Dear Dr. W
Happy Thanksgiving !
I am delighted to inform you that Dr. C has kindly allowed me to work in his lab part of the time. I do not know for certain, but I am guessing that that he must have spoken to you at some point in time and you must have put in a kind word or two on my behalf. In any case, he did have access to your letter of recommendation. Even if I do not make it this year, (Last year they accepted only 1 International student) I will be glad to be working on rhythms in the meantime. More importantly, I will have peace of mind that my life is moving in the right direction. So, a Big Thank You.
Now, on a different subject ....
Dr. E used to say that there was something wrong in my head/thinking/philosophy that I was not working as hard or as smart as I needed to be working. Dr. L also was a little bit frustrated in his inability to make me see things his way. I did not pay much attention to the matter back then, but a few months ago, I came across a phrase that might have described the atttitude problem from which I was suffering, namely, "having a theatrically sensitive soul and delusions of self-importance." I would lay stress on the number of hours that I had put in, instead of the number of things accomplished. Simple things as having a clear understanding of what is expected between myself and the PI and then putting in all efforts to meet those expectations as if my life depended on it eluded me.
Joblessness, reading a lot of books on philosophy and psychology, and frustrations in not getting into any lab as a technitian led me to apply and then accept a position for electronics technitian at TR. The only connection to rhythms research was that the company built incubators with circadian lighting and temperature for use by rhythm researchers. The job allowed me to overcome my phobia of all things electronic and mechanical. My self confidence was restored when I built 20 of them, without even one coming back for repair.
Dr. P, owner of TR and a former Harvard worm biologist himself, decided to make use of my programming skills, in making the circadian incubators better. Once I did that, he gave me more challenging tasks - such as building a FedEx label printing system. Eventually, I ended up designing and rebuilding the entire Tritech Research web site. The positive dynamics I had working with him restored my belief that I can have a good work relationship. I came to know all the things I had done right this time, when he showed me the letter of recommendation he drafted for U--- graduate program - putting in extra time on weekdays and weekends to not let a project suffer and being open to criticisms being the foremost of them.
There were many times when I made mistakes such as making a bad soldering joint or using too thin a wire or just wasting everyone's time trying to debug an electronics problem that was beyond my expertise. I was criticized, rather harshly at times, but I continued to work, and a few days later, would realize that the criticism was meant for just that one aspect of working, not a statement about my entire life. A desperation to work, along with past experience at U---- allowed me to "not have a theatrically sensitive soul" and focus on matter, not the manner of criticism. Getting things done was constantly reinforced positively by Dr. P. None of the things were done just because I wanted to do them (the kind of expectations that I had when I was a graduate student). Every thing was done because Dr. Papp wanted it done, and I focused merely on getting them done. My work attitude was consistent with the idea of "not having delusions of self-importance."
When I went this Monday to Dr. C's lab to do my first project - namely repairing their Shock Apparatus - I focused just on gettting that done - and was delighted that I could in fact do that. My next projects include making a drinkometer - these are purely electronic jobs, but I have the ability to execute these, and if Dr. C wants them done, then those shall be done. A year and a half ago, I would have found reasons to say no to such projects. (In fact, I now recall that Dr. E wanted a collaboration with Dr. S which involved me going to London - that I plainly refused point blank!)
Only further experiences will tell whether this theory is correct, and whether I have changed my attitude really. I will be happy if you could share your thoughts on this matter.
I have not yet thought through why I am writing all this to you, but I do know that I wanted to, so I am writing.
Finally, on the very important matter of recommendation letters ....
I have zero hopes of getting in this year, but am working on getting a green-card, which will allow me to apply in the general category next year. Then, I will be competing for sixty seats instead of one. So, the next one year in Dr. C's lab is really a preparation for my 2010 application.
This year, I am reapplying only to Neuroscience graduate program at U--- ... the graduate program coordinator insists that I resubmit letters of recommendation even though they might be identical ... Could you resend your last letter, if not a new one, to neurophd@---.edu as soon as possible? Their deadline is December 1st for receiving applications (which I have met) but they will wait for letters of recommendation and transcripts for a few more days.
Thanks,
Sincerely,
Srikanth.
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Hi Srikanth,
Many thanks for the update. I've just sent in a revised version of the letter to U---.
I don't recall having spoken to C about you; I haven't talked to him in a long time.
BUT, you're welcome anyway.
It sounds as though you have had an interesting year.
It seems you accept that criticism from Dr. P is intended to correct and re-direct you, not to tear you down.
This is usually the case in working relationships, and recognizing this is very important.
There is much too much rejection in this business (whether it is manuscripts, grant applications, etc...even job applications) for every criticism to be seen as a personal criticism.
Indeed, an important aspect of training is to become adept at professionally attacking a paper, while (hopefully) still respecting the source, and providing a critique that instructs the author in how to improve the product. The objective to keep in mind, even while the criticisms are stinging, is that the end product will be better if one can swallow pride long enough to understand the criticism as it was intended. Another way to think of it is to de-personalize the process as much as you can; in submitting a manuscript for review, you're looking for "feedback from the beta-testers" , not necessarily acceptance (and certainly not compliments).
Similarly, defending yourself against criticism/ responding to reviewer comments, questions after a talk, or evaluations of your work, needs to be done calmly, without attacking the person or viewing them as hostile. They usually are trying to provide the opportunity for you to say it better, explain more clearly, or justify your choices.
There's a distinction between doing things because the boss wants them done and because you do. It is true that accomplishing objectives in the short term to satisfy the boss is necessary. The ideal is when you can take a sense of ownsership over that accomplishment, making the boss's objective yours as well. I believe that is what you express below. There also comes a time when you will need to focus instead on what you want, and become increasingly self-directed. When this occurs, within a graduate program, varies a lot, both by PI and by student. Some PI's let the students sink or swim, in developing something independent, for which the student has the greatest resoponsibility (and also takes considerable risk, if it fails).
Other PI's want to dictate how much will be accomplished.
Others will provide a background question, and expect the student to find a niche within that broad area that is new enough to be worthwhile, yet not so risky as to risk 2-3 years of a graduate career.
Some students are ready to be given a budget and a firm push in the right direction;
others need yardsticks and milestones to keep them on track.
There's no one way to do it.
BUT, to be successful, it is critical to understand what is expected of you, and to communicate along the way.
Hope you find these thoughts helpful.
I have some old drinkometers from Lafayette Instruments.
If you need one to use as a template, to get part numbers, resistor strength etc., let me know and I'll send it out to you.
Best of success to you, and happy Holidays,
D
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Theory of consciousness - Part 2 - Paradox: Robots Can See But Do Not See
From the discussions in Part 1, we can accept the proposition that "Quarks have visual sensation" to be axiomatically correct. There is no reason to restrict the analysis to just one sense; Generalizing the result, we arrive at the axiom that "Quarks have all senses - visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile as well as thermal, and emotional spectrum from pain to pleasure."
The axiom of sensual quarks leads to the corollary of senusal universe. Each element of the Universe can experience sense - yet, it is common knowledge that only living animals really sense - a cat sees, but a wall does not see. A man sees but a robot does not.
We are running into the risk of confusing vocabulary, so let me clarify with an example. In Fenway, during a Red Sox game, there are thousands of people. They all have the ability to pitch the ball. You just need a hand and a ball to pitch the ball. Yet, only one person in the middle of the stadium is pitching the ball. There is a marked differene between being able to pitch the ball and in fact pitching the ball. This marked difference is very concrete - it is having the ball.
In terms of sensual quark theory, the entire Universe is capable of pitching or sensing. The ability to feel redness of rose is equivalent to having the hand. Yet, only the few living things have the ball or in fact are sensual. The equivalent of having a ball is ....What?
When we were performing the imaginary thought experiment of removing one body part at a time to localize the anatomical site of vision, we had made an implicit assumption that the man would be alive even though he did not have most of the parts of the body. Yet it is common knowledge that a fully intact man, who could clearly see one moment before death, no more sees anything after he is dead, even though all his body parts are intact. Revisiting our conclusions from the thought experiment, we would add LIFE as a critical component of being able to see.
LIFE is then like having the ball. Only the living things have LIFE, by definition. Yet, what is LIFE? In the biological sense, even cells have LIFE. Having LIFE really means, being functional - having enough parts in motion so that the whole machine functions. In the same way, cars are dead when their batteries are dead. LIFE merely refers to the functional state of being. LIFE does not reside in one single part, but refers to the state of a lot of interconnected dynamic parts. LIFE is like the word Isosceles. The quality of being Isosceles resides in the entire triangle. It can not be localized to a single point in the triangle. The quality of LIFE belongs to an entire conglomeration of sensual quarks, not to just one single quark.
In conclusion, Lots of Sensual Quarks + LIFE (Quality of connections between then) = Actual sensation.
In the next part, we will examine the requirements for LIFE ...
The axiom of sensual quarks leads to the corollary of senusal universe. Each element of the Universe can experience sense - yet, it is common knowledge that only living animals really sense - a cat sees, but a wall does not see. A man sees but a robot does not.
We are running into the risk of confusing vocabulary, so let me clarify with an example. In Fenway, during a Red Sox game, there are thousands of people. They all have the ability to pitch the ball. You just need a hand and a ball to pitch the ball. Yet, only one person in the middle of the stadium is pitching the ball. There is a marked differene between being able to pitch the ball and in fact pitching the ball. This marked difference is very concrete - it is having the ball.
In terms of sensual quark theory, the entire Universe is capable of pitching or sensing. The ability to feel redness of rose is equivalent to having the hand. Yet, only the few living things have the ball or in fact are sensual. The equivalent of having a ball is ....What?
When we were performing the imaginary thought experiment of removing one body part at a time to localize the anatomical site of vision, we had made an implicit assumption that the man would be alive even though he did not have most of the parts of the body. Yet it is common knowledge that a fully intact man, who could clearly see one moment before death, no more sees anything after he is dead, even though all his body parts are intact. Revisiting our conclusions from the thought experiment, we would add LIFE as a critical component of being able to see.
LIFE is then like having the ball. Only the living things have LIFE, by definition. Yet, what is LIFE? In the biological sense, even cells have LIFE. Having LIFE really means, being functional - having enough parts in motion so that the whole machine functions. In the same way, cars are dead when their batteries are dead. LIFE merely refers to the functional state of being. LIFE does not reside in one single part, but refers to the state of a lot of interconnected dynamic parts. LIFE is like the word Isosceles. The quality of being Isosceles resides in the entire triangle. It can not be localized to a single point in the triangle. The quality of LIFE belongs to an entire conglomeration of sensual quarks, not to just one single quark.
In conclusion, Lots of Sensual Quarks + LIFE (Quality of connections between then) = Actual sensation.
In the next part, we will examine the requirements for LIFE ...
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
How To Be Higher On Google Search Results
BEFORE YOU TRY TO IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE RANK, KNOW WHERE YOU ARE AT PRESENT!
Google WebMaster Tools
BEFORE YOU TWEAK ANYTHING, UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE TWEAKING
A Tutorial To Explain Each Of 31 Google Guidelines - Start Here!
READ THE 7 OFFICIAL ARTICLES FROM GOOGLE ON HOW TO BE RANKED HIGHER - DIRECT FROM THE SOURCE!
1. Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes, and serves the web
Remember: Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. Focus on the other 199 factors too!
2. Making sure Google knows about your site
3: How can I create a Google-friendly site?
4: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5: Webmaster Guidelines
6: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
7: Official Search Engine Optimization Guidlines By Google
Google WebMaster Tools
BEFORE YOU TWEAK ANYTHING, UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE TWEAKING
A Tutorial To Explain Each Of 31 Google Guidelines - Start Here!
READ THE 7 OFFICIAL ARTICLES FROM GOOGLE ON HOW TO BE RANKED HIGHER - DIRECT FROM THE SOURCE!
1. Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes, and serves the web
Remember: Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. Focus on the other 199 factors too!
2. Making sure Google knows about your site
3: How can I create a Google-friendly site?
4: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5: Webmaster Guidelines
6: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
7: Official Search Engine Optimization Guidlines By Google
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
A Certain Chemistry - By Mil Millington - Take Home Message
I found the following 4 points from this entire God's narration very interesting:
1. PEA causes you to stop judging the person you are attracted to ... at least for 30 months
2. Love is really Dopamine in your brain ... when you don't get it (as in during a heartbreak) you feel bad ... but really, it is just "Addiction" and "Withdrawl Symptoms" ... you will get over it!
3. Fidelity is really addiction to drug ... You want something, you want it bad, and you want more of it ...
4. When you fantasize about someone/something erotically, you are applying classical conditioning.
These are the four most important "take-home" messages!
Together, they give you a proper perspective of romance in the real world.
Love = molecules + opportunity! Nothing moral or exalting or mystical about it!
1. PEA causes you to stop judging the person you are attracted to ... at least for 30 months
2. Love is really Dopamine in your brain ... when you don't get it (as in during a heartbreak) you feel bad ... but really, it is just "Addiction" and "Withdrawl Symptoms" ... you will get over it!
3. Fidelity is really addiction to drug ... You want something, you want it bad, and you want more of it ...
4. When you fantasize about someone/something erotically, you are applying classical conditioning.
These are the four most important "take-home" messages!
Together, they give you a proper perspective of romance in the real world.
