Still, I will persevere against my creative malaise so that all five of you can have something to waste your time with on a more regular basis. That was not fishing for compliments, though it sounded suspiciously like it. There are exactly five of you following this blog, and I don't feel comfortable saying "something to look forward to" or "something to wet yourself in anticipation of." I got enough nice, thoughtful compliments on my last two blogs that I can hang up my fishing rod. The problem is I took a lot of time on those last two, and I can't continue to do that and have any hopes for regularity. [insert poop joke]. So I'm going to try to write things that are in my head without taking an hour to phrase them just so and then another hour to edit them just so. I'll still try and make time for super special updates when I feel particularly passionate about something, but I'm really gonna try for pretty okay updates in the meantime.
So in that spirit, I'm gonna start talkin' about stuff. I'll start with a musing I had in biochem.
See, Hans Lineweaver was a chemist who helped come up with the Lineweaver-Burk plot, a double reciprocal plot of the Michealis-Menton equation that shows enzyme activity in a straight line, making it easy to find the critical parameters by hand.
See, Hans Lineweaver was a chemist who helped come up with the Lineweaver-Burk plot, a double reciprocal plot of the Michealis-Menton equation that shows enzyme activity in a straight line, making it easy to find the critical parameters by hand.
Er, I mean, he did some dumb science stuff or whatever.
Anyway, my point is that this guy named Lineweaver is famous for formulating a really useful graphical equation. Mathematically speaking, he wove a fucking line. So that got me thinking about how often that happens, where people come to embody their names. Like how many Millers do you know who are actually millers? How many Petersons actually have dads or moms named Peter? In middle school, I always thought it was neat that the band director was Mr. Harmon (just needed a y) and the choir director's first name was Carol. I think Armstrong would be one of the best names to live up to, but then I guess there are some names that you really wouldn't want to live up to, like Hertz or Heimann. Or Heimann-Hertz. . .
In sixth grade we had a student teacher in music named Ms. Asunchion, and a kid named Kevin asked her if we could call her Ms. A Sun Shine and she said no. In eighth grade she was a regular music teacher who married Mr. Harmon the year before and Kevin asked her if we could call her Mrs. Harmony. I think I was the only person to notice the same person ask her if we could pronounce her name differently twice.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is names Richard Pierce.
ReplyDeleteHe prefers to be called Eddie.
I don't think he's lived up to anything but his dreams.
My dad once told me a story about a guy he knew named Richard (Rich) Whiteman.
ReplyDeleteMr. Hauber told us about his former student Ophelia Myassa every chance he got.
ReplyDelete