Monday, December 20, 2010

Picking a winner


About a month ago I wrote a post about the upcoming movie Cowboys & Aliens. Well, the other night while waiting outside the theater to see TRON (future post), I saw this poster.

And then I looked again...

Wow. Wranglers are meant to be tight (see Where have all the cowboys gone?), but they were never meant to do that. 

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Enzymatic Promiscuity

The number of unsavory human characteristics that enzymes portray has always impressed me. The first to catch my attention was the idea of enzymatic bullying. Enzymes prowl around intracellularly picking on wimpy substrates that are foolish enough to get in their way. They grab the sorry sobs and twist and contort them and put them in very uncomfortable positions. Sometimes the poor substrates even suffer an embarrassing public dephosphatation or have a stranger’s phosphate thrown at them.  The enzymatic bullies are complete in that they also have little toadies. With enzymes they take the form of co-enzymes; little guys that are not big enough or capable of pushing substrates around on their own. So, until we can stop those raging enzymes, our substrates will continue to live in a sad, cruel world.

The most recent unsightly human characteristic that has been brought to my attention is that of promiscuity. Some enzymes go around and have relations with only a specific type of substrate and engage in enzymatic 'yada yada yada' with just that one type for their entire microscopic existence. Others, however, will engage in inappropriate interactions with multiple partners, occasionally one right after another. It does not matter what the substrates look like or where they have been. I say that someone needs to stand up for our sorry substrates. It is simply wrong for those barbaric enzymes to treat them so poorly and discompassionately.    

Something has to be done. I need to stop them. I don’t know how yet …maybe dynamite.