When I was in school, biology was one of the dullest classes I had to endure.
Pointless experiments with Bunsen burners and peanuts, long drawn out processes that you had to learn by rote and videos on autopsies of smoker’s lungs is what I remember most.
In fact the most exciting thing was when our teacher vanished mysteriously for a period of six months and we had a replacement teacher.
On maybe the third lesson we had he with him he was late. Another class had over run, no problem, time to doodle and relax. However as I looked out of the window I saw him on the second story of the block of class rooms on the other side of the playground. He was very slowly approaching the stairs. The stars were white steel framed with blue rubber treads with embossed circular bumps the kind that had gaps in between the steps so you could see through to the bottom. He got to the edge of the stairs and stopped. After a long pause, he tightly clutched the banister rail and put out his foot as if he was about to step off the edge of a skyscraper or precipice. He slowly lowered his foot and as it touched the next step, he suddenly crumpled and desperately grasped at the railing on the side then he quickly turned around and on his hands and knees crawled quickly off back through the glass doors of the stairwell. I never saw him again. To this day he may still be there, crippled by what one must assume was a terrible case of vertigo. Anyway. He was nothing like this guy:
Fuck me. If biology had been this interesting when I was in school, I may well have actually listened rather than ignoring it to pursue a career in programming and advertising.
I can’t wait for the stage when we as engineers and software developers get some kind of higher level language abstraction to play with and start developing out own organisms, that we can then send off as code to some lab in China or India that will produce the DNA in dish and send it back to us. Then I can watch it grow in to the giant Killer monster I always dreamed of that would destroy this world and help me build a new civilisation. Or maybe, I’d just like to create some glow in the dark grass for my back garden.