[Hplusroadmap] Fwd: [OWW-Discuss] What previously underrecognized sport or pastime should be included in the Olympic Games?

[Bryan Bishop]

On Friday 21 March 2008, Bill F wrote:
> Up close and personal: Alan Charning, UK PostDoc. World renowned
> pipette pro. His presence on any team is enough to titrate fear in
> the hearts of his opponents. Merely having him at the lab bench has
> propelled the austere labs of Cambridge into a force to be reckoned
> with in the global pro-am wetlab circuit.
>
> When not pushing copious quantities of fluids through ridiculously
> thin tubes, Alan likes to relax in his training lab in the Outer
> Hebrides. Where sheep once trod, now Alan's legendary training
> regimen is conducted with a host of experts flown in from the four
> corners of the globe. Swimming 2 miles every day, pumping through
> massive volumes of treacle syrup to increase training friction,
> performing hundreds of arm rep lifts per day, and consuming the
> highlights of the world's literature cell biology output well into
> the night makes for little time for his wife, Brit, and their son,
> Watson, and daughter, Sabine.
>
> As he prepares for his date with destiny this summer in Beijing, Alan
> understand the  kind of expectations physicists, chemists, and
> biologists have heaped upon him. The bust of Cavendish that sits on
> his desk and the picture of Fleming on the wall remind him of the
> titans who preceded him. Little did they know that one day,
> endorsement deals with Van Heusen, Dockers, and VWR Scientific would
> one day be the prizes of their intellectual progeny.
>
> Some called it frivolous when Charning halted his cancer research
> career peers felt would eventually lead to a Nobel prize to instead
> perfect his legendary pipetting skills. His gold medal performance in
> the 3 liter medley in Oslo in 2005, 3 medals in the Helsinki
> Invitational in 2006, and, finally, the world record in dispensing
> over 3000 separate samples in a time of 5:02:03954 last year,
> shattering Professor Jan Gulbricks of the Netherlands time by a
> massive 5 hundeths of a second, made his appearance on this years UK
> team a slam-dunk.
>
> Wen asked what drives him onward, Alan adjusted his thick glasses,
> fumbled a bit with the glass tube in his hand, and cleared his
> throat. Tears welled in his eyes. "My personal hero was Jesse Owens.
> In my own way, I'm doing my part to let the world know that Lab
> Science can be as rewarding as any other Olympic sport. We can create
> life on a competitive playing field and send it crawling off when
> we're done. The spoils don't go to the victors but to the storm
> drains that surround the venues we compete in. We're changing the
> world. I'm honored to be a part of it."
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 11:20 AM, John Cumbers
> <johncumbers at gmail.com>
>
> wrote:
> > *What previously underrecognized sport or pastime should be
> > included in the Olympic Games?*
> >
> > The contestants are given a bag of spinach and asked to isolate the
> > DNA, purify the ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase, and separate
> > the rRNA from the mRNA. This would be a timed trial with certain
> > as-yet-undetermined constraints, but leaning towards the low-tech.
> > from:
> > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v422/n6932/full/422567a.html
> >
> > Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
> >
> > --
> > John Cumbers, Graduate Student
> > Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry
> > Biology and Medicine, Brown University, Box G-W
> > Providence, Rhode Island, 02912, USA
> > Tel USA: +1 401 523 8190, Fax: +1 401 863-2166, UK to USA: 0207 617
> > 7824
> >
> > Delivery address: Brown University (EEB) Biomed Stock Room
> > 34 OLIVE ST, Providence, RI 02912

________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/