Love = molecules + opportunity! Nothing moral or exalting or mystical about it!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 8 - The end
Hey, I'm no great thinker, but even I could see that was going to end badly. But, like I said, that was why I showed you the thing in the first place. You get me? I picked Tom and Sara and Georgina for a couple of reasons. One reason I picked them was there was no particular reason to pick them, right? The names, the time, the jobs, the superficial details of stuff that happened - the paint job - all that might well belong to them, but really, they could have been anyone, anywhere. The story, if you know what I mean, the story is pretty much fixed: all they can do is use their own handwriting to put it down. Tom might feel he is hurting 'cause he's lost Sara, but he's just hurting 'cause that's what happens to anyone at this point. The chemicals he's been getting are close to cocaine or nicotine not just 'casue they induce the same kind of pleasure, but 'cause they're addictive like them too. Really, I'm not kidding you here; these things aren't all that different. It's no wonder that now he's feeling just like someone who's going cold turkey. And, yeah, it's my doing, again. I wanted you people to keep things going, and that meant not only making it good to get together but making it bad to be apart. Carrot and stick, you see what I'm saying?
But he's not missing Sara; he's just missing his partner. All tthat stuff about people being meant for each other or - what is it some of you say? "Somewhere, there's one person for everyone - it's just down to the two of them to finding each other." What? I ask you, is that any way to run a species? Your "special person" is simply a person who's available. Just one person for each other person? You die out. The fact is, the reason your partner is beside you right now hasn't got anything to do with destiny and paired souls - it's just 'cause they were around. They were around, a fw smells and features were close enough to fit you, and the way tour head works meant that you came to believe that they were "special." You see that, right? I mean, if you think about it for just a moment even, you're bound to realize I'm being straight with you here.
George is famous. Dick Cheney is famous too. You think Tom would have been attracted to Dick Cheney, if they'd met? I know it's against your nature, okay, but don't complicate things. Things are simple. Mostly, you just pair off by attractiveness - I figured this was as good a way to do it as any. All the things that strongly influence a friendship - similar interests, personal beliefs, intelligence, yadda, yadda, yadda - are completely outweighed when men and women pair up in relationships by how similar they are in the good-looks stakes. I can't count the number of your scientists who've done experiments that have shown this. One guy at UCLA even did this study and found that the closer matched pairs were in physical attractiveness, the more likely they were to have "fallen more deeply in love." Ha! I am good, or what? Another one of these study things found there was a really high hit rate when people tried to match husbands and wives together from their wedding pictures based on nothing but how close they were when ranked by looks. I mean - come on - I don't even need to tell you all about this, do I? It can't be like you haven't noticed it, right?
I'm not saying you don't feel anything, but you feel it 'cause of oxytocin and vasopressin and endotrophins and 'cause that's the game plan, not 'cause of anything mystic. There isn't anything mystic. When a junkie wants his fix, he really wants his fix - it's real. But whatever he tells himself, you can see it's just the drug pulling the strings, right? I know it's tough to step outside on this one, but it's the same thing here - it's just different drugs.
Which kind of brings me to the second reason I picked Tom: it's because we got to see a little of the aftermath. I'm kind of hoing that by understanding Tom's misery - how it came about and what it is - you'll understand your own when it happens. And that understanding it will make it be not so bad. I know I screwed up - I've told you that, and I'm not trying to avoid anything here - but maybe it'll be a bit bettter if you realize that this is all nothing but, you know, molecules and opportunity.
Okay, okay, sure - I've simplified stuff. Who wouldn't? Makes my head ache just thinking about all the biochemistry and the whatever - the neurology - and the variations and all that. But, overall, it's always pretty much the same. And, all the time, however complex the mixture might be, there's no pixie dust in it, you know what I'm saying? Like that guy said ... what was he called? Whatever, it doen't matter, he said - Ryle! That was his name. Cheesh - I'm losing it, I really am. Anyways, like I was saying, however much you 're going to say it's complicated and you can't get some big computer to work out all the interactions and all thay, however complex it is ... there's no "ghost in teh machine," okay?
I'm hoping that'll give you some comfort. I really should have guessed that, the way you are, you'd see meaning and magic in love - because you like tot see meaning and magic in yourselves and you believe love is the most human thing there is - the thing that makes you what you are. I never intended that, but I should have guessed it. So, I came here to tell you straight how things really work. To make amends for my oversight. So that the next time you feel like crap 'cause of all this stuff, you can say, "Sure, I feel like crap. But it's just molecules - I'm not being crshed by, you knkow, destiny or anything." It'll still hurt, but you'll have perspective, right? Stick your hand in a flame and it hurts like crazy - but you don't take it personal, right? You don't let it break your spirit.
So, Tom and Sara didn't work out. That's a shame. I like things to work out; I was really cut up about the Neanderthals, for example. But they'll get over it. They weren't meant to be together - or not meant to be together - they just met and were togehter for a while. Molecules and opportunity. That's the way you've got to look at these things. I hope you understand now, and it'll help you all, and, you know, that my explaining everything here makes up for the way I took my eye off the ball a little with this one.
You all take good care of yourselves, okay?
But he's not missing Sara; he's just missing his partner. All tthat stuff about people being meant for each other or - what is it some of you say? "Somewhere, there's one person for everyone - it's just down to the two of them to finding each other." What? I ask you, is that any way to run a species? Your "special person" is simply a person who's available. Just one person for each other person? You die out. The fact is, the reason your partner is beside you right now hasn't got anything to do with destiny and paired souls - it's just 'cause they were around. They were around, a fw smells and features were close enough to fit you, and the way tour head works meant that you came to believe that they were "special." You see that, right? I mean, if you think about it for just a moment even, you're bound to realize I'm being straight with you here.
George is famous. Dick Cheney is famous too. You think Tom would have been attracted to Dick Cheney, if they'd met? I know it's against your nature, okay, but don't complicate things. Things are simple. Mostly, you just pair off by attractiveness - I figured this was as good a way to do it as any. All the things that strongly influence a friendship - similar interests, personal beliefs, intelligence, yadda, yadda, yadda - are completely outweighed when men and women pair up in relationships by how similar they are in the good-looks stakes. I can't count the number of your scientists who've done experiments that have shown this. One guy at UCLA even did this study and found that the closer matched pairs were in physical attractiveness, the more likely they were to have "fallen more deeply in love." Ha! I am good, or what? Another one of these study things found there was a really high hit rate when people tried to match husbands and wives together from their wedding pictures based on nothing but how close they were when ranked by looks. I mean - come on - I don't even need to tell you all about this, do I? It can't be like you haven't noticed it, right?
I'm not saying you don't feel anything, but you feel it 'cause of oxytocin and vasopressin and endotrophins and 'cause that's the game plan, not 'cause of anything mystic. There isn't anything mystic. When a junkie wants his fix, he really wants his fix - it's real. But whatever he tells himself, you can see it's just the drug pulling the strings, right? I know it's tough to step outside on this one, but it's the same thing here - it's just different drugs.
Which kind of brings me to the second reason I picked Tom: it's because we got to see a little of the aftermath. I'm kind of hoing that by understanding Tom's misery - how it came about and what it is - you'll understand your own when it happens. And that understanding it will make it be not so bad. I know I screwed up - I've told you that, and I'm not trying to avoid anything here - but maybe it'll be a bit bettter if you realize that this is all nothing but, you know, molecules and opportunity.
Okay, okay, sure - I've simplified stuff. Who wouldn't? Makes my head ache just thinking about all the biochemistry and the whatever - the neurology - and the variations and all that. But, overall, it's always pretty much the same. And, all the time, however complex the mixture might be, there's no pixie dust in it, you know what I'm saying? Like that guy said ... what was he called? Whatever, it doen't matter, he said - Ryle! That was his name. Cheesh - I'm losing it, I really am. Anyways, like I was saying, however much you 're going to say it's complicated and you can't get some big computer to work out all the interactions and all thay, however complex it is ... there's no "ghost in teh machine," okay?
I'm hoping that'll give you some comfort. I really should have guessed that, the way you are, you'd see meaning and magic in love - because you like tot see meaning and magic in yourselves and you believe love is the most human thing there is - the thing that makes you what you are. I never intended that, but I should have guessed it. So, I came here to tell you straight how things really work. To make amends for my oversight. So that the next time you feel like crap 'cause of all this stuff, you can say, "Sure, I feel like crap. But it's just molecules - I'm not being crshed by, you knkow, destiny or anything." It'll still hurt, but you'll have perspective, right? Stick your hand in a flame and it hurts like crazy - but you don't take it personal, right? You don't let it break your spirit.
So, Tom and Sara didn't work out. That's a shame. I like things to work out; I was really cut up about the Neanderthals, for example. But they'll get over it. They weren't meant to be together - or not meant to be together - they just met and were togehter for a while. Molecules and opportunity. That's the way you've got to look at these things. I hope you understand now, and it'll help you all, and, you know, that my explaining everything here makes up for the way I took my eye off the ball a little with this one.
You all take good care of yourselves, okay?
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 7
So, what I want to talk about here is ... What? No, look, it doesn't really matter about the specifics of Tom and George and Sara - how many times do I have to tell you that? They're only, you know, an ullustration of the general principle, right? Sara's just one woman, in Scotland, at one moment in time; her hearing that recording on her cell phone isn't an issue we're concerned with. No, I'm here to tell you ... What? Hey, don't look at me like that ... What? Oh, for ... Okay, okay, I'll come back later, then. Really - the phrase "the bigger picture" just means nothing to you people, does it?
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 6
You know what I was thinking about back there? Back when Tom was having that problem with the punk outside the bar? Well, I've got to come clean again here, and tell you that back then I remembered that I cut a few corners, you know, "physiology wise." you see, I didn't really think to put enough space between the cues for "love" and the cues for "fear." I just kind of figured it'd be clear from the context. I mean, why wouldn't I, right? Then I hearr that some of your scientists have done this experiment and discovered that, because of the chemicals released, people who experience fear on a first date often "misinterpret" it as love. Was my face red when I heard that, eh? I simply can't tell you.
Yeah, well, it was just a thought I was having. Never mind.
There is another thing, though. I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier, when I was dropping all thes science on you and telling you the names of stuff. But, well, I lost my nerve, you knonw? One reason I lostt it is that this word's no sweetheart to say, I can tell you. Here goes ..."phenylethylamine." What did I tell you, eh? Even your own scientists shorten it to PEA, so they don't keep screwing up when they try to say it and making an ass of themselves during, I don't know, seminnars or whatever. But I got to admit, the length of it wasn't the only thing that stopped me. Fact is, I'm a bit guilty about it. PEA, you see, is a dirty trick. Sure-like I've told you- I was worried you wouldn't get yourselves yogether, tand that things would fizzle out 'cause of it, but PEA ... well. Okay, I'm just going to say it straight out. PEA kicks in when you're attracted to someone, and here's what it does: it stops you from seeing their faults. PEA is, like, your actual rose-tinted glasses. That's bad enough, right? But then ... Sorry. Okay. The length of time varies - it can be years - but after a while ... it stops working.
Yeah, I know.
I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to tell yoou this if your scientists hadn't uncovered that bit of evidence already. A dirty trick, like I say. Worse still, a dirty trick badly done.
Let's just say I owe you one.
Yeah, well, it was just a thought I was having. Never mind.
There is another thing, though. I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier, when I was dropping all thes science on you and telling you the names of stuff. But, well, I lost my nerve, you knonw? One reason I lostt it is that this word's no sweetheart to say, I can tell you. Here goes ..."phenylethylamine." What did I tell you, eh? Even your own scientists shorten it to PEA, so they don't keep screwing up when they try to say it and making an ass of themselves during, I don't know, seminnars or whatever. But I got to admit, the length of it wasn't the only thing that stopped me. Fact is, I'm a bit guilty about it. PEA, you see, is a dirty trick. Sure-like I've told you- I was worried you wouldn't get yourselves yogether, tand that things would fizzle out 'cause of it, but PEA ... well. Okay, I'm just going to say it straight out. PEA kicks in when you're attracted to someone, and here's what it does: it stops you from seeing their faults. PEA is, like, your actual rose-tinted glasses. That's bad enough, right? But then ... Sorry. Okay. The length of time varies - it can be years - but after a while ... it stops working.
Yeah, I know.
I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to tell yoou this if your scientists hadn't uncovered that bit of evidence already. A dirty trick, like I say. Worse still, a dirty trick badly done.
Let's just say I owe you one.
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 5
Well. I've got to be honest with you here. I feel like a bit of a jerk right now. Kind of like when you play a practical joke on someone, thinking everyone will get a blast out of it, only it goes wrong and people get upset. I mean, sure, I feel responsible - I'm, God, right? It comes with the territory. But I got to assure you that, for what it's worth, I had only the best intentions. You got to believe what I'm telling you when I say that I never intended things to get messy like this.
Oh, I don't mean for Tom or Sara or George, obviously. I knew about that - that's the very reason I'm showing them to you now, so you can see waht I'm talking about. No, I mean not for anyone. Because, like I say, Tom and Sara and George could be anyone. I have to check that you understand me here. It doesn't matter, for example, that George is a famous actress, okay? I know you people are built to understand complex stuff and be able to see patterns and meaning - and that's good. But the trouble is, it makes you want to see patterns and meaning, and hate to think you're not complicated. If that terrible Fiona chick had been willing, then Tom might easily be in a hotel with her now. And later he'd think that maybe it was some indefinable connection they had - both being English in Soctland or both working in publishing or whatever - that was the critical thing. But that ain't it. Remember: filter out the scenery. Remember: Sara or George or Tomr or A.N. Other or you - it's all the same thing, okay?
