It s a Wonderful Life

As I looked out the window and into the lobby, the Mandarin Oriental, with its silver Chinese cloud motif, began to remind me of the mythical lamasery in Frank Capra s 1937 Lost Horizon. (Mr. Capra claimed the Christmas season with another classic, It s a Wonderful Life.)... 

A frequent theme in literature and in movies involves a person seeing the world after his or her death. Think Dickens s A Christmas Carol, and Jimmy Stewart in It s a Wonderful Life. Now think about the world without you. Imagine the tears of your loved ones. Picture yourself not being able to do all the things you ve wanted to do. Four decades later, I still miss my father. My wife and children would certainly miss me. And many would miss you. 

An effective treatment is Frank Capra s It s a Wonderful Life (1946). Heaven and angels seemed out of place in the immediate postwar period. But today, after 50 years, the Capra film is shown continually and celebrated. 

Select an appropriate subject. First, make sure you know your subject thoroughly one fuzzy step could wreck your entire process. Second, choose a process that is simple and short enough to describe in detail. In a 500-to-800-word essay, for instance, it s better to describe how to build a ship in a bottle than how to construct a life-size replica of Noah s Ark. On the other hand, don t choose a process so simpleminded, mundane, or mechanical that it insults your readers intelligence. (Some years ago at a large state university, students were asked to write a process essay on How to Sharpen a Pencil with the assignment of such stirring, creative topics, it s a wonder that particular English department produced any majors at all that year.)... 

How many has she had by now Five Six She doesn t remember anymore. The vodka tonic is delicious. The more she drinks, the better it tastes. So Claire drinks. Life has been good to her. She s 26 and carefree. More vodka Gordon asks. He brings her another glass. It s a wonderful evening, isn t it ... 

I ll save you the trouble of skipping ahead to where the data are described. R. J. P. Williams was right. The chemical trends he identified are reflected in the genomic data, with a few exceptions, and he predicted it all from chemical rules like the Irving-Williams series. This means that, over 4 billion years, chemistry shaped biology. It also contradicts Wonderful Life. Stephen Jay Gould s tape of life would look much the same upon replay, because its events, when examined from the proper perspective, were shaped by universal and predictable chemical laws. 

Because the nature of history is a philosophical topic, how you look at it is shaped by prior convictions. Stephen Jay Gould s book Wonderful Life is also about the nature of history, and in my first and last chapters 1 discuss how Gould s interpretations were shaped by his prior convictions. However, 1 don t intend to throw stones, because my own prior convictions undoubtedly shaped this book. 

I ve had incredible experiences with life. It s sad and lonely and sometimes I wonder if there s a place in the world for someone like me. But I have an inner strength from my training as a world-class runner. Sometimes I wanted to win a race so bad, and I started out last. I often ended up in first place. And the reality is that I m living in my car. But when I look at people who are living unconsciously, and who don t seem to have a deep level of compassion, I ve wondered Who is more alive—them or me ... 

Carbon is the most important atom in living creatures. Without it, life—at least, life as we know it—could not exist. This is because carbon can form huge, complicated molecules or almost endless chains. Living things need these complicated molecules because they have to accomplish a huge variety of tasks. No matter how it s put together, carbon is a strange and wonderful substance. 

In one way, I ve always wondered if, in terms of job security, I should have gone to medical school. Like my father wanted me to. You can t help but think it would have been much easier to have been an M.D.. .. And not worry about tenure. I didn t get tenure at In a sense, I sort of wonder if life would have been easier if I had gotten an M.D. In the end, I think that I would not have had as interesting a career, if I had simply practiced medicine. The thing that I love about research is that there is always a new challenge. And, it s always exciting. 

What do you really want Seriously, take a moment and think about what speeifieally would make your life absolutely wonderful What would make you leap out of bed early everyday with jubi-lanee and antieipation equal to a six-year-old on Christmas morning What are your passions Is there anything you love to do frequently just beeause it s fun What if... you have the power within your own mind to ereate the things you want most in life What would you create for yourself ... 

The next scene of the aluminum drama is laid in the United States. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville s process had made the metal a commercial product, but it was still expensive. Charles Martin Hall, a student at Oberlin College, inspired by the accounts which Professor F. F. Jewett had given of his studies under Wohler, decided that his supreme aim in life would be to devise a cheap method for making aluminum. In an improvised laboratory in the woodshed, and with homemade batteries, he struggled with this problem. On February 23,1886, this boy of twenty-one years rushed into his professors office and held out to him a handful of aluminum buttons. Since these buttons led to a highly successful electrolytic process for manufacturing aluminum, it is small wonder that the Aluminum Company of America now treasures them and refers to them affectionately as the crown jewels A beautiful statue of the youthful Charles M. Hall, cast in aluminum, may now he seen at Oberlin College (11, 55). 

You are made of water, born into a world of water, and then forevermore dependent on water. You can survive for more than a month without food, but without fresh water you would perish in a matter of days. Little wonder when you consider that water makes up about 60 percent of your body mass. It s the ideal solvent for transporting nutrients through your body and for supporting the countless biochemical reactions that keep you alive. All living organisms we know of depend on water. It is the medium of life on our planet and arguably our most vital natural resource. 

In a wonderful article [12] the late Stephen Jay Gould discusses that life based on solar energy and photosynthesis may be the exception rather than the rule. Equally, he disputes that the bulk of life s biomass should reside in the wood of trees in our forests and argues that the mass of subterranean living material as that of bacteria is comparable to that at the surface and is possibly in excess of it. 

Adversity (such as health problems in both of us, a lack of contact with friends and family due to MCS) has made our relationship more special and steady. We are two pillars of strength in a none-too-sympathetic world. It s wonderful to know somebody in your life who supports you 100 percent, especially when many others fail to do the same. You yourself are also, of course, an important factor in a loving and respectful relationship. Every good relationship demands a good heart and an extensive give-and-take from both sides, even without MCS. Wanting to see each other happy and unconditionally wishing the best for one another is an important aspect of our relationship. 

The song Strong by Robbie Williams contains a wonderful line on this subject, which inspires me to see that it s time to overcome my shame forever Life is too short to be afraid, step inside the sun ... 

This is academia. We have the most flexibility of any job, and yet here we are saying that if s easier in industry to have children. I do not understand this. When my children were born, I was at home, and I had group meetings at home—we have computers now, and we have all kinds of means of communication—so I was gone for just a month or two. Now, I have never taken a sabbatical—which is my personal choice—but I have colleagues who were on sabbatical, and I could not tell because I hadn t seen them in 2 or 3 years anyway. These are all side tracks off the main issue of integrating your life into your career. It is so terribly discouraging that for some reason academia is not perceived as a wonderful... 

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