Evolving

     "Be careful.  That's eighty below zero!" the Wizard said.

     Gingerly I moved my gloved hand among the pellets, lining up the canisters and trying to ignore the arthritis and carpal tunnel pangs in my right arm.  Even through the double layered gloves, I could feel the biting cold, trying to eat its way through the fabric.  I did very little else and soon grew bored at holding the lid while the Wizard worked.

     "Could I touch the stuff from the large metal tank?" I asked.

     "No!"  This rebuff warranted his kind but steely gaze and a full stoppage of his work.  "That's liquid nitrogen.  It's two hundred below zero.  Your hand will burn and freeze instantly!"

     The Wizard was an Evolutionary Biologist who had been offered a prestigious position at a research university in another state.  I was helping him move.  Despite my weekday job in the American bureaucracy, I have no shame in following the Ancient Hebrew admonition (paraphrased, of course):  "Learn to work with your hands as well as your mind."  Still, I have to question the validity of my having completed college just to wear a collar that reverses frequently from white to blue.

     "We have to transfer these containers from the freezer to the coolers and make sure that they have plenty of dry ice around them" the Wizard continued.

     "What's in them?"

     "These are samples from hundreds of varieties of sharks.  I've spent most of my life acquiring them."

     "From where?  Fish stores?"

     "No.  I captured them myself."

     As we (actually he) continued to work, he regaled me with his adventures, of his travels to all of the continents including Antartica, of his fascination with American social mores and traditions, of his upbringing in Africa.  On that last point, I can honestly say that he was kind, authentic and perhaps as non-colonial as a White man can get.  I suppose that devotion to the origin of species can make one appreciate all of Mankind.

     Still, the canisters, boxes and sealed vials of shark DNA fascinated me.  I made some offhand remark about sharks and live birth.  This earned a mini-lecture about differing gestational models, of how different species of sharks reproduce, ranging from live births to internally laid eggs to even same sex cloning.

     I asked:  "Does that have anything to do with why they have been around for so long?"

     "Exactly!" he exclaimed, growing more excited.  "The reason why sharks have survived is because they are so adaptable!"

     After a few hours I returned to my rather mundane life.  In the grocery store I heard people talking of the poor economy.  On NPR I heard the usual litany of woes.  On the internet more of the same.  This is not our first economic downturn, nor will it be the last.  The greatest difference, however, is the amount of information we now have at our fingertips.  With this onslaught of data we can either drown or adapt.

     Cue the background music from the movie JAWS...

Always B Positive