Mindless Spawn of Space
In 1953, exactly fifty years ago today, Watson and Crick announced their explantion of How Living Things Work. Wonder where the two brilliant scientists have been since then? A few highlights...
Everybody complains about it, now Dr. Watson (of DNA Double-Helix fame) says we can do something about it. Better living through chemisty!
Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity."If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."
Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
Meanwhile, his sidekick, Dr. Francis Crick, has discovered that there is no meaning to meaning! Elementary, my dear Watson!
At the heart of the Crick-Koch hypothesis is a simple idea with vast implications. It is that consciousness, rather than representing some spiritual or God-given quality, is a biological process like digestion or circulation, generated by the activity of neurons in the brain. As he wrote in his 1994 book, "The Astonishing Hypothesis": "You, your joys and your sorrows--your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."And don't forget about Crick's former brainchild announced in his book in 1973 called "Directed Panspermia" which answers the question "where did life come from?" Answer: life on earth was seeded by microorganisms from a higher civilization and sent through space on unmanned rockets.
This one is for the kids. I wrote them last week when Buster had a couple of bad days and we were worried about him. This picture is just to show that he has fully recovered to his prior levels of obnoxiousity and is enjoying the snow, even if he is basically an Orlando Retriever (at least that's what he tells us when he stands at the door with his legs crossed, refusing to go as far as the lilacs to pee when it gets below 20 degrees). 
In the picture you can see how I store my wood, in teepee fashion, over in the pasture. I just cut this little bunch up last week, got one truckload over here between snows, and the remainder is buried once again and frozen to the ground. It's nice to see the green again and remember my love-hate relationship with grass mowing and summer heat. Ann likes to mow. Go figure. You can see a bit of the AT (no, not Appalachian Trail... the Annie Trail) that wifey keeps up, cutting a swath around the perimeter of the pasture and down the old road we follow in our daily walk, so as to keep the dew off, and hopefully, most of the ticks, come summer. And come it will. And I'll be getting in firewood when I should be gardening. Such is life. 
The house had been on spring water for over a century, but the spring head up the road filled in with sediment some decades ago, and I guess the hippies that lived here over the years brought in water from other wells or springs. Not knowing what to expect when we put in the very first deep well on the place, we were delighted to have 12-15 gallons of water at about 140 feet! And the best thing was that, very rare for deep wells in our area, it was artesian, meaning that there was enough pressure on the aquifer to send water up out of the well without pumping. We had enough pressure to use all the water outlets on the main floor, even when the power to the well pump was off during winter storms! Until...
The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. An entire world, rich in structure and history, may have existed before our Universe appeared; but if it did, science cannot tell what kind of world it was. A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. 
To tell the truth, I don't always go willingly on the last dog walk of the night. When you're warm and sluggish and already thinking how good that down comforter is going to feel, its awfully hard to get dressed again in your winter survival clothes, to venture out into the cold and dark. We stumble along in the crusty snow to find the dog the appointed roadside tree du noir. But there are some times, many, if I'm honest, that all my grumbling is just bluster, because I have learned that often these late night walks produce memories I would never have had, snug and drowsy in my slippers warm inside.
...An oak leaf will refuse to let go until December, clacking and waggling brown and brittle in the cold breezes. The serrated leaves of a smooth-boled American Beech turn almost white and become so thin and light, they seem to move on their own on a still January day. This year's beech leaf may persist on the twig until next spring's new baby leaf evicts it, finally, pushing it out and away, off into space, down to the black soil among the first of the spring mustards and violets. 
I know there are many out there who think George W hung the stars and moon. I'm not one of those who give him quite that stellar a rating. In all honesty, I wish he were more like his daddy. But only in the manner of wishing I would hear him say, in daddy's flat, SNL-parodied Texas drawl, complete with wooden hand gestures...