Look, when I set this universe up, I was kind of making it up as I went. There was no "Creation 101" I could have attended beforehand, you know what I'm, saying? Sure, so I could have done a few things better - I'm the first to admit that. No one can say I'm not prepared to stick up my hand and say "mea culpa" when I screw up, 'cause that just isn't right. And I'm, at least trying to make up for things as best as I can - I mean, that's why I'm, here now, okay? We got to deal with the situation we're in; we can't go back and rewrite the book, but I can at least read you the rules we have, so your know where you stand. Should have done it a long time ago, I admit - strike two against me - but you know how you put these things off.
Okay, enough with the beating myself up. Let's get on with business.
You remember what I was saying about the whales? How I just kind of thought up all this stuff and went at it? Sometimes I got a bit carried away, got into a groove and kept pumping out these ideas. I'm like, "Yeah, that's good! Whoa - and I know what else would be cool ... " and I don't know when to stop. They call it plentitude; I just kind of thought of it as "being on a roll." Well, I don't want you getting the idea that I simply threw you guys together, okay? I was really on the case, thinking about all these angles and stuff, all these possibilities. Like I say, though, like with the whales, I don't really know how I do stuff; I just, you know, want badgers and - there you go - badgers. Which suits me, by the way. If I have this great idea for a plant, I don't want to have to figure out cell division and invent osmosis and stuff first - who has the time, right? But like I told you earlier, I'm totally into all these scientists of yours getting out their microscopes or whatever and working out how I did everything. That gives me a real kick. And - I'm guessing here, but I figure I'm right - I think it helps you to understand what's going on if you look at it like that. So, that's how I'm going to explain all this to you, okay? So you kind of hear it in your own language, you know what I mean? And also, so you can check up on it and see I'm telling you the truth here. I'm showing good faith by making sure you can do that.
Now, first off, I thought you'd mostly all be dead by forty. Let's get that straight right from the start. That was the time frame I was working in, and I don't think anyone can accuse me of not doing enough to make this reasonable. Natural disasters, disease, wild animals, cold, starvation - the list goes on. So, I don't think that any charge of negligence is going to stick, you know? And until fairly recently, it worked. How was I to know you'd start coming with all this stuff to keep yourselves alive? Flood warnings and antibiotics and office work. You think it's reasonable to blame me for not guessing that some wise guy would go and invent a dialysis machine, eh? So, for a start, any problems with your love life when you're over forty: not my fault, okay? Past the warranty. Stuff you do beyond thirty-nine you do at your own risk, you know what I'm saying?
So, I'd got this sex stuff - which, I think you'll agree, is kind of neat - and my only problem was how to ... um, how to implement it. You have fourteen years to get a chance to stop being stupid (Okay, okay, third strike, there - let's push on anyways), a bit of finding your feet, then all the sex while you try to defy the odds against dying for a decade or so. Now, it was kind of important you had sex. I was worried you might not do it enough to keep yourselves in offspring, so I put a lot of work into getting you to go for it. (Well, yes, - I went over the top, obviously. Everyone can be smart in retrospect, can't they?) First I made you want it - badly. How? "Gonadal steroids," apparently. As I say, I'm just using your words here - if I'd been naming stuff, you can bet I'd never have come up with "gonadal steroids." I mean, ugh, right? Anyways, you have these gonadal steroids - estrogen and testosterone - to get you all fired up and looking for sex. Off you go.
Now I need to refine it a bit or ... well, I'll let you picture what happens if I don't - but queues would move even slower at the post office, if you know what I'm saying. So, I get you to be attracted to someone, rather than absolutely everyone (I'm going to come back to this later, so remember it, okay?). I'm pretty clever here, if I say so myslef. I throw in a bit of that brain chemistry that you people call psychology - basic stuff, but I do it real smooth like, so you don't notice.
For example, I make you most attracted to faces that are similar to your own. That's to say that, if your're a man, you like your own mug, only in a more feminine style, and the same if your're a woman - you go for the structure you see in your mirror but with the manliness turned up. (You didn't even know that, did you? You think I am making this up. I'm not - ask people at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, if I'm just making this up' they'll smack you right in the face.) Better, I thought, that you're drawn to faces like your own than if you're drawn to faces like your dogs'. Tell me I'm wrong. Mostly it's very simple rules that I come with. You don't know about them, but they're pretty fomulaic. Symmetry: you prefer symmetrical people. Smell: women prefer the smell of men whose immune systems are different from theirs. Oh, and they go for male pheromones pretty reliably too. (I got a bit carried away with women and smelling, to be honest. Ended up with women being a thousand times more sensitive to some smells than men. No need for that, really. Just on a roll again.) And all the time I'm seeing to it that you get really excited about this by doling out the monoamines.
You remember the monoamines, right? Remember I mentioned them a while back, just so you wouldn't start giving some kind of spiritual agenda to the woody that Tom got while he was interviewing George? Yeah, sure you do. Well, let me clue you in on the monoamines.
Monoamines are a collection of chemicals - neurotransmitters - and they, well, they are sexual attraction, basically. What happens when you feel attraction? Nah, don't give me any of that, "Oooh, I go all tingly" or "It's like tiny little bunnies are hopping around in my stomach and my mind starts twinkling" stuff. Not only are metaphors part of the trouble here, but I asked you what happens, not how you interpret it. Attraction isn't controlled, it couldn't give a damn about your morals or your worldview, and it definitely isn't the work of Cupid, tiny pink fairies, or magic of any kind. It's monoamines. You've got your serotonin, your norepinephrine (that's adrenaline to you and me), and your dompamine washing about in your head. Your brain's lighting up around the medial insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the putamen, while it's "good night" to the posterior cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, and, right-laterally, the prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices. What the hell does all that mean? It means you're mad as crab, basically. I'm not kidding here - you're clinically barking; you really shouldn't be allowed to drive. Monoamines are the ruthless, amoral storm troopers of sexual attraction; these things really do take no prisoners - dopamine alone buys your entire better judgement in exchange for a warm glow - and together they make the kind of cocktail that can, say, lead to you ending up in a hotelroom on top of a soap star.
But, as you'll have guessed, all of this is no good if, when you manage to get sex, you find it's about as appealing as chewing a truck driver's sock. So, stage three: neuropeptides. What we have here, basically, are your standard oxytocin and vasopressinn. You have sex, oxytocin hits the pleasure centers of your brain, and you think, "Whoa. That's something I'll be doing again." But - and this is where I got real smart - oxytocin also encourages you to be faithful. I really put in the effort with this one. Did the road work. I tested the idea of faithfulness with prairie voles first - to see if it was possible. Didn't know I was using oxytocin, of course, but that's what it was, and I tried faithfulness with midwestern prairie vole males and skipped it with the northwestern ones. I have to tell you, with prairie voles, it was fine either way. But with you I went for the faithful approach - figured you'd enjoy the grounding. So, I hit you with oxytocin when you had sex, and I made its release what the white coat call a "a classically conditioned reflex." What that means is you get oxytocin when you have sex, but if you have sex with one person enough it gets so as a bit slips out when you just see them. If Tom thinks he feels guilty now, just wait until he sees Sara again and he gets a shot of oxytocin to hammer it home.
So, there you go - pretty well planned, I think you'll agree. You don't have to bother about sorting yourselves out to reproduce, 'cause I've set up everything for you. No thought required on your part.
Then you go and begin moving goalposts.
I didn't know you were going to change from small groups to cities of eight million, did I? I thought you'd be very lucky to reach the four-decade mark before you died from the flu or were eaten by a wolf, so why bother about the long-term durability of faithfulness? The effects of the monoamines only hold out for - best-case scenario - thirty months. After that your body becomes "tolerant" to the neurotransmitters and, well, passion fades. That's the end of the running through parks in rainstorms, laughing - there's only reflexive oxytocin holding you together now. And how well do you think that's going to hold up when another round of dopamine and serotonin arrives? And I didn't even think it was important to fix that glitch where women - whatever country and culture they've grown up in - have a cycle of about four years from getting together to thinking about finding someone else. Serial monogamy seemed to be fine; chances are that within four or five years either she or her partner would have succumbed to appendicitis or been carried off by an avalanche or something - and even if that didn't happen, well, there'd hardly be four million other people hanging around within an hour's drive for her to move on to, would there? And why not give men an extra helping of testosterone to keep their eyes open? Better to have loved and lost, right?
And this is where it starts to get very embarrassing for me. 'Cause I didn't think infidelity would be a big issue. I certainly couldn't have guessed that more people would be, would even get the chance to be, unfaithful than faithful - you really shot me down in flames there, didn't you? 'Cause I didn't allow for it, it's all done really, really badly. I never thought to throw in a bit of sleight of hand to make it look random or varied. I didn't even give it the thought I put into snow-flakes, is what I am saying. It just runs on the basics, it falls back onto the low-level, unrefined chemistry and psychology (and psychology is nothing but chemistry in a groove, of course). That's why every affair is like every other affair. It doesn't matter whether it's an infidelity between two people who make the same bolts at the same factory, or an English wrriter living in Edinburgh colliding with an actress from the country's highest rated soap ... it's always the same. The trivial details vary and the settings are different, but the people go through the same thing time and time again. I know you must have spotted this, which is partly the reason why I felt I should own up here. Admit what you all knew anyway, just to clear the air.
I messed up. But I got lots of other stuff right. Take bananas, for example. Bananas I got dead-on. Okay, okay, I sense the hostility, and that's fine; best to acknowledge it. If we don't both acknowledge it, we won't be able to move on.
And, you know, I think we can move on, a little. I'm not going to discuss that now, though. Right now, I think you need some time to yourself, a little bit of space.
We'll talk later, okay?
Oh, I don't mean for Tom or Sara or George, obviously. I knew about that - that's the very reason I'm showing them to you now, so you can see waht I'm talking about. No, I mean not for anyone. Because, like I say, Tom and Sara and George could be anyone. I have to check that you understand me here. It doesn't matter, for example, that George is a famous actress, okay? I know you people are built to understand complex stuff and be able to see patterns and meaning - and that's good. But the trouble is, it makes you want to see patterns and meaning, and hate to think you're not complicated. If that terrible Fiona chick had been willing, then Tom might easily be in a hotel with her now. And later he'd think that maybe it was some indefinable connection they had - both being English in Soctland or both working in publishing or whatever - that was the critical thing. But that ain't it. Remember: filter out the scenery. Remember: Sara or George or Tomr or A.N. Other or you - it's all the same thing, okay?
Look, when I set this universe up, I was kind of making it up as I went. There was no "Creation 101" I could have attended beforehand, you know what I'm, saying? Sure, so I could have done a few things better - I'm the first to admit that. No one can say I'm not prepared to stick up my hand and say "mea culpa" when I screw up, 'cause that just isn't right. And I'm, at least trying to make up for things as best as I can - I mean, that's why I'm, here now, okay? We got to deal with the situation we're in; we can't go back and rewrite the book, but I can at least read you the rules we have, so your know where you stand. Should have done it a long time ago, I admit - strike two against me - but you know how you put these things off.
Okay, enough with the beating myself up. Let's get on with business.
You remember what I was saying about the whales? How I just kind of thought up all this stuff and went at it? Sometimes I got a bit carried away, got into a groove and kept pumping out these ideas. I'm like, "Yeah, that's good! Whoa - and I know what else would be cool ... " and I don't know when to stop. They call it plentitude; I just kind of thought of it as "being on a roll." Well, I don't want you getting the idea that I simply threw you guys together, okay? I was really on the case, thinking about all these angles and stuff, all these possibilities. Like I say, though, like with the whales, I don't really know how I do stuff; I just, you know, want badgers and - there you go - badgers. Which suits me, by the way. If I have this great idea for a plant, I don't want to have to figure out cell division and invent osmosis and stuff first - who has the time, right? But like I told you earlier, I'm totally into all these scientists of yours getting out their microscopes or whatever and working out how I did everything. That gives me a real kick. And - I'm guessing here, but I figure I'm right - I think it helps you to understand what's going on if you look at it like that. So, that's how I'm going to explain all this to you, okay? So you kind of hear it in your own language, you know what I mean? And also, so you can check up on it and see I'm telling you the truth here. I'm showing good faith by making sure you can do that.
Now, first off, I thought you'd mostly all be dead by forty. Let's get that straight right from the start. That was the time frame I was working in, and I don't think anyone can accuse me of not doing enough to make this reasonable. Natural disasters, disease, wild animals, cold, starvation - the list goes on. So, I don't think that any charge of negligence is going to stick, you know? And until fairly recently, it worked. How was I to know you'd start coming with all this stuff to keep yourselves alive? Flood warnings and antibiotics and office work. You think it's reasonable to blame me for not guessing that some wise guy would go and invent a dialysis machine, eh? So, for a start, any problems with your love life when you're over forty: not my fault, okay? Past the warranty. Stuff you do beyond thirty-nine you do at your own risk, you know what I'm saying?
So, I'd got this sex stuff - which, I think you'll agree, is kind of neat - and my only problem was how to ... um, how to implement it. You have fourteen years to get a chance to stop being stupid (Okay, okay, third strike, there - let's push on anyways), a bit of finding your feet, then all the sex while you try to defy the odds against dying for a decade or so. Now, it was kind of important you had sex. I was worried you might not do it enough to keep yourselves in offspring, so I put a lot of work into getting you to go for it. (Well, yes, - I went over the top, obviously. Everyone can be smart in retrospect, can't they?) First I made you want it - badly. How? "Gonadal steroids," apparently. As I say, I'm just using your words here - if I'd been naming stuff, you can bet I'd never have come up with "gonadal steroids." I mean, ugh, right? Anyways, you have these gonadal steroids - estrogen and testosterone - to get you all fired up and looking for sex. Off you go.
