During this phase of my education, I have frequently come across the phospholipid bilayer. This describes the chemical and physical nature of the membrane surrounding all cells. When I consider this structure, my thoughts often turn to the thought experiment of abiogenesis. I heard it described as a thought experiment in a thread I was reading on the topic, and I like that way of approaching it, so I decided to adopt the terminology. I feel that it is barely credible to call abiogenesis a hypothesis, or a series of hypotheses due to the issue of testability and falsification. I am not trying to discredit the value of the arguments and explanations that highly intelligent people have put forth. I do think that you can demonstrate clearly, for example, that a phospholipid bilayer can spontaneously form in water. I also think you can demonstrate that certain nucleic acids can self-polymerize in random fashion. I think the experiments of Stanley Miller were fascinating, and certainly plausible evidence that under the hypothesized conditions of the early Earth components of amino acids will form spontaneously. How you get from there to a cell is a challenging question, but I am not trying to argue against abiogenesis as an explanation for how life arose. What I question here is how you can show that without such conditions life would not have arose. Is a spontaneously dividing phosolipid bilayer necessary for a process that gives rise to life? Is it sufficient? My questions are only meant to demonstrate the difficulty in approaching the origin of life from a scientific perspective.
A cell is extraordinarily complex, seemingly unnecessarily so. Cascades of enzymes associate with each other through intricate paths of intersection. Redundancy is an ubiquitous component of the system. I am consistently amazed by the mechanisms that keep us alive. My professors often mention that they would not have designed a certain pathway in a certain way. I think this is due to this perceived redundancy in the pathways. Why for example, is it necessary to
I find this equally intriguing and I believe I wrote it sometime during 2012-2013, but I don't remember what I was going to say next in the final incomplete sentence. Even though it is not finished, what I wrote seems thought-provoking enough that I feel I should still publish it. :-)
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Road Trip Part I: Memphis
"Alright, you're all set. Best wishes!" These were the last words I heard before I left Atlanta and they were spoken by a member of the leasing office staff as she signed me out of the apartment. This was ok because I had been sent off in style by close friends and family. In fact the night before some friends from church had taken me out to for Mexican food and margaritas at Taqueria del Sol. I regret that I had not discovered this restaurant earlier because it far surpassed any of the Mexican food I had tried during my stay in Atlanta.
As I drove down roads I had traversed countless times I was afflicted with a powerful nostalgia and noted that this was the last time I would drive by this gas station, these neighborhoods, stop at this traffic light. As the sprawl of metropolitan Atlanta receded and gave way to thick green deciduous forests towering on either side of the interstate, I listened to NPR until it faded into static and switched to the inevitable "down home" country station. Two years in Atlanta and a roommate from North Carolina had nurtured in me quite the taste for country music. In particular, though not technically country, my ears had grown to crave the sound of "progressive bluegrass." To be honest, I don't know what made it "progressive" other than the fact that the musicians seemed to be young hipsters and the lyrics weren't always about the coal mines shutting down, yet still seemed to echo the struggles of the working class in Appalachia.
When I returned home, people often asked me "how was Atlanta?" It seems like the more time you spend in a place, the harder it is to answer that question. My answer generally encompasses the humidity in summer, the older architecture and infrastructure, the distinct regional culture that has inspired so much American music and literature. This is a woefully shallow way to encapsulate my experience though. I would probably include the sound of cicadas against the tranquil and dignified quad of the Emory campus, with buildings dating to the turn of the last century evoking citadels of scholarship. Summer nights with the hot condensation of the surrounding air, happening upon fireflies. A clear day assaulted by a subtropical rainstorm, and a night illuminated by thunderstorms. Walks through deciduous forests, crossing bridges that could have been built before the Civil War. Grocery stores where collards and grits were standard items for sale. Kudzu tangling over every surface without discrimination between organic and non-organic.
These memories, and all of the physical belongings that were important enough to load into my '99 Buick Park Avenue, came with me as this capital of the New South, where the old South still seeped up from just under the veneer of modernity, faded behind me.
