blog a: two weeks ago

this is a pretty impressive story.

you may not understand how cool this tale is, but its really pretty impressive.

some people get this experience, but many never, EVER, will be in this position. i'm coming to realize this, and i'm coming to realize that this fact makes my current position really, really damn cool.

so a couple weeks ago there was The Big Seminar On Campus. the gist of it is this: guy discovers a basic biological mechanism. this mechanism has particular functional significance, on a small and a large scale level. on the small level, well, this is a molecule (RNA) which can catalyze (act on) itself. effectively, it doesn't need shit else.

on the larger scale, this THEORETICALLY could give an insight as to the evolutionary origin of organsims.

anyhow, in addition to this guy giving what ended up being a fairly elementary talk, there was an introdution given by Dr. James Watson. this is Dr. James Watson of Crick and Watson. for those of you who are unfamiliar, he is on of the original namesakes, one of the original "discoverers" of the structure of EVERYONE'S genetic material. his work isn't the end of the world, but for fuck's sake, it makes the beginning of it a hell of a lot bigger.

to put this in perspective, this is like the socrates of philosophy, the pete rose of hitting, the peter of kissing religous ass, in terms of genetics. second to reading and loving henry woo in Jurassic Park, this is my guy.

anyhow, James Watson was the sponsor of the day's lecture, and at the request of Fairly Eminent Speaker he was in attendance. so in anticipation of a pretty full talk, i showed up early. and before i knew it, Dr. James Watson walked right past my left shoulder.




that was pretty cool, for the record. imagine one of your top five idols walking right past you, no matter how old he/she may be. way neat.

but the great thing was that after that, he goes on to give the introduction for the lecture series.

and i can tell you this.

dr. james watson grew up at 7944 luella st. in chicago. he went do the university of chicago on a scholarship,. partly because his mom knew the administrator of the scholarship he was on. and after a ten minute talk, he said he wanted to give back to the university that gave him his start. i may not be stating this clearly to this point, so i will say it now: James Watson, the 70-something Nobel Prize winner, spent 15 minutes talking like my grandfather. for that matter, the day before he died, my grandfather told me four stories that were much more interesting and 4x more coherent than the one james watson told. and furthermore, my grandfather was one year older.

and so it comes to this: i had my brush with greatness. and it was interesting. it was impressive. but at the same time, i get the feeling that it was impressive because that is what it is made up to be. i have been in more inspirational presences , such as that of the teacher from my elementary school system who was a potential candidate for the position of christa mcauliffe. he was interesting, and inspirational, though perhaps not ultimately groundbreaking. at the same time, at least he's not dead now either. but the multiple failures of the space program are another subject.

a few points. 1. i was in the presence of an absolute luminary in my field. this is very, very neat. 2. this particular luminary, though i have heard fairly abbrasive things about him, was relatively pleasant. 3. while being pleasant, he also acted like a person who was just like a regular old person. it seems that perhaps when you get to the old point, its all just oldness.

which supports an idea of mine, one that i try to stick to. i may be on an advanced academic track. but that's just what my hypothetical and/or eventual future requires of me. i know a lof of people in other fields. teachers. accountants. machinists. realtors. management types. and some of them say 'wow what a great thing you're doing'. its not that great. its what i'm good at. its an understanding i've got. the people i know who do disparate things, i couldn't imagine how to start at what they do. but in the end, no matter what our strenghts and weaknesses, we're all people. we all have a common experience, and for fuck's sake that should be a big factor in tying us all together.