Now I need to refine it a bit or ... well, I'll let you picture what happens if I don't - but queues would move even slower at the post office, if you know what I'm saying. So, I get you to be attracted to someone, rather than absolutely everyone (I'm going to come back to this later, so remember it, okay?). I'm pretty clever here, if I say so myslef. I throw in a bit of that brain chemistry that you people call psychology - basic stuff, but I do it real smooth like, so you don't notice.
For example, I make you most attracted to faces that are similar to your own. That's to say that, if your're a man, you like your own mug, only in a more feminine style, and the same if your're a woman - you go for the structure you see in your mirror but with the manliness turned up. (You didn't even know that, did you? You think I am making this up. I'm not - ask people at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, if I'm just making this up' they'll smack you right in the face.) Better, I thought, that you're drawn to faces like your own than if you're drawn to faces like your dogs'. Tell me I'm wrong. Mostly it's very simple rules that I come with. You don't know about them, but they're pretty fomulaic. Symmetry: you prefer symmetrical people. Smell: women prefer the smell of men whose immune systems are different from theirs. Oh, and they go for male pheromones pretty reliably too. (I got a bit carried away with women and smelling, to be honest. Ended up with women being a thousand times more sensitive to some smells than men. No need for that, really. Just on a roll again.) And all the time I'm seeing to it that you get really excited about this by doling out the monoamines.
You remember the monoamines, right? Remember I mentioned them a while back, just so you wouldn't start giving some kind of spiritual agenda to the woody that Tom got while he was interviewing George? Yeah, sure you do. Well, let me clue you in on the monoamines.
Monoamines are a collection of chemicals - neurotransmitters - and they, well, they are sexual attraction, basically. What happens when you feel attraction? Nah, don't give me any of that, "Oooh, I go all tingly" or "It's like tiny little bunnies are hopping around in my stomach and my mind starts twinkling" stuff. Not only are metaphors part of the trouble here, but I asked you what happens, not how you interpret it. Attraction isn't controlled, it couldn't give a damn about your morals or your worldview, and it definitely isn't the work of Cupid, tiny pink fairies, or magic of any kind. It's monoamines. You've got your serotonin, your norepinephrine (that's adrenaline to you and me), and your dompamine washing about in your head. Your brain's lighting up around the medial insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the putamen, while it's "good night" to the posterior cingulate gyrus, the amygdala, and, right-laterally, the prefrontal, parietal, and middle temporal cortices. What the hell does all that mean? It means you're mad as crab, basically. I'm not kidding here - you're clinically barking; you really shouldn't be allowed to drive. Monoamines are the ruthless, amoral storm troopers of sexual attraction; these things really do take no prisoners - dopamine alone buys your entire better judgement in exchange for a warm glow - and together they make the kind of cocktail that can, say, lead to you ending up in a hotelroom on top of a soap star.
But, as you'll have guessed, all of this is no good if, when you manage to get sex, you find it's about as appealing as chewing a truck driver's sock. So, stage three: neuropeptides. What we have here, basically, are your standard oxytocin and vasopressinn. You have sex, oxytocin hits the pleasure centers of your brain, and you think, "Whoa. That's something I'll be doing again." But - and this is where I got real smart - oxytocin also encourages you to be faithful. I really put in the effort with this one. Did the road work. I tested the idea of faithfulness with prairie voles first - to see if it was possible. Didn't know I was using oxytocin, of course, but that's what it was, and I tried faithfulness with midwestern prairie vole males and skipped it with the northwestern ones. I have to tell you, with prairie voles, it was fine either way. But with you I went for the faithful approach - figured you'd enjoy the grounding. So, I hit you with oxytocin when you had sex, and I made its release what the white coat call a "a classically conditioned reflex." What that means is you get oxytocin when you have sex, but if you have sex with one person enough it gets so as a bit slips out when you just see them. If Tom thinks he feels guilty now, just wait until he sees Sara again and he gets a shot of oxytocin to hammer it home.
So, there you go - pretty well planned, I think you'll agree. You don't have to bother about sorting yourselves out to reproduce, 'cause I've set up everything for you. No thought required on your part.
Then you go and begin moving goalposts.
I didn't know you were going to change from small groups to cities of eight million, did I? I thought you'd be very lucky to reach the four-decade mark before you died from the flu or were eaten by a wolf, so why bother about the long-term durability of faithfulness? The effects of the monoamines only hold out for - best-case scenario - thirty months. After that your body becomes "tolerant" to the neurotransmitters and, well, passion fades. That's the end of the running through parks in rainstorms, laughing - there's only reflexive oxytocin holding you together now. And how well do you think that's going to hold up when another round of dopamine and serotonin arrives? And I didn't even think it was important to fix that glitch where women - whatever country and culture they've grown up in - have a cycle of about four years from getting together to thinking about finding someone else. Serial monogamy seemed to be fine; chances are that within four or five years either she or her partner would have succumbed to appendicitis or been carried off by an avalanche or something - and even if that didn't happen, well, there'd hardly be four million other people hanging around within an hour's drive for her to move on to, would there? And why not give men an extra helping of testosterone to keep their eyes open? Better to have loved and lost, right?
And this is where it starts to get very embarrassing for me. 'Cause I didn't think infidelity would be a big issue. I certainly couldn't have guessed that more people would be, would even get the chance to be, unfaithful than faithful - you really shot me down in flames there, didn't you? 'Cause I didn't allow for it, it's all done really, really badly. I never thought to throw in a bit of sleight of hand to make it look random or varied. I didn't even give it the thought I put into snow-flakes, is what I am saying. It just runs on the basics, it falls back onto the low-level, unrefined chemistry and psychology (and psychology is nothing but chemistry in a groove, of course). That's why every affair is like every other affair. It doesn't matter whether it's an infidelity between two people who make the same bolts at the same factory, or an English wrriter living in Edinburgh colliding with an actress from the country's highest rated soap ... it's always the same. The trivial details vary and the settings are different, but the people go through the same thing time and time again. I know you must have spotted this, which is partly the reason why I felt I should own up here. Admit what you all knew anyway, just to clear the air.
I messed up. But I got lots of other stuff right. Take bananas, for example. Bananas I got dead-on. Okay, okay, I sense the hostility, and that's fine; best to acknowledge it. If we don't both acknowledge it, we won't be able to move on.
And, you know, I think we can move on, a little. I'm not going to discuss that now, though. Right now, I think you need some time to yourself, a little bit of space.
We'll talk later, okay?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 4
I'm sorry you had to witness that, I really am. You're classy people, some of you, and you shouldn't have to be confronted with that kind of thing. If it's any consolation, just think how Tom's going to feel when you all meet up in the afterlife and he learns that the bunch of you sat there watching him trying to get a quick one off the wrist, huh?
Of course, I've got to take some responsibility myself, and I'm big enough to put up my hands and accept part of the blame - that's why I'm here telling you all this now. When I started this whole thing - you know, the universe and all that stuff - I thought it'd be a nice little distraction. I'd set it up, leave it running, sit back and watch it like a lava lamp - kind of fascinated, kind of just letting my mind drift. You know what I mean? But, anyways, to keep it working you need to have the whole sex thing, and so I put that in the mix. Never though it'd be such a big deal, I swear to you, I really didn't. It's like, okay, I heard this thing about Rachman and Hodgson that other day. These guys are scientists - I'm a real science freak, by the way. Do you watch Discovery Channel? It's great - I love that stuff. You see, I didn't have a clue about how anything works - why would I have? I want a whale, I go, "Boom - whale," and that's it - bada-bing, bada-boom. I'm not going to get all caught up in the details, am I? I mean, the devil's in the details, right? Ha ha- "the devil's in the details" - get it? No, no, I 'm kidding you again. Relax, there's no devil - why would I make a devil? What am I, stupid? But that's a good one, right? "the devil's in the details." Ha ha. Anyways, what I'm saying is, these scientists come along, and they study stuff and investigate and explain how everything works. And I'm, like, "Wow! A whale. So that's how I did that ... cool." So, same thing, these guys Rachman and Hodgson - Stan and Ray - Stan and Ray do these experiments to see if they can persuade people to have, you know, "a thing" for boots. They're basically seeing if they can grow a fetish in the lab, right? Because, they're thinking, some people have these things anyways, so let's see if we can understand how that could happen by trying to make one of our own. And they chose to make one for boots. Don't ask me why. Maybe they think using underwear would cloud the issue, you know, and trying to get folks to have the hots for a gas turbine engine is just making things hard for themselves - so they settle on boots. Whatever, ask them if you want - it's not important to what I'm telling you here. Anyways, they do it. Stan and Ray do these, you know, kind of, conditioning things with volunteers, and eventutally they get guys to go, "Phwoar!" when you show them a picture of a boot.
So, back there, Tom was doing a bit of conditioning of his own. Self-condition: reinforcing his attraction to George by looking at pictures of her while ... you know, "applying stimulation." He didn't know that, of course. He didn't intend to do it, but that's what he was doing all the same. Maybe some of you might want to bear that in mind, eh? Be aware of what you're doing sometimes - just so you avoid getting yourselves more into spin dryers or certain kinds of fruit or socks full of Jell-O than you ever intended. It's okay, I'm not going to name names: you know who you are.
But that's not the most important thing here. The most important thing is what happened after Stan and Ray worked thier shoe trick. You see, they got a result, and they're happy. They go out for a meal to celebrate, maybe, I don't know - and then, because they're straight-up guys, they set about deconditioning the volunteers. Ridding them of this unfortunate boot attraction that's been created for the purposes of scientific investigation. And here's the thing, right .. a lot of volunteers don't want to be "cured." They're into it now. I mean, you can imagine how it is for them. It's like they've discovered a whole new sex or something. They can probably spend the entire afternoon standing looking through the window of a shoe shop; it's probably like watching an orgy for them, right? It's just a programmed reaction ... but that's all "normal" attraction is. I simply put it in there to make sure you kept things going - but to guarantee that, it needed to be powerful. So powerful it has Tom playing five-knuckles shuffle in his dining room when the house is empty. So powerful, right, so powerful that it seems more than functional, it seems precious and mystical to those who feel it. The boot squad don't want to have their desire for a nicely turned insole taken away from them, but would you want your desire removed? If some doctor said to you, "We're going to do a desire-ectomy on you, so that all those feelings you have looking at a film star or a singer or a model or the person across the road no longer get in the way and you can live your life undistracted by such urges, "would you go in for the operation? Like I siaid, this is partly my fault. I make things important for you guys, and then I',m all surprised when you feel they're important in ways I didn't intend. I needed them to be strong: I never intended them to be special.
I'm sorry about that. Really, I am.
Of course, I've got to take some responsibility myself, and I'm big enough to put up my hands and accept part of the blame - that's why I'm here telling you all this now. When I started this whole thing - you know, the universe and all that stuff - I thought it'd be a nice little distraction. I'd set it up, leave it running, sit back and watch it like a lava lamp - kind of fascinated, kind of just letting my mind drift. You know what I mean? But, anyways, to keep it working you need to have the whole sex thing, and so I put that in the mix. Never though it'd be such a big deal, I swear to you, I really didn't. It's like, okay, I heard this thing about Rachman and Hodgson that other day. These guys are scientists - I'm a real science freak, by the way. Do you watch Discovery Channel? It's great - I love that stuff. You see, I didn't have a clue about how anything works - why would I have? I want a whale, I go, "Boom - whale," and that's it - bada-bing, bada-boom. I'm not going to get all caught up in the details, am I? I mean, the devil's in the details, right? Ha ha- "the devil's in the details" - get it? No, no, I 'm kidding you again. Relax, there's no devil - why would I make a devil? What am I, stupid? But that's a good one, right? "the devil's in the details." Ha ha. Anyways, what I'm saying is, these scientists come along, and they study stuff and investigate and explain how everything works. And I'm, like, "Wow! A whale. So that's how I did that ... cool." So, same thing, these guys Rachman and Hodgson - Stan and Ray - Stan and Ray do these experiments to see if they can persuade people to have, you know, "a thing" for boots. They're basically seeing if they can grow a fetish in the lab, right? Because, they're thinking, some people have these things anyways, so let's see if we can understand how that could happen by trying to make one of our own. And they chose to make one for boots. Don't ask me why. Maybe they think using underwear would cloud the issue, you know, and trying to get folks to have the hots for a gas turbine engine is just making things hard for themselves - so they settle on boots. Whatever, ask them if you want - it's not important to what I'm telling you here. Anyways, they do it. Stan and Ray do these, you know, kind of, conditioning things with volunteers, and eventutally they get guys to go, "Phwoar!" when you show them a picture of a boot.
So, back there, Tom was doing a bit of conditioning of his own. Self-condition: reinforcing his attraction to George by looking at pictures of her while ... you know, "applying stimulation." He didn't know that, of course. He didn't intend to do it, but that's what he was doing all the same. Maybe some of you might want to bear that in mind, eh? Be aware of what you're doing sometimes - just so you avoid getting yourselves more into spin dryers or certain kinds of fruit or socks full of Jell-O than you ever intended. It's okay, I'm not going to name names: you know who you are.