The road led me through Alabama, passing through the hills of Birmingham, then across the Appalachian highway into Mississippi. The ancient green peaks rolled ahead of me until just across Tennessee border I entered Memphis. Just for kicks, I popped in the Paul Simon Graceland album and played the title track as I entered the city limits. Once I had finished that, I toggled through the stations and came upon the sounds of a powerful gospel choir. While at a stoplight, I looked to my right and was surprised by a massive replica of the Statue of Liberty, only instead of a torch, she was holding a large golden cross. Inscribed below her were the Ten Commandments. This caused me to consider that if Atlanta and Memphis were both part of the Bible Belt, Memphis must have been the buckle. I think this works out both geographically and metaphorically, but Texas does make the belt a bit lopsided.
My destination was a Days Inn just off the freeway, with all the seediness such a place entails. The lobby had an extraordinarily tacky mural of various symbols considered Memphian in the American psyche. These included the King, a steamboat (presumably the Memphis Queen?), and the famous bridge spanning the Mississippi river into Arkansas. Of course, I found this delightful and snapped a photo.
After settling in to my room, I decided to find a good place to get a sense of the cityscape and then get some of that famous Memphis BBQ for dinner. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my brain was a particularly dry and illegible memory about a place my Dad had been to get some BBQ he had later raved about. I thought a park might be a good place to get a view and relax a bit. In the classic style of my generation, I found where I thought I wanted to go using Google search. Looking back, I suppose I could have stood at the corner and asked strangers for directions, but I had been driving all day and I was not sure the possibility of sharing Elvis' fate was worth a crazy story to tell the guys. Lee Park seemed like a good choice for getting a good panorama of Memphis, so I headed in that direction. Much to my surprise, the day I arrived in Memphis happened to be the first day of a "World Championship BBQ Festival" located in, yes, Lee Park. So, in an effort to be an opportunist, I considered that I may be able to kill two birds with one stone, gruesome metaphor aside. I parked in a grass field and walked to the festival entrance. As I approached, my path merged with the path of several other festival goers. As we walked, a security guard shouted at the collective group to "stay on the path!" "They're just on a power trip." I realize the comment was directed at me, and I turned to see a middle-aged woman. "Yeah, I feel like a farm animal," I offered in response. We both laughed and since I didn't have anything else to add, she returned to her group. After walking the path for a ways, I arrived at a booth.
This was not good. A booth means a ritual of admission. Most of the time this involves money. I have developed a complex mixture of both frugal and excessive spending patterns over time. The fact that I decided to snap a brief picture at the entrance and leave was actually a departure from my rules, since food tends to be an area where I spend far too much money. But, for a reason that made sense at the time, I returned to my car, and decided to pick up some BBQ elsewhere. I called the place I had looked up on Google, and found myself in the unfortunate position of barely understanding the person on the other end.
I had just finished two years of living in the South. Most people in Atlanta did not have a strong southern accent, but I felt pretty confident I could untangle the thickest drawl thrown at me. As a result, my lack of comprehension stemmed not from a confusion of dialect, but rather of enunciation and technical quality. Namely, the connection was horrible and the person on the other end mumbled equally horribly. After several rounds of trying to make myself understood, I finally got my order taken down satisfactorily.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, I found two entrances. I decided to enter through the right hand door. I found myself at a seating podium. I told the waitress I needed to pick up an order. She politely informed me that it was on the other side. For some reason, I interpreted "other side" as walking past her to the counter where the orders came out. After standing here for some time, the hostess gently informed me that I could pick up my order through the other door.
I wrote this in 2012 after returning from a road trip across from Atlanta to California. It was meant to describe each of my stops along the way. Obviously I never finished it, but I thought I would publish it anyways, since anything I write now will be inauthentic, but it still intrigues me after all this time.
When I returned home, people often asked me "how was Atlanta?" It seems like the more time you spend in a place, the harder it is to answer that question. My answer generally encompasses the humidity in summer, the older architecture and infrastructure, the distinct regional culture that has inspired so much American music and literature. This is a woefully shallow way to encapsulate my experience though. I would probably include the sound of cicadas against the tranquil and dignified quad of the Emory campus, with buildings dating to the turn of the last century evoking citadels of scholarship. Summer nights with the hot condensation of the surrounding air, happening upon fireflies. A clear day assaulted by a subtropical rainstorm, and a night illuminated by thunderstorms. Walks through deciduous forests, crossing bridges that could have been built before the Civil War. Grocery stores where collards and grits were standard items for sale. Kudzu tangling over every surface without discrimination between organic and non-organic.
