COMMENT NUMBER: 6

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 08:50:59 EST5EDT4,M4.1.0,M10.5.0

From: Joachim Frank

joachim@wadsworth.org

To: galligan@sprynet.com

Subject: RE: Evaginations







I appreciate your thoughts and metaphors.  The text on the screen is always

too long for me to venture a fast reply -- that's why the msg slumbers for

days in my computer.  Your notes are influenced by the circumstances

of the recording -- you speak of the fluidity of my writing while you sit

in the bathtub, and the Northway speaks to you through billboards.



As you scold me for the part with the bells and whistles, I'm writing

an abstract for a keynote lecture entitled "The ribosome -- an

 astounding molecular machine".  

Indeed, the everyday man is so far removed from

understanding any phenomena of the physical world, in this civilization,

that the distinction between animate and inanimate has become almost

irrelevant.  In popular view, a pickup truck is by far more complex

than a chicken, and both share the attribute of belonging to a category

of things profoundly mysterious.



That's, as always, only part of my response, since the day must go on.



--Joachim.