But that's not the most important thing here. The most important thing is what happened after Stan and Ray worked thier shoe trick. You see, they got a result, and they're happy. They go out for a meal to celebrate, maybe, I don't know - and then, because they're straight-up guys, they set about deconditioning the volunteers. Ridding them of this unfortunate boot attraction that's been created for the purposes of scientific investigation. And here's the thing, right .. a lot of volunteers don't want to be "cured." They're into it now. I mean, you can imagine how it is for them. It's like they've discovered a whole new sex or something. They can probably spend the entire afternoon standing looking through the window of a shoe shop; it's probably like watching an orgy for them, right? It's just a programmed reaction ... but that's all "normal" attraction is. I simply put it in there to make sure you kept things going - but to guarantee that, it needed to be powerful. So powerful it has Tom playing five-knuckles shuffle in his dining room when the house is empty. So powerful, right, so powerful that it seems more than functional, it seems precious and mystical to those who feel it. The boot squad don't want to have their desire for a nicely turned insole taken away from them, but would you want your desire removed? If some doctor said to you, "We're going to do a desire-ectomy on you, so that all those feelings you have looking at a film star or a singer or a model or the person across the road no longer get in the way and you can live your life undistracted by such urges, "would you go in for the operation? Like I siaid, this is partly my fault. I make things important for you guys, and then I',m all surprised when you feel they're important in ways I didn't intend. I needed them to be strong: I never intended them to be special.
I'm sorry about that. Really, I am.
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 3
Right, now I know what you guys is like, so I think I need to step in here - just quickly - and get something straight. 'Cause I can just see you all sitting there going, "Yeah, I know what's happening here, " and starting to invent this big theory that I'll never be able to get you off of. You just can't stop yourselves. That's part of the problem, in fact. I don't know about what George (Georgina is her real name) said back there a ways about wanting to have a shrink, but I do know that every one of you secretly thinks you could be a shrink: you just love to analyze one another. If I don't step in here, you'll be giving it all the "this means that" and "he does such because she does whatver" and "it's all to do with unfulfilled needs" and "faulty images of self" and "the table represents his mother" and who knows what you'll end up believing. Well, before you start doing that, I',m going to say one word to you, okay? Here it is: monoamines. Got that? Monoamines.
I'll explain this more later - now's not the time. But I want you to stay focused, you hear me? I want you to keep on the path and, if you ever find yourself wandering off into some tangled forest of theorizing, you just say to yourself, "Monoamines, " and get yourself back on course. Think you can do that for me? Yeah, well .... at least try - okay?
I'll explain this more later - now's not the time. But I want you to stay focused, you hear me? I want you to keep on the path and, if you ever find yourself wandering off into some tangled forest of theorizing, you just say to yourself, "Monoamines, " and get yourself back on course. Think you can do that for me? Yeah, well .... at least try - okay?
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 2
Hiya, God here again. Forget I was watching, did you? Yeah, that happens a lot. Ha ha! Relax, relax, it's okay - I'm just kidding with you. I got to tell you, one of the real drags about being God is being, you know, misunderstood. You know what I'm saying? It's like I crack a joke and everyone's, "What did he mean by that? Should we laugh? Or is he going to smite us or something?" I'm telling you, it'd really get me down if I let it. And expectations too. Man, you wouldn't believe the expectations people have of you when you're God. They can come to you with a real attitude because you don't do things the way they expected. Sometimes I have to get a bit heavy, you know - remind them all the lines. "I hear you're upset, and that's okay. But lose the attitude or you'll find yourself in a situation - you hear what I'm saying?" Like, say, when they die. Some of them stand there shooting their mouth off. Real obstreperous. They're like, "Hey, Tony, we followed this religion or that religion and this god or these gods, and it turns out you're nothing anyone's ever heard of! Why didn't you tell someone, eh? Do you realize the time we've wasted panicking about certain days and what to wear and how to do things and what we could say? And don't even start us on the nightmare we've had keeping to the diet." You know, like that's my fault. I have to try to calm them down, yeah? Say I can see where they're coming from but I didn't make all that up and, frankly, some of it ... well, for ages I didn't think anyone actually believed that stuff, I thought they were just pretending to believe it for a joke. You know, being kind of ironic. Anyhow, eventually I generally get them to calm down. It's a bit of a kicker wasting all that time (though, I tell you, mostly I think they're angry just because they're embarassed), but that's over. Put it behind you. Fresh start. They usually come around in the end. It's a pretty good place here, all things considered. We even have minigolf now.
Whatever - let's stick to the matter in hand, eh? The tale I'm laying on you here, with Tom and all those guys, I showing you it so you understand a few things, okay? I'm trying to show you why things happen the way they do. It's about how stuff works, basically - that is, it's about how you work, that's the thing I'm trying to explain: the reasons you all behave a certain way and how you stick to the path, even though you can't see the path. Some of you may not like what I have to tell you, but it's for the best that you understand the situation. So, for now, I just want you to watch the people, right? I know how you guys tend to get, well, "distracted". You look at what work people do and where they are and all that kind of thing. The scenery. You get all caught up with the details and can't see beyond them. Well, don't, okay? What's happening here is what always happens. And there are reasons for that, but I'll come to those later. Just don't get distracted by any of the background noise, okay? Watch the people. Don't think about who they are; watch what they do. It's the people. The people are always the important thing.
Whatever - let's stick to the matter in hand, eh? The tale I'm laying on you here, with Tom and all those guys, I showing you it so you understand a few things, okay? I'm trying to show you why things happen the way they do. It's about how stuff works, basically - that is, it's about how you work, that's the thing I'm trying to explain: the reasons you all behave a certain way and how you stick to the path, even though you can't see the path. Some of you may not like what I have to tell you, but it's for the best that you understand the situation. So, for now, I just want you to watch the people, right? I know how you guys tend to get, well, "distracted". You look at what work people do and where they are and all that kind of thing. The scenery. You get all caught up with the details and can't see beyond them. Well, don't, okay? What's happening here is what always happens. And there are reasons for that, but I'll come to those later. Just don't get distracted by any of the background noise, okay? Watch the people. Don't think about who they are; watch what they do. It's the people. The people are always the important thing.
Instant Love ... A Certain Chemistry ... By Mil Millington - Part 1
Hi there, I'm God. Yeah, yeah, I know, you thought I'd be taller. Cheesh, I created you people and sometimes even I don't get you, you know what I am saying? Some joker's standing here - bit of a problem with his brakes and now he's the new kid in paradise - and he's all with the "Yeah, right - you're God" like there's a height restriction on creating the universe or something. So I'm a couple of inches shorter than he is, so what? I'm God - get over it.
Anyways, don't get me started down that road 'cause I'm here to explain some stuff. It's real important stuff - kind of, you know, sweeping, if you get me. So, what I'm thinking here is that the best way to start doing this is to tell you about somethting that happenned - you know, show it to you as an example of what I'm talking about. This is somethting that happenned to Tom Cartwright. Tom's twenty-eight, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he's one of those - what do you call them? Those guys who do books for other people? - ghostwriters, that's it, he's one of them there ghostwriters. What I want you to keep in mind here is that - no, in fact, I'll come to that later. Right now, just listen whie I have Tom start to tell you his story.
Yeah, of course I can do that.
Anyways, don't get me started down that road 'cause I'm here to explain some stuff. It's real important stuff - kind of, you know, sweeping, if you get me. So, what I'm thinking here is that the best way to start doing this is to tell you about somethting that happenned - you know, show it to you as an example of what I'm talking about. This is somethting that happenned to Tom Cartwright. Tom's twenty-eight, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he's one of those - what do you call them? Those guys who do books for other people? - ghostwriters, that's it, he's one of them there ghostwriters. What I want you to keep in mind here is that - no, in fact, I'll come to that later. Right now, just listen whie I have Tom start to tell you his story.
Yeah, of course I can do that.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Find The MIssing Experiment
Prof. Santa Singh, a world class scientist from Chandigarh, was also interested in locating the Ultimate Sensor, just like us. He, however, was focusing on the sense of Sound. He decided to use the fruitflies - Drosophila melanogaster - for his research for two important reasons - a) firstly, the fruitflies are very genetically amenable and b) secondly, the female flies respond to the male courtship song by spreading their wings, a visual signal for males (and Santa Singh) to indicate their readiness to mate (Not with Santa Singh! but with male flies).
Prof. Santa Singh was delighted with his idea and the possibilities that it represented. He wanted to conduct full time research on it. He decided to apply for NIH Research Grant R01 that would supply him with a crucial fund of 1 million dollars over the course of four years to conduct his research without any distractions. There is a lot of competition for these grants, so some preliminary experimental data is also supplied by the applicants in addition to their proposal to demonstrate the strength of their proposal.
Thus motivated to do some real experimental work before submitting the proposal, Prof. Santa Singh arrived at his lab on one fine Monday morning. He downloaded the courtship songs from the internet, borrowed a few wildtype virgin flies from the neighboring lab, put them on a Petri Dish containing aphrodisiac food and .... played the music!
For the first one minute, nothing happpenned - the female flies behaved as if nothing was happenning. Then one female fly spread her wings for two seconds and retracted them. Then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next 5 minutes. Then, another female fly spread her wings for five seconds. And then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next half an hour. By then, Prof. Santa Singh was frustrated.
He had imagined that the flies would be always ready to mate - they were like machines - Supply the Stimulus, Elicit the Response - but alas, his brilliant idea was trumped a well known universal truth - that the females are very moody and not always ready to mate! He went home frustrated and discussed the matter with his wife, a psychologist who ran a successful marital counselling business. She explained to Prof. Santa Singh that only two types of females are always ready to mate - 1) those who have been abused as children and are suffering from low self esteem, and 2) those that have a higher hormonal level than the normal people due to genetic alteration. "Ah Ha!", said Prof. Santa Singh. He just had had a "Eureka" moment. He thanked his wife profusely for her expert counselling and excused himself to go to the study to write up his proposal.
Prof. Santa Singh's idea was simplicity itself - he wanted to propose an isolation of "horny" mutation in fruit flies, whose behavior would be an immediate spreading of wings in response to the courtship song recording. By way of preliminary experiments, he wanted to isolate such a mutant fly. He knew it would be done very quickly, because his neighboring lab was screening 2000 mutant lines for behavior at the very moment. He just had to borrow their flies, put them on a dish, play the music and watch for the wing-spread. It was a very quick assay! He was very pleased with himself.
The next day, it was a beautiful Tuesday morning, he arrived at his lab, armed with the twenty trays of 100 vials containing 2000 mutant flies. He started doing his assay - anaesthatize the flies by giving them a puff of Carbon Di Oxide, put them on the petridish, play the music and score for wing spread action. He was very efficient ... he was workig with 20 vials at a time ... In four hours, he had screened all 2000 lines. He was no more so ecstatic as he had been when he started out. Not a single vial contained flies that would spread their wings within 10 seconds of playing the courtship song. How disappointing! Yet ... there was that one vial .. vial number 297 ... which had some weird behavior ... he remembered them being particularly "jumpy".
He went back to vial 297, poured some more flies out, anaesthetized them, laid them on a petridish, and waited for them to become active. They were behaving normally. They looked normal. The eyes were red, the wings were straight, the body was normal, the bristles long ... in fact, as far as looks were concerned, they looked completely normal! Yet, when he turned the music ON, a few of the flies JUMPED and hit the ceiling of the Petri Dish. The kept JUMPING. They stopped when the music was turned off.
Prof. Santa Singh felt another Eureka experience building up in him. So, he did not have "horny" mutant but a "jumpy" mutant. He needed the "horny" mutant because he wanted a visual response of spreading wings to the stimulus of playing courtship song. But "jumpy" mutants also had a visual response - that of jumping to the ceiling of the Petri Dish - in response to the very same stimulus - namely the courtship song. All he had to do was substitute "jumpy" for "horny" and "jumps to celing" for "spreads her wings" in his proposal that he had drafted yesterday, and the proposal would essentially still be good!
This indeed was very good luck! He already had the "jumpy" mutant fly. In fact, he even knew which possible genes were mutated in it, because the flies had come from the Bloomington Stock Center, a centralized stock center in the world, on which the whole world was working!
Prof. Santa Singh quickly revised his proposal, and rushed it by FedEx to NIH. The grant was reviewed and voted on. It was a fantastic proposal - it ranked in the top 90 percentile of all the proposals. A few months after the submission of the grant, Prof. Santa Singh received a letter congratulating him on being awarded the R01 grant from NIH and the details of how he would be receiving the $1,000,000.
...............................................................................................................
In the meantime, Mr. Banta Singh, an aspiring graduate student, had expressed his desire to join Prof. Santa Singh's lab and conduct research on the anatomical location of Sound Sensors in "jumpy" flies. Just the day before receiving the letter from NIH, he had concluded the most fascinating research in his entire life - he had made a breakthrough! He had identified THE ANATOMICAL location of Sound Sensor. When he mentioned this to his mentor, Prof. Santa Singh smiled at Mr. Banta Singh and advised him to write up a thesis proposal and take his qualifying exam. When Mr. Banta Singh submitted his thesis proposal the very next day, all the members of his thesis committee were surprised by the industry of Mr. Banta Singh. Three weeks later, everyone was looking forward to the presentation.
Mr. Banta Singh started his presentation by narrating the story of how the "jumpy" mutant had been isolated in just a day and what a brilliant tool it had turned out to be in the research of anatomical location of the Sound Sensor. He then outline the four approaches he had initially undertaken - a) to genetically ablate a few neurons in the brain, b) to anatomically ablate a few body parts at a time c) to use laser to ablate different patches of neurons in the brain and d) to combine these approaches and ablate Multiple body parts simultaneuosly.