These memories, and all of the physical belongings that were important enough to load into my '99 Buick Park Avenue, came with me as this capital of the New South, where the old South still seeped up from just under the veneer of modernity, faded behind me.
The road led me through Alabama, passing through the hills of Birmingham, then across the Appalachian highway into Mississippi. The ancient green peaks rolled ahead of me until just across Tennessee border I entered Memphis. Just for kicks, I popped in the Paul Simon Graceland album and played the title track as I entered the city limits. Once I had finished that, I toggled through the stations and came upon the sounds of a powerful gospel choir. While at a stoplight, I looked to my right and was surprised by a massive replica of the Statue of Liberty, only instead of a torch, she was holding a large golden cross. Inscribed below her were the Ten Commandments. This caused me to consider that if Atlanta and Memphis were both part of the Bible Belt, Memphis must have been the buckle. I think this works out both geographically and metaphorically, but Texas does make the belt a bit lopsided.
My destination was a Days Inn just off the freeway, with all the seediness such a place entails. The lobby had an extraordinarily tacky mural of various symbols considered Memphian in the American psyche. These included the King, a steamboat (presumably the Memphis Queen?), and the famous bridge spanning the Mississippi river into Arkansas. Of course, I found this delightful and snapped a photo.
After settling in to my room, I decided to find a good place to get a sense of the cityscape and then get some of that famous Memphis BBQ for dinner. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my brain was a particularly dry and illegible memory about a place my Dad had been to get some BBQ he had later raved about. I thought a park might be a good place to get a view and relax a bit. In the classic style of my generation, I found where I thought I wanted to go using Google search. Looking back, I suppose I could have stood at the corner and asked strangers for directions, but I had been driving all day and I was not sure the possibility of sharing Elvis' fate was worth a crazy story to tell the guys. Lee Park seemed like a good choice for getting a good panorama of Memphis, so I headed in that direction. Much to my surprise, the day I arrived in Memphis happened to be the first day of a "World Championship BBQ Festival" located in, yes, Lee Park. So, in an effort to be an opportunist, I considered that I may be able to kill two birds with one stone, gruesome metaphor aside. I parked in a grass field and walked to the festival entrance. As I approached, my path merged with the path of several other festival goers. As we walked, a security guard shouted at the collective group to "stay on the path!" "They're just on a power trip." I realize the comment was directed at me, and I turned to see a middle-aged woman. "Yeah, I feel like a farm animal," I offered in response. We both laughed and since I didn't have anything else to add, she returned to her group. After walking the path for a ways, I arrived at a booth.
This was not good. A booth means a ritual of admission. Most of the time this involves money. I have developed a complex mixture of both frugal and excessive spending patterns over time. The fact that I decided to snap a brief picture at the entrance and leave was actually a departure from my rules, since food tends to be an area where I spend far too much money. But, for a reason that made sense at the time, I returned to my car, and decided to pick up some BBQ elsewhere. I called the place I had looked up on Google, and found myself in the unfortunate position of barely understanding the person on the other end.
I had just finished two years of living in the South. Most people in Atlanta did not have a strong southern accent, but I felt pretty confident I could untangle the thickest drawl thrown at me. As a result, my lack of comprehension stemmed not from a confusion of dialect, but rather of enunciation and technical quality. Namely, the connection was horrible and the person on the other end mumbled equally horribly. After several rounds of trying to make myself understood, I finally got my order taken down satisfactorily.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, I found two entrances. I decided to enter through the right hand door. I found myself at a seating podium. I told the waitress I needed to pick up an order. She politely informed me that it was on the other side. For some reason, I interpreted "other side" as walking past her to the counter where the orders came out. After standing here for some time, the hostess gently informed me that I could pick up my order through the other door.
I wrote this in 2012 after returning from a road trip across from Atlanta to California. It was meant to describe each of my stops along the way. Obviously I never finished it, but I thought I would publish it anyways, since anything I write now will be inauthentic, but it still intrigues me after all this time.
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