double helix at 60

The Double Helix
by James Watson 

my little poem is not much to match

but hey it's a genuine show of love. :-)

Ode to DNA

Head to tail, tail to head

Featuring a doubly-stranded

Holding tight, not to tread

Physical strains o'er chemical bands

Spiraled over, that thread

living in a cellular land

I say a "Zipper!"

Only so pret-tier

one can never be tired of the story on the discovery of the DNA structure. and it's not mainly because of its supreme importance. the double helix is also incredibly beautiful:  elegant, intricate, mysterious, complex and simple,  and perfect.

how to figure all these out is of course a detective thriller of the highest order. that it had had to take the brainiest, the eccentric, the paranoid, the beautiful to crack its secrets comes as no surprise.

for all his faults, Watson is a brilliant story-teller. this anniversary edition has also provided additional or new historical documents to put his viewpoints in perspective - now readers can judge for themselves who is right, who is wrong, would have, could have... at the end of the day though, the double helix triumphs over human beings. and one is just too happy to behold that grandiosity of a molecule - the blue print of life.

a signed copy

The little engine that can .... has to

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch

when Dr. Randy Pausch took the podium to deliver the now famous "last lecture", the most critical moment had long passed.

he had been told by his doctor that cancer had returned and that he had but months to live.  he had since moved his family to be closer to where his wife's parents live and made other necessary arrangements. every activity was heart-wrenching but also rational, consistent with what one would have to do, given the life and death situation.  only one odd issue lingered: he was scheduled to deliver a "last lecture", an academic tradition for accomplished professors to do a moment of reflection and share their deeper thoughts with students. for Dr. Rausch, suddenly, this became sad, ironic and problematic. what could he possibly talk about? could he handle the physical and emotional stress? and was it even important enough to take precious time away from his loved ones to prepare for a ....lecture?

to do or not to do - that is the question.

with the dying certainty and his wife's disapproval on one hand and little or no prospect a lecture would provide on the other, Randy Pausch just had to do this one last show!

that decision made and the rest is history:



for me, this is the most valuable part the book has to offer. one has to follow his own heart, even in the face of death.

such is a life worth living

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

by Feynman, Richard P., Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings and Albert R. Hibbs 

one got to feel envious for someone who has got it all. and Richard Feynman is one of those lucky human beings. a genius and a handsome one, too. here he talks about his life in a down-to-the-earth manner.  a life of fulfillment and triumphs in and out of his profession. a life full of intellectual joy, wild imagination and gratifying freedom and choices.

the rest are details - little stories of various importance but often amusing and enlightening. like how he taught himself to pick locks and cracked open safe after safe in - of all places - the Los Alamos National laboratory for nuclear research. his adventures in night clubs were infamous, one of which ended with his taking lone stand in the court to defend the local nude bar, another with him lecturing students with a bruised face at Cornell after a bathroom brawl the night before in Buffalo. a common theme underneath is that he made friends in all walks of life and left lasting impressions wherever he went and whatever he did.

he couldn't do no wrong. he didn't leave much to regret. then he died. at a relative young age of 70.

wow. if only everyone lived like that.