Preamble
A self-confessed molecular biology geek, Mesk has spent the last year attempting to make a mutant rodent as one part of the Honours year of his Bachelor of Medical Science degree. The other part of his project involved taking blood from more than 700 elite athletes and 450 healthy controls, extracting their DNA, and figuring out whether or not they had a particular sequence variation. He should really be writing his thesis right now, as it's due in about a month, but don't worry - he has a backup plan.
Mesk's writeups are purely concerned with molecular biology, because he doesn't remember how to write about anything else. Sometimes, when he's trying to get to sleep, Mesk hears the sound of automatic pipettes and watches coloured dye fronts lazily migrating through the agarose gel of his mind. Occasionally Mesk wonders whether he should really have subjected his rather fragile sanity to what has been undoubtedly the most stressful year of his life. Writing about himself in third person, he reasons, is probably a very bad sign.
Update (18th Nov 2002): Mesk finished his thesis a couple of weeks ago, and appears to have survived with his mental faculties more or less intact. He may even have done quite well.
What Am I Doing Here?
I could very well ask the same of you. This is my homenode, after all.
Oh, I see - you mean what am I doing on Everything2? Well, to tell you the truth I'm not entirely sure. I came here thinking this place was like some big encyclopaedia, and I wanted to share my meagre knowledge for the sake of praise, posterity and maybe even just a little selfless desire to share knowledge for its own sake. I guess that's still pretty much what I'm doing here, although my perception of what E2 is has broadened somewhat. In my brief time here I've learned stuff and laughed outrageously, been amazed, disgusted and saddened, done many silly newbie things, worked hard to put together a few good writeups (and a few shite ones) and, amazingly, been rewarded for my efforts (see below).
Fundamentally, though, I guess I'm here for the same reason everyone else is: To try, in some small way, to turn E2 into the place I think it should be. In my case that means creating factual writeups, because I think E2 should be a massive, readily searchable, accurate and self-correcting storehouse of all human knowledge. Of course, other people see things differently, which is why E2 is also a crazy, eclectic collection of dreams, jokes, ideas and arguments. Thankfully there appears to be room for all these things, and in fact I think it is the combination of genres that makes E2 so cool. What other encyclopaedia allows you to find the facts you're looking for, but also takes you (if you so desire) along bizarre detours through some of the most interesting minds ever collected in one place.
Mind you, I'm just a newbie, so what would I know?
Latest Molecular Biology Writeup
Want thrills? Want excitement? Want big words like ribosome, and funky ASCII renditions of mRNA and protein sequence? If you liked codon or 5', you'll love open reading frame.