Genetic ablations of neurons by induction of the apoptotic genes in the adult head in different tissues resulted in dead flies, normal flies or severly retarded flies. Anatomical ablation of single body parts such as a leg, a wing, an eye etc. did not lead to any difference in the "jumpy" behavior. Laser ablation of different patch of neurons in the brain yielded the same results as the first one. However, the final approach had yielded some really great positive results!
He then showed a video he had made of the final crucial experiment. The video showed a single "jumpy" fly in a Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned on. Within a second of starting the music, the "jumpy" fly jumped. Then one leg was removed from the "jumpy" fly and released back into the Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned back on again, and now the "jumpy" fly jumped again! Mr. Banta Singh proceeded to remove one leg at a time with a pair of tweezers, release the fly into the Petri Dish, play the courtship song and write a comment in his notebook until the "jumpy" fly had only one leg left. Mr. Banta Singh placed the "jumpy" fly with just one leg back into the Petri Dish and played the courtship song one more time. The "jumpy" fly made its best effort to jump, which he recorded in his notebook. After he pulled off its last leg, he placed the legless "jumpy" fly back into the Petri dish for one last time and played the courstship song. After repeating the song many times without the "jumpy" fly responding, he stopped the video, and exclaimed to his audience, " After the fly loses all of its legs it becomes completely deaf!"
The audience laughed. They thought that either Prof. Santa Singh or Mr. Banta Singh had played a joke on them. They were surprised by the solemn expression on the faces of both Prof. Santa Singh and Mr. Banta Singh. They were in earnest! They both really believed that the site of auditory sensation resided in the legs of the fruitflies. Mr. Banta Singh proceeded, "I did one last experiment to confirm the results, and here is the video". After his demonstration of the video, his entire audience was dumbfounded. They burst into applause. Everyone thought that Mr. Banta Singh and Prof. Santa Singh had made a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough. Indeed, ten years later, they both went to Sweden to accept the accolade.
The question to you, my gentle reader, is: "What was the last experiment performed by Mr. Banta Singh that was documented in the final video"? Hint: The last experiment was performed on wild-type flies ... the clues / information are already available in this article .... And YEAH! THIS IS A SERIOUS SCIENCE QUESTION DESPITE ALL APPEARENCES!
Prof. Santa Singh was delighted with his idea and the possibilities that it represented. He wanted to conduct full time research on it. He decided to apply for NIH Research Grant R01 that would supply him with a crucial fund of 1 million dollars over the course of four years to conduct his research without any distractions. There is a lot of competition for these grants, so some preliminary experimental data is also supplied by the applicants in addition to their proposal to demonstrate the strength of their proposal.
Thus motivated to do some real experimental work before submitting the proposal, Prof. Santa Singh arrived at his lab on one fine Monday morning. He downloaded the courtship songs from the internet, borrowed a few wildtype virgin flies from the neighboring lab, put them on a Petri Dish containing aphrodisiac food and .... played the music!
For the first one minute, nothing happpenned - the female flies behaved as if nothing was happenning. Then one female fly spread her wings for two seconds and retracted them. Then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next 5 minutes. Then, another female fly spread her wings for five seconds. And then, nothing remarkable happenned for the next half an hour. By then, Prof. Santa Singh was frustrated.
He had imagined that the flies would be always ready to mate - they were like machines - Supply the Stimulus, Elicit the Response - but alas, his brilliant idea was trumped a well known universal truth - that the females are very moody and not always ready to mate! He went home frustrated and discussed the matter with his wife, a psychologist who ran a successful marital counselling business. She explained to Prof. Santa Singh that only two types of females are always ready to mate - 1) those who have been abused as children and are suffering from low self esteem, and 2) those that have a higher hormonal level than the normal people due to genetic alteration. "Ah Ha!", said Prof. Santa Singh. He just had had a "Eureka" moment. He thanked his wife profusely for her expert counselling and excused himself to go to the study to write up his proposal.
Prof. Santa Singh's idea was simplicity itself - he wanted to propose an isolation of "horny" mutation in fruit flies, whose behavior would be an immediate spreading of wings in response to the courtship song recording. By way of preliminary experiments, he wanted to isolate such a mutant fly. He knew it would be done very quickly, because his neighboring lab was screening 2000 mutant lines for behavior at the very moment. He just had to borrow their flies, put them on a dish, play the music and watch for the wing-spread. It was a very quick assay! He was very pleased with himself.
The next day, it was a beautiful Tuesday morning, he arrived at his lab, armed with the twenty trays of 100 vials containing 2000 mutant flies. He started doing his assay - anaesthatize the flies by giving them a puff of Carbon Di Oxide, put them on the petridish, play the music and score for wing spread action. He was very efficient ... he was workig with 20 vials at a time ... In four hours, he had screened all 2000 lines. He was no more so ecstatic as he had been when he started out. Not a single vial contained flies that would spread their wings within 10 seconds of playing the courtship song. How disappointing! Yet ... there was that one vial .. vial number 297 ... which had some weird behavior ... he remembered them being particularly "jumpy".
He went back to vial 297, poured some more flies out, anaesthetized them, laid them on a petridish, and waited for them to become active. They were behaving normally. They looked normal. The eyes were red, the wings were straight, the body was normal, the bristles long ... in fact, as far as looks were concerned, they looked completely normal! Yet, when he turned the music ON, a few of the flies JUMPED and hit the ceiling of the Petri Dish. The kept JUMPING. They stopped when the music was turned off.
Prof. Santa Singh felt another Eureka experience building up in him. So, he did not have "horny" mutant but a "jumpy" mutant. He needed the "horny" mutant because he wanted a visual response of spreading wings to the stimulus of playing courtship song. But "jumpy" mutants also had a visual response - that of jumping to the ceiling of the Petri Dish - in response to the very same stimulus - namely the courtship song. All he had to do was substitute "jumpy" for "horny" and "jumps to celing" for "spreads her wings" in his proposal that he had drafted yesterday, and the proposal would essentially still be good!
This indeed was very good luck! He already had the "jumpy" mutant fly. In fact, he even knew which possible genes were mutated in it, because the flies had come from the Bloomington Stock Center, a centralized stock center in the world, on which the whole world was working!
Prof. Santa Singh quickly revised his proposal, and rushed it by FedEx to NIH. The grant was reviewed and voted on. It was a fantastic proposal - it ranked in the top 90 percentile of all the proposals. A few months after the submission of the grant, Prof. Santa Singh received a letter congratulating him on being awarded the R01 grant from NIH and the details of how he would be receiving the $1,000,000.
...............................................................................................................
In the meantime, Mr. Banta Singh, an aspiring graduate student, had expressed his desire to join Prof. Santa Singh's lab and conduct research on the anatomical location of Sound Sensors in "jumpy" flies. Just the day before receiving the letter from NIH, he had concluded the most fascinating research in his entire life - he had made a breakthrough! He had identified THE ANATOMICAL location of Sound Sensor. When he mentioned this to his mentor, Prof. Santa Singh smiled at Mr. Banta Singh and advised him to write up a thesis proposal and take his qualifying exam. When Mr. Banta Singh submitted his thesis proposal the very next day, all the members of his thesis committee were surprised by the industry of Mr. Banta Singh. Three weeks later, everyone was looking forward to the presentation.
Mr. Banta Singh started his presentation by narrating the story of how the "jumpy" mutant had been isolated in just a day and what a brilliant tool it had turned out to be in the research of anatomical location of the Sound Sensor. He then outline the four approaches he had initially undertaken - a) to genetically ablate a few neurons in the brain, b) to anatomically ablate a few body parts at a time c) to use laser to ablate different patches of neurons in the brain and d) to combine these approaches and ablate Multiple body parts simultaneuosly.
Genetic ablations of neurons by induction of the apoptotic genes in the adult head in different tissues resulted in dead flies, normal flies or severly retarded flies. Anatomical ablation of single body parts such as a leg, a wing, an eye etc. did not lead to any difference in the "jumpy" behavior. Laser ablation of different patch of neurons in the brain yielded the same results as the first one. However, the final approach had yielded some really great positive results!
He then showed a video he had made of the final crucial experiment. The video showed a single "jumpy" fly in a Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned on. Within a second of starting the music, the "jumpy" fly jumped. Then one leg was removed from the "jumpy" fly and released back into the Petri Dish. The courtship music was turned back on again, and now the "jumpy" fly jumped again! Mr. Banta Singh proceeded to remove one leg at a time with a pair of tweezers, release the fly into the Petri Dish, play the courtship song and write a comment in his notebook until the "jumpy" fly had only one leg left. Mr. Banta Singh placed the "jumpy" fly with just one leg back into the Petri Dish and played the courtship song one more time. The "jumpy" fly made its best effort to jump, which he recorded in his notebook. After he pulled off its last leg, he placed the legless "jumpy" fly back into the Petri dish for one last time and played the courstship song. After repeating the song many times without the "jumpy" fly responding, he stopped the video, and exclaimed to his audience, " After the fly loses all of its legs it becomes completely deaf!"
The audience laughed. They thought that either Prof. Santa Singh or Mr. Banta Singh had played a joke on them. They were surprised by the solemn expression on the faces of both Prof. Santa Singh and Mr. Banta Singh. They were in earnest! They both really believed that the site of auditory sensation resided in the legs of the fruitflies. Mr. Banta Singh proceeded, "I did one last experiment to confirm the results, and here is the video". After his demonstration of the video, his entire audience was dumbfounded. They burst into applause. Everyone thought that Mr. Banta Singh and Prof. Santa Singh had made a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough. Indeed, ten years later, they both went to Sweden to accept the accolade.
The question to you, my gentle reader, is: "What was the last experiment performed by Mr. Banta Singh that was documented in the final video"? Hint: The last experiment was performed on wild-type flies ... the clues / information are already available in this article .... And YEAH! THIS IS A SERIOUS SCIENCE QUESTION DESPITE ALL APPEARENCES!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Theory of consciousness - Part 1 - Sensual Universe: Deductions from reductionism
Richard Feynman said:
If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
Let us then apply a little imagination and thinking to that one area of biology that has eluded any explanation (not even a wrong explanation!) so far - that of consciousness. By consciousness, I mean that quality which distinguishes the conceivably most advanced robot from a human. Thus, consciousness has got nothing to do with reproduction ... we can design robots that make other robots. Nor does it have to do with memory - robots can be designed to never forget.
Let us consider that part of consciousness that deals with vision. Going back to the definition of consciousness, Vision Consciousness is quality of vision that distinguishes the conceivably most advance robot's vision from a human's vision. A human's vision can be thought of as the ability to sense some spectral information about outside world, recognize patterns therein, and either match them to known objects in memory, or add a new entry into the memory. A robot with a sensitive camera can also accomplish the same feat. Yet, we do not say that the "Robot can see just like we do", because we sense that there is some additional quality to our vision that the robot is lacking. If we could somehow define, understand and get a grip on this "difference", then we could understand consciousness so much more better.
For the purposes of this essay, let us define the difference between Robotic Vision and Human Vision as Conscious-Vision. Both human eye and robotic camera are capable of recognizing the "red" color of rose ... as in the light reflected from the rose had a wavelength in the neighborhood of 400 nm; yet, only human eye can sense redness while robotic camera merely records the wavelength. This ability to see, sense, feel and experience the chromatic beauty of rose is the essence of Conscious-Vision.
Which parts of the body are the essential for Conscious-Vision? By process of accidental elimination of body parts, we can postulate that the fingers, the toes, the nails, the legs, the stomach, the heart, the kidney and other parts below neck are not necessary for Conscious-Vision. Within the head region, we can similarly eliminate the tongue, the ears, the nose, the external skin, the hair, the mustache and the beard as being unnecessary to experience Conscious-Vision. Thus we are left with the relatively small parts of the body - "the eye and the brain" - as essential body parts for Conscious-Vision.
That the eye and the brain are necessary for Conscious-Vision was perhaps expected. Before we proceed further in our investigations, let us pause for a moment and indulge in a minor tangential, albeit very interesting, question - Can A Blind Man Dream In Colors? By definition, the blind man cannot "see" when he is awake. However, it is conceivable that he still might be able to "see" dreams.
Medically, the answer seems to be - "it depends" - it in fact depends on whether the blindness was at the time of birth or only recently. If the blindness was congential, then there is no notion of "sight". However, if the blindness was recent, then the blind man does have vivid colorful dreams.
Returning now to our original quest ... we had so far concluded that the eye and the brain were essential for Conscious-Vision. With the added benefit of dream-ability of a blind man, we can further postulate that the "eyes" themselves are not essential for continued Conscious-Vision. Thus, we are left with "just the brain". We can congratulate ourselves on our achievement - we started with the statement - "Man has Conscious-Vision" and ended with "Brain has Conscious-Vision". If Man were considered to be sum of all the parts, then we elimiated all but one part!
Can we repeat this same feat? Brain, after all, can be thought of as sum of all of its parts - namely all the cells that constitute it. So, can a cubic millimeter region of the brain be idenitfied as the site of Conscious-Vision? With today's scientific knowledge, we can not answer this question. However, there is no reason to suspect that this question does not admit a positive answer. Let us then suppose that at some future date, a cubic millimeter region of the brain was shown to be sufficient to experience Conscious-Vision.
Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of a one cubic millimeter patch? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the cubic-millimeter patch of the brain be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of neurons and the glia that form the patch - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single cell.
Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single cell? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single cell be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the thousands of proteins, the DNA, the RNA, the lipids, the sugars and other simple ions and complex molecules that form the cell - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single molecule.
Finally, Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single molecule? No! We would demand to apply the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single molecule be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of quarks that form the molecule - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single quark. Only with the identification of a quark as a site of Conscious-Vision will our intellectual curiosity about the subject be finally satisfied!
The very act of asking the question - what is the site of conscious vision - narrowed the possibilities of answers to just one, namely - that the quarks must be the site of conscious vision. This kind of reasoning is called deduction. Let us then re-examine the elements of our deduction.
1. We started with the fact that we can "see" while the robots cannot "see".
2. We also started with the fact that reductionism is a valid logical tool.
3. We applied the tool of reductionism to the issue of "site of conscious vision".
4. We ASSUMED that the atomic hypothesis is correct - namely everything is made of fundamental things that themselves can't be further broken down (now thought to be as quarks).
5. We CONCLUDED that site of conscious vision must reside in the fundamental particles, namely the quarks.
The postulation of quarks having capacity for Conscious Vision immediately gives rise to the following absurdity: If everything in the Universe is made of these fundamental particles - then, everything in the Universe is capable of Conscious Vision! The stone can see, the chalk can see, the hand can see, the nose can see! But none of them do!
Posing the conundrum in terms of the very definition of Conscious Vision ...
A: Conscious Vision is defined as the difference between Human vision and Robotic vision.
B: The capability for Conscious Vision resides in the fundamental particles of Nature, namely quarks.
C: By Atomic Hypothesis, everything in the Universe, including the Human and the Robot, are made of the fundamental particles, i.e. quarks.
D: From B&C, both Humans and Robots have capacity for Conscious Vision.
How does one explain the Robot having the capacity for Conscious Vision but Not in fact having Conscious Vision?
The answer to this question is similar to the answer to another question - What is the difference between a man who is dead and the same man, who, a couple seconds ago, was still alive? This will be taken up in the next essay ...
If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
Let us then apply a little imagination and thinking to that one area of biology that has eluded any explanation (not even a wrong explanation!) so far - that of consciousness. By consciousness, I mean that quality which distinguishes the conceivably most advanced robot from a human. Thus, consciousness has got nothing to do with reproduction ... we can design robots that make other robots. Nor does it have to do with memory - robots can be designed to never forget.
Let us consider that part of consciousness that deals with vision. Going back to the definition of consciousness, Vision Consciousness is quality of vision that distinguishes the conceivably most advance robot's vision from a human's vision. A human's vision can be thought of as the ability to sense some spectral information about outside world, recognize patterns therein, and either match them to known objects in memory, or add a new entry into the memory. A robot with a sensitive camera can also accomplish the same feat. Yet, we do not say that the "Robot can see just like we do", because we sense that there is some additional quality to our vision that the robot is lacking. If we could somehow define, understand and get a grip on this "difference", then we could understand consciousness so much more better.
For the purposes of this essay, let us define the difference between Robotic Vision and Human Vision as Conscious-Vision. Both human eye and robotic camera are capable of recognizing the "red" color of rose ... as in the light reflected from the rose had a wavelength in the neighborhood of 400 nm; yet, only human eye can sense redness while robotic camera merely records the wavelength. This ability to see, sense, feel and experience the chromatic beauty of rose is the essence of Conscious-Vision.
Which parts of the body are the essential for Conscious-Vision? By process of accidental elimination of body parts, we can postulate that the fingers, the toes, the nails, the legs, the stomach, the heart, the kidney and other parts below neck are not necessary for Conscious-Vision. Within the head region, we can similarly eliminate the tongue, the ears, the nose, the external skin, the hair, the mustache and the beard as being unnecessary to experience Conscious-Vision. Thus we are left with the relatively small parts of the body - "the eye and the brain" - as essential body parts for Conscious-Vision.
That the eye and the brain are necessary for Conscious-Vision was perhaps expected. Before we proceed further in our investigations, let us pause for a moment and indulge in a minor tangential, albeit very interesting, question - Can A Blind Man Dream In Colors? By definition, the blind man cannot "see" when he is awake. However, it is conceivable that he still might be able to "see" dreams.
Medically, the answer seems to be - "it depends" - it in fact depends on whether the blindness was at the time of birth or only recently. If the blindness was congential, then there is no notion of "sight". However, if the blindness was recent, then the blind man does have vivid colorful dreams.
Returning now to our original quest ... we had so far concluded that the eye and the brain were essential for Conscious-Vision. With the added benefit of dream-ability of a blind man, we can further postulate that the "eyes" themselves are not essential for continued Conscious-Vision. Thus, we are left with "just the brain". We can congratulate ourselves on our achievement - we started with the statement - "Man has Conscious-Vision" and ended with "Brain has Conscious-Vision". If Man were considered to be sum of all the parts, then we elimiated all but one part!
Can we repeat this same feat? Brain, after all, can be thought of as sum of all of its parts - namely all the cells that constitute it. So, can a cubic millimeter region of the brain be idenitfied as the site of Conscious-Vision? With today's scientific knowledge, we can not answer this question. However, there is no reason to suspect that this question does not admit a positive answer. Let us then suppose that at some future date, a cubic millimeter region of the brain was shown to be sufficient to experience Conscious-Vision.
Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of a one cubic millimeter patch? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the cubic-millimeter patch of the brain be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of neurons and the glia that form the patch - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single cell.
Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single cell? No! We would demand application of the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single cell be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the thousands of proteins, the DNA, the RNA, the lipids, the sugars and other simple ions and complex molecules that form the cell - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single molecule.
Finally, Would our intellectual curiosity about the site of Conscious-Vision be satisfied with the identification of one single molecule? No! We would demand to apply the process of narrowing down one more time! We would demand that the single molecule be considered as a sum total of all its parts - namely the hundreds of quarks that form the molecule - and we narrow down the site of Conscious-Vision to one single quark. Only with the identification of a quark as a site of Conscious-Vision will our intellectual curiosity about the subject be finally satisfied!
The very act of asking the question - what is the site of conscious vision - narrowed the possibilities of answers to just one, namely - that the quarks must be the site of conscious vision. This kind of reasoning is called deduction. Let us then re-examine the elements of our deduction.
1. We started with the fact that we can "see" while the robots cannot "see".
2. We also started with the fact that reductionism is a valid logical tool.
3. We applied the tool of reductionism to the issue of "site of conscious vision".
4. We ASSUMED that the atomic hypothesis is correct - namely everything is made of fundamental things that themselves can't be further broken down (now thought to be as quarks).
5. We CONCLUDED that site of conscious vision must reside in the fundamental particles, namely the quarks.
The postulation of quarks having capacity for Conscious Vision immediately gives rise to the following absurdity: If everything in the Universe is made of these fundamental particles - then, everything in the Universe is capable of Conscious Vision! The stone can see, the chalk can see, the hand can see, the nose can see! But none of them do!
Posing the conundrum in terms of the very definition of Conscious Vision ...
A: Conscious Vision is defined as the difference between Human vision and Robotic vision.
B: The capability for Conscious Vision resides in the fundamental particles of Nature, namely quarks.
C: By Atomic Hypothesis, everything in the Universe, including the Human and the Robot, are made of the fundamental particles, i.e. quarks.
D: From B&C, both Humans and Robots have capacity for Conscious Vision.
How does one explain the Robot having the capacity for Conscious Vision but Not in fact having Conscious Vision?
The answer to this question is similar to the answer to another question - What is the difference between a man who is dead and the same man, who, a couple seconds ago, was still alive? This will be taken up in the next essay ...
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs
Enzymatic Catalysis of a Nuclear Fusion Reaction Converting Iron to Gold in the Liver of a Goose
Abstract
The tale of a goose that laid golden eggs in which the goose was killed for greed and none of its eggs hatched to give rise to another goose that laid golden eggs is very familiar. That such goose might actually exist is consistent with the hypothesis that the phenotype of laying golden eggs arose in the goose due to an accumulation of multiple independent mutations in its somatic tissues after development, a situation common in cancer. We conducted a study on commercial geese in which multiple mutations in random tissues were introduced by inserting P-elements and the eggs were screened for the presence of gold. We report here the isolation of one Goose that lays golden eggs. Biochemical analyses suggest that the gold in the eggs is being produced by a nuclear fusion reaction involving conversion of iron to gold rather than by ingestion of food containing gold. Tracing the origin of gold by examination of blood from various tissues revealed that the conversion of iron to gold occurs in the liver of the Goose, the gold being subsequently transported to the ovaries for excretion as eggs. This is the first report of a nuclear fusion reaction occurring under physiological conditions.
Introduction
In a survey of common folktales in independently evolved languages, Carpenter et al1 found the story of the goose that laid golden eggs to be one of the ten most frequently told stories, even in the most secluded of tribes. They attributed the phenomenon to the dual coincidence of presence of geese and the presence of gold in the proximity of human civilization. We wondered if there were a more biological explanation possible and obtained permission from FDA (Permit ID USFDATX1967QF474387) in 1967 to conduct a study in McGregor’s farm in San Antonio, Texas, USA on commercially used geese.
Barbara McClintock recently described the occurrence of randomly hopping fragments of DNA called P elements (brought about by an enzyme called transposase) in rice2. We decided to isolate geese expressing P elements or transposases and use them to generate mutant geese which could potentially lay golden eggs. After examining more than 10 million eggs in this fashion, we indeed found a goose that laid eggs, all of which had traces of gold in it. We now report the results of further tests carried out on the goose that laid it.
Materials and Methods
Geese strains
Geese were screened by Southern Blotting using probes for P element (Toba et al, 1964). Geese carrying exactly one P element coding for transposase were mated with each other to generate a flock of geese called T flock. Each progeny was selected for the presence of the transposase by Southern Blot.
Geese containing only P elements but no transposase were also identified by Southern Blotting and interbred to generate a flock of geese called the P flock.
Southern Blotting
Genomic DNA from the eggs were digested and DNA was separated on 1% agarose TBE gel using a CHEF DRII pulse field apparatus (Bio-Rad Labs., Hercules, CA) set for 10 hrs at 200 volts and 2 second pulses. A sizing ladder purchased >from Life Technologies was used for size determination. Nitrocellulose lifts of the DNA were hybridized to 32[P] labeled transposase cDNA.
Egg Collection
One female goose from the P flock and one male goose from the T flock were paired for 3 days and the female goose was subsequently isolated. Embryos at the 2-16 cell stages were partly dejellied with fine-tipped forceps and dissolved with Ringer's solution containing 111 mM NaCl, 1.9 mM KCl, 1.1 mM Cacl,, 0.8 mM MgS04, 0.08 mM NaH,PO,, and 2.4 mM NaHC03 at pH 7.4. Only the first 10 embryos were collected and used for analysis.
Measurement of 197Au in fly embryos
Unless otherwise specified, all NMR measurements were made at 53 MHz and 21 "C using a Varian XL-200 NMR spectrometer with a 5/10-mm diameter concentric combination of sample tubes. 50 eggs were placed in the inner tube, and 50 (for field-frequency locking) in the annular space between the inner and outer tubes. The intensities of the 197Au resonances directly yielded the concentration of intracellular 197Au.
Data Analysis
NMR free induction decay signals from about 50 eggs contained in a 5-mm sample tube were time-averaged for 2 min to obtain the spectra shown. Comparable spectral signal-to-noise could be obtained in only 10 s with a 10-mm diameter sample tube containing about 500 eggs.
Results
Identification of geese carrying transposons and transposases
Genomic DNA was isolated from geese tissues and subjected to a Southern analysis for presence of a transposase flanked by P elements. We isolated one goose that carried such a transposase. We backcrossed its progeny to generate a flock of geese carrying this transposase (T flock). Since it is impossible to generate a homozygous line of geese carrying a transposase, we performed a Southern analysis on all the geese that were used for subsequent crosses. Fig 1 shows a typical Southern blot performed on genomic DNA isolated from a transposase containing goose. The hybridized bands of digested DNA derived either from a transposase clone or from a test goose show a similar pattern, confirming that the goose contains a transposase.
Since all geese carry multiple P elements naturally, we isolated lines of geese that did not express any transposase and generated a flock of them (P flock). Virgin females from this flock were used for subsequent crosses.
Isolation of the Golden Egg
One male from the T flock and one 1-month old virgin female from the P flock were incubated together in isolation at room temperature for three days. After this, the male was used for further crosses whereas the female was isolated and its eggs tested. Only the first 10 eggs were tested for the presence of gold and if no egg was detected, this goose was transferred to the commercial stock.
More than 10 million eggs were screened before an egg with some gold contents was identified. The wild type eggs and the “golden” eggs were subjected to spectrographic analysis and compared to spectra derived from a pure gold sample and distilled water (Fig 2). The spectra of golden eggs showed a peak at the gold resonance point whereas that of the wild type eggs remained flat, similar to spectra of pure gold and distilled water. This conclusively demonstrated that gold is present in the golden eggs and that the isotope of gold present in them is 197-Au.
