I haven’t posted in a while because I was preparing for and recovering from some ‘minor’ surgery. As a practicing clinical neurologist, I was called in multiple times after people didn’t wake up, or stroked out from what was thought by all to be trouble free surgery. I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as minor surgery. Although mine has gone well, I knew all the things which could go wrong, having seen nearly all of them. This sort of thing has a way of concentrating the mind, leaving room for little else.
So the old year’s resolutions are to get a few of the posts I’ve been sitting on out before the end of the year (probably not in this exact order)
Post #1 — further death of the synonymous codon
Post #2 — Heraclitus was right (about the nervous system) — you can’t step into the same brain twice
Post #3 — Book Review of Duncan Watts book
Post #5 — Unhappy 50th birthday for the War on Poverty
Post #6 — Gloating about the minimal hurricane season despite dire predictions about it
Post #7 — What sleep does and why babies sleep so much
Post #8 — The mating dance of ligand and receptor
The new year resolution — to go through the text on relativity by a classmate I hadn’t met until my 50th reunion. I’ve been through most of the math behind it (I hope). It’s the only time (I think) I’ve used the old school tie gambit to get something I wanted. He’s incredibly busy, still writing papers with Hawking etc. etc. but will answer at least a few questions when I get stuck (as I’m certain to do) purely because we were classmates. I doubt that he’d do this for any other 75 year old retired non physicist.
As my kids say, knowing someone can get you in the door, but you have to perform once you’re inside.
The old Ivy League school tie ain’t what it used to be. A cousin’s kid couldn’t get into a grad school in a subtype of English Lit despite a recent degree from one. Back in the day, it did mean a lot. If you were a premed at my institution and the premed advisor put his hand on your shoulder to say you were okay, you got into Columbia Med School. He was already famous and an operation named for him is still in use. A classmate, a smart guy, majored in Near East studies just because he was interested in it. That was enough for Chase which hired him as a banker. He never went near the mideast in his career.
Chemiotics II 