweeping Eastern Europe. It is a revival of an older C&W tune by Brooks and Dunn:

[WSJosh]

On shore, enjoying a nice Chianti.

[KrisHendo]

Well, with a nudge or two from @wendywalker, I think I have crawled onto shore, covered in seaweed and very salty as I floated for days on a buoy. My body is tired but elated to have joined the fun. A little ranch water should hydrate me well. Cheers to all of you onshore.

[Joe Ross]

[Joe Ross]

[LadyBird]

I SO disagree with this answer! The renal system includes the kidneys and ureters and bladder and urethra. How are you supposed to intuit that from the puzzle? I looked and looked in the grid for another organ to no avail.

The oral system can include tongue and mouth--you knew they were going for mouth because of MONTH. The pedal system could be foot or feet or toes, but you knew it was foot because of FOOL.

I am disappointed in this--I think Matt really dropped the ball here. Okay--First World rant over.

[Joe Ross]

[LadyBird]

[Joe Ross]

KIDNEY, BLADDER, URETER, URETHRA, RENAL VEIN, RENAL ARTERY, NEPHRON, RENAL COLLECTING DUCT, RENAL TUBULES, RENAL CAPSULE, RENAL MEDULA, MINOR CALYX, MAJOR CALYX, RENAL PAPILLA, RENAL PYRAMID...

Rumor has it that MINOR CALYX will also be accepted.

[Inca]

Not systems, just adjectives, I think. Dental=relating to teeth; Ocular=related to the eye; etc until we get to renal=related to the kidneys. Of course, it would have been awesome if there were a kidney (with one letter off; is there a word that would qualify?) in the grid...but, to me the answer was pretty clear anyway.

[mikeB]

Theme answers contain Body Part Adjectives
. . . which steer us to the corresponding Body Part Nouns "almost entered" scattered around the grid
. . . each of which needs a single-letter substitution to form said noun
. . . whose replaced letters unscramble to form a Body Part Adjective
. . . which corresponds to a Body Part Noun that is the answer.

To me, that process of adjective-to-noun-to-adjective-to-noun reminded me of a pretzel. In my mind, that locked in the kidney as the answer. It’s undeniably renal, and it’s shaped like a pretzel.

[Franklin.Bluth]

I SO disagree with this answer! The renal system includes the kidneys and ureters and bladder and urethra. How are you supposed to intuit that from the puzzle? I looked and looked in the grid for another organ to no avail..

Sometimes smart people overthink these — but, taking it from a more intuitive and less academic perspective, "oral" generally means pertaining to mouth , "dermal" generally means pertaining to skin, etc. In everyday language "renal" nearly always refers to the kidneys. (If your friend is having renal failure, for example, you assume their kidneys have shut down.)

Incidentally, when they start tinkering with it directly the kidney gets referred to by the prefix nephro-: as in, "I went to see the nephrologist." No idea why...maybe to avoid exactly the confusion LadyBird is fired up about.

I donated a kidney a couple of years ago and it was said that I'd gotten a "donor nephrectomy", so I spent a couple of years under the care of a nephrologist to make sure all was going well (it was...the other kidney hypertrophies and picks up most of the slack for the missing one). One more little bit of trivia: my donee now has three kidneys; because kidneys get their blood supply directly from the aorta, one of the biggest risks in surgery is a blown suture and resultant blood loss. So it's safer to leave the non-working kidneys in place and just graft the new one into the system, sticking it wherever they can find room in the abdominal cavity.

[DrTom]

Renal-Kidney.png

I understand people's gripes about the answer, but RENAL means KIDNEY to the majority of people. Yes, the ureters, minor calyx, major calyx, renal collecting ducts, urine, ureters, urethra, etc. could all be answers if the mechanism spelled out RENAL SYSTEM, but it didn't. Still, Matt may relent but he would have to honor about 20-30 different answers.

[DrTom]

Screenshot_20220327-232242_Chrome.jpg

Hmm if that were the case then maybe LEE was supposed to change to PEE? After all, if urine is a part of it then the answer could run into lots of things.