Physical and Chemical properties of the eggs
The eggs weighed 825.6 grams on average. They had an outer appearance of white color. When dropped from a height of 2 meters, the eggs did not smash, nor was there any splash of white and yolk. In fact the eggs lay where they had fallen with the bottom of the egg caved in. Upon reexamining these eggs, we saw that the eggshell had shattered where the egg had struck. Pieces of it had flaked away and what shone through was a dull yellow in color. We excluded the possibility of the yellow substance being brass by confirming that it remained inert to concentrated nitric acid. The spectrographic analysis of the material confirmed that it was gold. The eggs contained only a shell of gold because they could be bent with moderate pressure. Besides, if the eggs were all solid gold, then they would weigh over ten pounds. We also reconfirmed that the egg shell was pure calcium carbonate. The average radius of a typical egg was 35 millimeters (major axis = 72 millimeters, and minor axis = 68 millimeters). The gold shell was 2.45 millimeters in thickness. This value is rather high compared to the average thickness of normal eggs (2.1 millimeters). Inside of the shell was egg. It looked like egg and smelled like egg.
Aliquots were analyzed and the organic constituents were found to be reasonably normal. The white was 9.7 percent albumin. The yolk had the normal complement of vitellin, cholesterol, phospholipid and carotenoid. Strangely, the eggs’ behavior on heating was abnormal – it coagulated at once, indicating that the proteins were partially denatured to begin with and were most likely so due to contamination by gold. An examination of yolk for inorganic constituents revealed an abnormally high presence (0.32%) of chloraurate ion, which is a singly-charged ion containing an atom of Gold and four of chlorine, the symbol for which is AuCl4. Also, the iron content of the yolk was double the normal.
Physiology of the Mother Goose
So far only one goose has been found to lay golden eggs in our experiments and the following discussion refers to data only from that one goose. Blood samples of the goose were obtained without anaesthetizing the goose because we did not want to alter its metabolism. It carried 2 parts per hundred thousand of chloraurate ion. Blood taken from the hepatic vein was richer than the rest, almost 4 parts per hundred thousand. This result prompted us to take an X-ray of the liver.
On the X-ray negative, the liver was a cloudy mass of light gray, lighter than the viscera in its neighborhood, presumably because the liver was less penetrable to the X rays because it contained more gold. The blood vessels showed up lighter than the liver proper and the ovaries were pure white (Supplementary online figure S1).
Origin of gold
Where was the gold coming from? In the beginning there was only negative evidence. There was no perceptible gold in the Goose’s feed, nor were there any gold-bearing pebbles about that it might have swallowed. There was no trace of gold anywhere in the soil of the area and a search of the grounds revealed nothing golden. In fact we found very remarkable that indeed it was possible to have a goose laying golden eggs, in spite of there being no natural source of gold.
We forced gastric tubes into the goose, with the idea of testing the contents of the alimentary canal in search of exogenous gold. Indeed, gold was found, but only in traces and was most likely due to the digestive secretions and therefore, endogenous in origin. However, something else was revealed by the test – the goose was low in bile pigment. Duodenal contents showed virtually no bile pigment. We wondered if the liver was malfunctioning due to a high concentration of gold in it, but further fecal tests confirmed that bile acids were present, only the bile pigment was missing. It appeared as though the porphyrin catabolism responsible for producing the bile pigment was not following the proper course in the liver.
We took a liver biopsy of the goose, isolated hemoglobin from the blood and small quantities of cytochrome (the oxidizing agents, also containing iron), and precipitated some of it as brilliant orange substance. Unlike ferrous or ferric ion, we had isolated a triply charged auric ion in the hemoglobin complex. We called this aureme, short for auric heme. It appeared that the liver was not breaking heme to bile pigment; instead it was converting it to aureme.
Further analysis showed that 29 percent of the gold in the blood stream was carried in the plasma in the form of chloraurate ion. The remaining 71 percent was carried in the red blood corpuscles in the form of auremoglobin. An attempt was made to feed the goose traces of radioactive gold with the idea that we pick up radioactivity in plasma and corpuscles and see how readily the auremoglobin molecules were handled in the ovaries. It seemed to us the auremoglobin should be much more slowly disposed of than the dissolved chloraurate ion in the plasma. The experiment failed, however, since we detected no radioactivity. We initially put it down to our inexperience with nuclear physics, but it turned out to be a very significant result. The goose was, in fact, absorbing all nuclear radiation in the background, presumably converting it to some usable form of energy, as if it were a living nuclear reactor.
Isotopic analysis of Iron and Gold
We isolated fresh samples of heme from the goose, precipitated the iron oxide and sent it to Brookhaven Labs for isotopic analysis. The results showed that there was no Fe56, suggesting that it was this isotope of iron that was being converted to gold. Since the reaction was endothermic, we hypothesized that it would be coupled to an exothermic reaction and searched through the tables of nuclear reactions to identify a series of reactions that would yield just enough energy to support conversion of Fe54 to Au197. We found the following reactions in the table.
Xe135 + 2Fe54 => Pu239
2 Pu239 => 2 I135 + Au197 + O18
I135 => Xe135
3 O18 => Fe54
12 O18 => Au197
Genetic analysis of the parent goose
The grandfather goose was from the T flock and hence contained the transposase. Sequencing the genome around the site of insertion in the mother goose revealed that the transposon had hopped near the promoter of the period gene (Supplementary online figure S2). Period gene is involved in circadian rhythms in the fruit flies and birds and most likely has a similar role in the geese. It is expressed in many tissues throughout the body, including in brain, liver and gonads.
The mother goose contained multiple transposons. Initial sequencing from the mother goose, as expected, has not given a clear indication of the sites of insertion of the transposons as different tissues have a different location of the insert. We have made primary cultures from many tissues of the mother goose and are conducting detailed genetic analysis on them.
Discussion
Since the blood from goose liver contained more gold than blood from other parts, we hypothesized that the chloraurate ion is secreted by the liver into the blood stream. The ovaries acted as a trap for the ion, reducing it to metallic gold and depositing as a shell about the developing egg. Relatively high concentrations of the unreduced chloraurate ion penetrate the contents of the developing egg.
There is little doubt that the goose finds this process useful as a means of getting rid of the gold atoms which, if allowed to accumulate, would undoubtedly poison it. Excretion by eggshell may be novel in the animal kingdom, even unique, but it is in fact this very mechanism that is keeping the goose alive.
Unfortunately, however, the ovary is being locally poisoned to such an extent that few eggs are laid, probably not more than what will suffice to get rid of the accumulating gold, and those few eggs are definitely unhatchable.
Gastric examination of the goose revealed that the bile pigment was missing in the goose. Bile acids are steroids secreted by the liver into the bile and poured into the upper end of the small intestine. These bile acids are detergent-like molecules, which help to emulsify the fat in our diet and distribute them in the form of tiny bubbles through the watery intestinal contents. This distribution makes the food easier to be digested. Bile pigments, on the other hand, are completely different. Liver makes bile pigments out of hemoglobin, the red oxygen-carrying protein of the blood. Worn out hemoglobin is broken up in the liver, the heme part being split away. The heme is made up of a square shaped molecule – called porphyrin – with an iron atom in the center. The liver takes the iron out and stores it for future use, then breaks the square shaped molecule that is left. This broken porphyrin is bile pigment. It is colored brownish or greenish – depending on further chemical change – and is secreted into bile. The bile pigments are of no use to the body and are poured into the bile as waste products. They pass through the intestines and come out with the feces. In fact, the bile pigments are responsible for the color of the feces.
Liver biopsy revealed that the liver of the goose was not breaking the heme to bile pigment; instead, it was converting it to aureme. The aureme, in equilibrium with chloraurate ion, entered the blood stream and was carried to the ovaries, where the gold was separated out and the porphyrin portion of the molecule disposed of by some as yet unidentified mechanism. The auremoglobin was, of course, useless as far as carrying oxygen was concerned, but it only made up about 0.1 percent of the total hemoglobin of the red blood cells, so there was no interference with the respiration of the goose.
The goose was excreting gold at the rate of 38.9 grams of gold a day and had been doing it over a period of months. That gold had to come from somewhere and failing that, it had to be made from something. Due to the mere fact that we were face to face with the goose that laid golden eggs, we had to seriously consider the possibility that while it was hemoglobin that entered the liver, not all of what came out was hemoglobin – a fraction of it was now auremoglobin. The gold shell of the eggs had iron as its only impurity. The egg yolk was high in only gold and iron. It all suggested that somehow iron was being converted into gold in a nuclear reaction.
However, there were a great many serious problems involved in this iron to gold idea. For one thing, the total quantity of iron in the goose can only be of the order of half a gram, yet nearly 40 grams of gold a day were being manufactured. There was a worse problem than that – Iron is about the bottom of the packing fraction curve. Gold is much higher up. To convert a gram of iron to a gram of gold takes just about as much energy as is produced by the fissioning of one gram of Plutonium-239.
Isotopic analysis of heme revealed a lack of Fe54, while showing a presence of Fe56, Fe57 and Fe58 in normal proportion. The implication was obvious – a nuclear reaction would use only one specific isotope and not others whereas an ordinary chemical reaction would dispose all isotopes equally. However the fact remained that such a reaction seemed energetically impossible. Even though many reactions requiring an input of energy go on in the body because they are coupled to an energetically favorable reaction, the amount of energy involved is very low – few kilocalories per mole. Nuclear reactions, on the other hand, consume millions. For the fusion to work, we needed an energy producing nuclear reaction.
A search of the nuclear reaction database revealed a set of reactions involving iron, oxygen, xenon, iodine and plutonium so that the energy produced by the exothermic reactions were just infinitesimally greater than the energy absorbed by the endothermic ones.
Genetic analysis of the geese revealed that the transposase had acted in the tissues expressing the period gene. Period gene is one of the core set of genes responsible for generating circadian rhythms. These are expressed in the brain, eyes, gut, liver and ovaries. This expression pattern correlates with the sites involved in generating gold due to altered catabolism.
Interestingly, in the 1940s, it was speculated that the circadian rhythms might be generated by the changing magnetic field, solar winds or other naturally oscillating quantum mechanical phenomena3. In fact, on Tuesday evening, September 25, 1944, during the building of the atomic bomb, Enrico Fermi had created a pile of Plutonium and was creating the first chain reaction when something bizarre happened, resulting in an oscillation of free neutrons with a period of 24 hours4. These oscillations involved Xenon, Iodine and Plutonium (See supporting online material). We wonder if those oscillations and circadian rhythms have any unknown connections.
Very recently, a group led by Kondo T has shown that the three proteins KaiA, KaiB and KaiC along with ATP are capable of generating circadian oscillations in the phosphorylation levels of KaiC in vitro. The Kai proteins are responsible for generating circadian rhythms in cyanobacteria, whose whole transcriptome is under circadian control. The evidence of a goose displaying nuclear reactions in the tissues where circadian clocks are expressed, coupled with the fact that these nuclear reactions display an ability to generate a circadian rhythm in neutron levels in vitro suggests that the circadian clock may indeed be constituted by core enzymes regulating nuclear reactions. Traditionally, one would have argued against such a possibility as the circadian rhythms were supposed to have been generated from negative feedback of proteins on the transcription of their coding genes. In the light of work done by Kondo’s group, it would appear that circadian rhythms indeed might be generated by proteins in the cytoplasm and the transcription factors such as CLOCK and PERIOD are involved only as a means of telling the cell the time of the day.
References
“Ten most frequently told stories in the world” Carpenter el al, Journal of Literature, Vol 45, Nov 1940, Pages 126-132
“Mobile elements in genome” Barbara McClintock, Journal of Evolutionary Genetics, Vol 16, Jun 1959, Pages 67-70
“Reconstitution of circadian oscillation of cyanobacterial KaiC phosphorylation in vitro” Nakajima et al, Science. 2005 Apr 15;308(5720):414-5
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Supplementary Online material
Description of events of September 25, 1944.
Briefly, the largest atomic pile yet assembled on earth was ready, having reached dry criticality – the smallest loading at which it would have gone critical without cooling water if its operators had not restrained it with control rods – the previous Friday. The operators withdrew the control rods in stages and gradually, the pile started working, as indicated by the gauges that showed that the cooling water warmed, flowing in at 50o F and out at 140o F. The pile went critical a few minutes past midnight. By 2 A.M. it was operating at a higher level of power than any previous chain reaction. For the space of half an hour all was well. Then the pile reactivity started steadily declining with time, necessitating withdrawal of control rods, until all the rods had been completely removed and even then the power kept declining, finally dying by early Wednesday evening. Early Thursday morning, the pile came back to life. By 7 A.M. it was running well above critical. But twelve hours later, it began another decline.
Princeton theoretician John A. Wheeler had been concerned about fission product poisons. The mechanism would be compound – A non neutron absorbing mother fission product of some hours’ half life would decay into a daughter dangerous to neutrons. This poison itself would decay with a half-life of some hours into a third nuclear species, non-absorbing and possibly even stable. So the pile would chain react, making the mother product; then the mother product would decay into the daughter; as the volume of daughter product increased, absorbing neutrons, the pile would decline; when sufficient daughter product was present, enough neutrons would be absorbed to starve the chain reaction and the pile would shut down. Then the daughter product would decay into a non-absorbing third element; as it decayed the pile would stir; eventually too little daughter product would remain to inhibit the chain reaction and pile would go critical again.
If this explanation made sense, then an inspection of the chart of nuclei showed that the mother had to be 6.68 hr [Iodine]135 and the daughter 9.13 hr [Xenon]135. Furthermore, the cross section for absorption of thermal neutrons by Xe135 was roughly 150 times that of the most absorptive nucleus previously known, [cadmium]113. Almost every Xe135 nucleus formed in a high flux reactor would take a neutron out of circulation. In fact Xe135 was the poison. This phenomenon was observed in another nuclear reactor in Chicago three days later, which also showed a shutting down of the pile twelve hours after it had gone critical.
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