Harry Houdini wanted
to live forever,
was skeptical of an afterlife
and figured the world would never remember a magician. Houdini
decided to force his way into history as the first airplane pilot
to have a three minute sustained flight over Australia. He made
what he thought would be the historic first flight over Digger's
Rest, in a Voisin in 1910. Although his pioneer flight is
remembered by Houdini nuts like me and recorded in aviation record
books, Harry didn't need to make the flight to become a legend. He
was wrong, he would be remembered for doing magic.
In my case, however, Houdini is dead right. I won't be remembered
for our magic act. Houdini was the Springsteen / Madonna of his day
and I'm the . . . well I'm the Penn Jillette of my day. I've
achieved a little notoriety* but, truth be told, I'd be better
off flying over Tasmania in a Voisin in 1992 to get famous.
So, this is my harebrained shot at fame
("I wanna live
forever").
I'm going to try to be remembered as the guy who answered the
question - "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I could
answer this in one word, save you all a lot of time, squeeze my
column into the margins of the zillion of mail order ad pages, save
part of a rain forest (making Sting happy), and have a 50%" chance
of getting it right on limited multiple choice, but for immortality
you need an answer in essay form of at least 689 words.
The journal Science and the New York Times reports that scientists
in Allan C. Wilson's laboratory have been doing statistical
analysis on the DNA of diverse races and running a computer (I told
you I'd get "computer" in) program to construct a genealogical tree
of us humans and bring us back to the mother of us all.
They call her "Eve," (get it?) a modern
Homo sapiens that lived in Africa
about 200,000 years ago.
Meanwhile in another part of the science world,
guys and gals are
breaking the genetic code and finding out what is where on that
wacky double helix.
By the time "2001, A Space Odyssey" and "20th
Century Fox" are really goofy names we'll have traced back our
ancestors and
broken the human machine code. We'll know what makes
blue eyes, curly hair and people who like Phil Collins. We'll be
able to look at some DNA and decide that it's human, and if we have
DNA that's very close to human but has a couple switches off we'll
be able to say, "This is not human." We'll just define "human" by
the DNA.
From there it's one small step to chicken. We will know the exact
DNA recipe for chicken (and even for things that taste just like
chicken). We'll be able to figure back to the "Eve of chicken" (a
Barry McGuire B Side). I contend that the mother of that
chicken-Eve had to be one mutation shy of the DNA that we have decided
means "chicken, just one switch short a chicken (I should be
remembered forever for the phrase "one switch short a chicken").
The way I figure it, the mother-of-chicken-Eve's double chicken
helix randomly mutated the one smidgen it needed and the "almost
chicken" laid the first real chicken egg. Ta-da.
I humbly (hoping
to make history) submit that the egg had to come first.
My microbiologist friend, Dave, says that my whole theory comes
from a deep misunderstanding of genetics. He's says I'm wrong. He
says I am "one switch short a chicken." Okay, let's see how long
he's remembered - this fool is betting his eternal life on the
chicken.