Math is Hard - Barbie

Actually I'm having trouble with several other subjects as well. Molecular Biology is nicer than physics because you have all these nice pictures. Unfortunately, each picture is worth a thousand words, so a text with a thousand pictures also seems to have a million more words. If I could remember the names (and properties) of all these silly molecules I would have been a botanist - with apologies to Enrico Fermi.

In physics, you pretty much know that you need to understand all the fundamentals - but experimental details are more optional. In biology, it's not so obvious, at least to me. Do I really need to remember which is the 3' and which the 5' Carbon of the whachamacallit sugar - (do I need to know how to tell a ribose from a deoxyribose, or for that matter, a purine from a pyramidine)? And all those blankety blank amino acids? Wait, wait - I think I remember glycine.

I have decided on a compromise strategy - I will stare at each page of elaborate diagrams until my eyes start to glaze over, and then move on. But hey, I did learn one thing - why unsaturated fatty acids are liquid at lower temps than their saturated cousins - the doubly bonded Carbons put a kink in the otherwise straight chains, making them less able to line up neatly.

The ideal molecular biology student, so I imagine, would have solid organic and bio-chem credentials. That's one place I went wrong. I forget most of the rest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more