Larry's quest

Meet Larry. Larry was quite alike his peers in every single way. Literally. He was down to version 89.5623.AxznF.005 and all his 1.53*10^17 counterparts were genetically identical to him. Of course, he lost a couple along the way for some strange reason. He was never able to figure out why they disappeared from the colony in such large numbers, but that was something he was investigating on the side.

Maybe the narrative calls for a small backtrack here in order give a few more precisions on our little friend Mr. L. For little he was. Quite little actually. So little that you couldn't even see him. Yes, Larry was a unique strain of an E-coli bacterium that called home petri dish L5 in Lab H-415 of the Acme Labs research facility. Lab H-415 was known for its top secret experiments and was primarily made famous when researchers managed to condition two white mice to sing and dance at a specific tone of bell.

But this was all beyond Larry's comprehension. For him, existence resumed itself to finding nutrients, growing and duplicating. Finding nutrients, growing and duplicating, finding nutrients, growing and duplicating. It was an endless cycle, but that he did not mind. It was a cycle that he knew well and that he liked. He couldn't quite say when it all started or what he came from. Whenever he replicated, he felt his insides splitting and opening up.

It was not a pleasant process, that he would concede, but once it was done, it left him feeling relieved, but somewhat starving for companionship. For no matter how many versions accumulated, they remained, inexorably, versions of himself. His own organism segregated in many different parts but without an inkling of difference. For, if solitude is defined by the act of not having anyone but yourself as a companion, Larry was the loneliest creature that ever came to be. If he were to ask a question, no answer would ever come except for the reverberations of his own thoughts from the general collectivity or the crowd as he liked to call them. His thoughts were their thoughts, his questions, their questions. It was a never ending conversation with himself, an echo that he could not escape. Sometimes he even wondered if his reflections were in fact his own or if he was sometimes a part of the echo that bothered him so. The truth was that he was the crowd and the crowd was him. Like yin and yang, they were separate all the while forming a single entity.

But all this changed one day. It all started with a strong vibration and then a subtle change in the air. Larry could not quite say what had happened. It felt like replication, but somewhat more odd. And then he saw it. A version he could not recognize in the crowd. He thought he might be mistaken, but that was not possible for he knew all versions of himself and their versions and their versions' versions. Was this it? The change he was hoping so desperately for? His salvation? Finally, a mutation in the genes? But no.

As he got closer to the bizarre creature, he saw that the differences were too flagrant for them to be the product of one error in the code. The rod shape was replaced with round grape-like forms that aggregated in a small cluster. Maybe a malformation of the membrane? But no. That answer did not feel right and he could sense his versions in the crowd agreeing. Therefore, only one conclusion was left. This was an entirely foreign organism that had penetrated their midst! And the implications of this realization were huge!

It meant that their cozy petri dish was not the beginning, nor the end. It did not define reality in its entirety. It mean that there was something else out there. Something bigger that encompassed all that he knew and even more. And that idea intoxicated him. He wanted to know it, to see it, to experience it, all of it, at that moment precisely! He wanted to discover every inch of it with all that it had to offer!

And wouldn't it be amazing if Larry could do just that? Wouldn't it be amazing if Larry could discover the lab that surrounded his little petri dish? If he could see the scientists walking in and out, discussing their experiments, eating their lunches, venting their frustrations for 6 month's work gone down the drain? If he could see the two white mice three labs down the hall? And then, wouldn't it be amazing if he could comprehend all that?



On a somewhat less scientific note, but still in the same sense of looking out towards a greater world and reality, if you manage to bear with the mosquitoes, go out in your backyard tonight and catch the peak of the Perseid meteor shower! They should be there all night and despite the full moon, I'm sure that with a little patience it's possible to see them. In any case that's where I'm headed! They say you can make a wish when you see a shooting star. Does it still count when there are roughly 3 of them every 2 minutes and you are waiting for them to come?

3 Easy Steps on how to ruin a human life

Leaving aside the title of this video (sorry it's not porn), I have to say that this story chilled me to the bone. Kind of reminded me of The Human Centipede or reading of Dr. Mengele's experiments in Auschwitz. It really is horrifying how one could play with human lives in the name of science. And, in the end, you know what? Screw animal rights! If I have to choose between a scientist experimenting on my child or on myself and experimenting on a lab rat, well the choice is really not that hard to make.

Souvenirs d'antan

Dans mon cours de chimie de secondaire 5, mon professeur, l'honorable Luc Plusquellec, nous avait dit que la seule chose qu'on allait se rappeler de son cours était une seule et unique formule. Moi, j'étais sure du contraire. Dans mon for intérieur, je savais que j'allais vite oublier sa foutue formule ce qui amènerait la totalité de mes souvenirs de son cours à zéro (enfin, les niaiseries du prof sur la cigarette, les tartes auxquelles on ressemble et la frayeur qu'il ressentait à l'idée qu'on pourrait être ses enfants ne comptent pas vraiment comme des souvenirs respectables ou valables d'un cours sur la chimie).

Et bien, j'ai passé à travers le CEGEP (où j'avais de la difficulté à oublier sa formule pendant la première année pour la simple raison, que je l'utilisais dans tous mes cours de chimie). Je suis arrivée à l'université (où j'avais toutes les chances d'oublier sa formule étant donnée que la chimie était vraiment la dernière chose auquelle je pensais avec tous mes cours sur l'économie et la comptabilité).

Et voilà, quatre ans plus tard, je vois dans une formule seulement deux lettres adjacentes: RT. C'est tout. Et que me vient-il tout suite en tête? PV = nRT. Sa foutue formule!! Je ne me souviens plus du nom de la formule. Je ne me souviens plus de toutes les unités (par exemple, V, le volume, est-ce des cm3? P, la pression, est-ce des atm? n, est-ce que c'est la concentration, donc des mol/L?). Je sais juste que R est la constante des gaz parfaits (par contre quel chiffre elle représente? Pfff là on en demande un peu trop). Mais bref, tout ça pour dire que, après toutes ces années, l'héritage de Luc Plusquellec (tel qu'il l'avait prévu) se résume à PV = nRT.

Je me demande, si les gens des souviennent de moi après des années sans aucun contact, ils penseront à quoi?

Psychobable

Not necessarily the most interesting or captivating ideas and it's a bit too optimistic and esoteric for a cynic like me (not to mention that she sounds like an actor giving a monologue and her voice really starts getting on my nerves at one point), but I love the way she describes reality and how our brain functions to interpret it. It kind of pulls you out of your conscious mind for a while and gives you a glimpse of how the world could be seen differently. We already know that we are limited by our senses (we can only see or hear a small portion of the stimuli available in the universe), but this video also makes you aware for those 18 minutes of how your brain limits your view of reality and just how trapped you are by those neurons and those synapses. Then again, I don't know if always seeing the world as Jill Bolte Taylor describes it in this video is better than the way we usually see it. Probably not, since you can't read nor speak. But it's a good way of expanding your understanding of reality, not to live like this, but to at least experience it once in your life. I guess the general purpose of this video (as far as I see it) is to show us that the realm of possibilities is not as narrow as we might think and that the mysterious and bizarre world we see in particle physics IS real and it's all around us. And this has to be the longest introduction for a video ever, so I'll just shut up now.