Out of Print Gems: The Four Lads - "Dry Bones"

The 1950s and early 60s constituted an era of vocal quartets, and the only thing separating The Four Lads from any other group whose name began with The Four - Freshmen, Tops, what have you - was the ensemble's Canadian citizenship and the hit it scored with "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." In early 1968, an obscure spiritual adaptation the group had recorded for a 1961 Dixieland-inspired album served as a memorable leitmotif in the final episode of the landmark TV series The Prisoner ("Fall Out" - see video below), and was thus ensured unlikely immortality.

The spiritual itself is "Dem Bones," one familiar for its "knee bone's connected to your thigh bone" refrain, but whose biblical content tends to be overlooked. In fact, the opening line, "Ezekiel cried dem dry bones," refers to Ezekiel 37, where the prophet, set down by god in a valley of full of long-dry bones, causes them to reanimate and form a vast army. Given series creator and star Patrick McGoohan's attention to detail, it's safe to assume the choice was intentional, meant to reflect his character's struggle to rouse his fellow prisoners against their repressive captors - and, presumably, McGoohan's own desire to rally support against a world he saw as repressive, soulless, and dangerously overautomated. Of course, the woozy effect of the song's modulating structure also perfectly mirrored his intentionally confusing and open-ended finale to the series. Interestingly, the liner notes to Dixieland Doin's indicate that the album's songs were meant to demonstrate the "happy, humor side of the Four Lads," and indeed, the song's effect is radically different when it's enjoyed outside the context of "Fall Out." This makes it all the more unfortunate that the track is almost impossible to find, having been omitted (possibly for copyright reasons) from the otherwise extensive 3 volume soundtrack to The Prisoner, as well the various Four Lads compilations on the market (for no discernable reason). Used vinyl copies of Dixieland Doin's are said to appear on eBay every few months. Meanwhile, the mp3 of "Dry Bones" is available here.

Chromosomes and Cell Division

The internet (along with textbooks and teachers) demonstrates an appalling unwillingness to explain simply how many chromosomes there are at any given point in a cell - or for that matter, what chromosomes are! (A pair of squiggly lines? Just one?) For all you Google searchers looking for what I couldn't find, here's the answer in plain terms. Chromosomes are what you find illustrated as a squiggly line. A somatic (body) cell has 23 kinds of them, and 2 copies of each - a total of 46. Before mitosis or meiosis, each squiggly line replicates, producing 46 of the structures we generally associate with the term "chromosome": 2 squiggly lines joined in the middle. In mitosis, these 46 replicated chromosomes are broken back down into their unreplicated predecessors and split amongst two cells.

(In explaining meiosis we'll ignore crossing over, which is explained adequately in many other places.) In Meiosis I, the 46 replicated chromosomes are not split as they are in mitosis, but rather divied up. That is to say, instead of each daughter cell having one copy of both homologous chromosomes, the daughter cell has a replicated set of only one. Even after Meiosis I, then, the daughter cells are already haploid, containing only 23 chromosomes, rather than the normal 46. In Meiosis II, the replicated chromosomes in each daughter cell are split (as in Mitosis) and divided amongst 4 final daughter cells, giving a final product of 4 cells with only one copy apiece of the 23 human chromosomes. These are gamete cells, which combine to form a brand new cell with a full, double set of these 23 chromosomes - half from one parent, and half from the other. The entire process is drawn out below. Enjoy.

And to any teachers or (especially) textbook writers out there: spend the extra four minutes/1 page and draw the whole thing out. It makes everything make sense. Fight the conventional idiocy - if not for our sake, then for that of the poor, defamed chromosomes you've made us resent.