I just (sort of) met Watson from Watson and Crick

[Merrick]

He came for a tour of my lab just now and came into the room I work in with a small entourage. My lab director showed him a couple of the instruments we have in here and he mumbled something like "Heh" while I sat at my bench like a bump on a log!

How exciting.

[SarahB]

1. Very cool!

:thumbsup:

To be honest, I didn't realize he was still around. He must have been relatively young at the time of his discovery. I had to learn a fair amount about DNA replication in a course this I had Summer. Not exactly easy stuff.

[riverwalker]

2. wow

something to tell the grandkids someday! Like meeting Galileo. I think Crick recently died.

[miss_kitty]

4. crick did just die 28-Jul-2004 n/t

[Merrick]

6. Yeah, I knew one of them died but forgot which one until

I got the word that Watson was coming, at which point I knew that it had been Crick who croaked.

[TlalocW]

3. Oh, yeah... Watson and Crick...

They rocked. What was that one big song of theirs?

Steven Colbert had Watson as part of a segment he did on the Daily Show called, "I'm with Stupid." You can find it on the DS site.

TlalocW

[Vanje]

5. Wow! I named my dog after him....sort of

In college, some years ago, I had a doberman from the pound, that I named Watson. My room mate had a cat then,called Crick.

Watson the Doberman is long gone now, passed into where ever it is that good dogs go when their 14-16 years is up.

I have a standard (big) poodle now, also called Watson to honor the doberman, the geneticist, but mostly because the name suits this distinguished canine gentleman.

[miss_kitty]

7. and EVERYONE forgets the woman who probably made their 'discovery'

possible, Rosalind Franklin,
and the images she created using x-ray crystallography that produced this: .
this led Wtson and Crick to postulate and theorise etc etc. she MIGHT have been included in the Nobel Prize fest, except she died of cancer a couple years before the prize was awarded. it's a real flame war starter among science types, the attribution of this discovery. some say watson was less than honest about the work.

[Merrick]

8. Yes, I was going to mention that in my post

but I didnt want to detract from the boastability of my encounter (naturally). I've also heard that both were quite the little chauvenistic skirt chasers.

[miss_kitty]

11. well i didn't mean to detract from your post

and i should say-i would be VERY excited to meet, run into or just walk past Watson on the street myself! :)

[liontamer]

9. are you at CSH?

[Merrick]

10. No - UC Irvine

in a mitochondrial genetics lab

[liontamer]

12. how do you like the area?

I'm thinking of doing my post doc(which won't be for years) around there.

[Merrick]

13. Irvine blows

Its a town built like a country club designed with nothing else in mind but for yuppies to nurture their real estate investments. There's no intermingling of residential with business zones so you have to drive everywhere to get anything, and every business is in a cheesy up-scale strip mall or mega mall where for every 1 acre of store there's 5 acres of parking. And of course to keep up the aesthetic there are zero liquor stores, zero bars and like 3 gas stations in a town with zero public transit and a population of 150,000.

Which is why (other than it costing an arm and a leg for the privilege of living in such a place) I live in Long Beach (where its pretty cool but there is no science industry)

Your from New York? hehe, my friend who lives in Irvine (who's Bosnian and spent 3/4 of her life living there but is now basically stuck in Irvine because she has a daughter who she doesnt want to uproot from her school/life) just came back from NY and said it was like returning to prison. Poor girl.

So anyway, its just my opinion, but I'd steer clear of Irvine- and Orange County for that matter, but a lot of Los Angeles is cool (its a diverse place with a lot of niches), as is some of San Diego or Santa Barbara (if you're looking for something more laid back)