Love in Space and in Shakespeare's Works

While in space in December 2006, Commander Oefelein received an email form Capt Colleen Shipman, “I will have to control myself when I see you.  First urge will be to rip your clothes off . . .”—now you know why the astronaut has to wear special protective clothes : )

The space suit is designed to be torn-resistant and fire-resistant as passion is ‘hot’ (heat-producing and fire hazard)

NASA has been criticized not doing a good job in monitoring the mental health of astronauts.  In my view, NASA knows their astronauts better and is very ‘considerate’ in allowing the astronauts to receive emails from their ‘loved’ ones when they are in space.  And the names of the ‘loved’ ones have to be pre-approved by NASA.

For those who are puzzled how this astronauts space love triangle could have happened, take hint from the Preface of Shakespeare’s Works that Samuel Johnson wrote in 1765:

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed and every action quickened or retarded.  To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony, to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow, to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed, to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist.  For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved.

From the evolutionary gene change to my childhood story

After reading the article about the genes regulating metabolism, Janice wrote, “Now that food is abundant, we’d have to override those formerly rational evolutionary impulses and tell ourselves not to eat all available food.  So restricting our diets is rational and irrational.”  I think she got my points.

We often lament how difficult it is to shed a pound or two, some, pointing to food, even said, “I put on 2 pounds just look at it!”  Each gene may have several alleles all with same function but some variation.  The process of burning glucose to yield energy (ATP) is quite complex with numerous steps, thereby involving many enzymes and genes.  Let me take you back to millions of years ago when cave was still our home.  Let assume there were 4 sets of alleles in the gene pools, each set of alleles (of genes) produces enzymes with different proficiency—judged by how many ATP produced upon burning of one molecule glucose.

Those with alleles 1 will have to burn twice as much glucose to yield the same amount of energy as those with allele 4.  Natural selection is about the ‘survival of the fittest,’ when food was scarce; the allele 4 is the fittest; and they survive to reproduce.

During my talk at Bible Class, I used an example comparing mom and me with those living in the cave.  There are two persons and 4 refrigerators / freezers in this house, not counting the small refrigerator.  Provided there is a big storm, we can survive for months without leaving the house, those living in the cave wouldn’t be so lucky; and only those evolved efficient and proficient genes survived over the eons.

Millions of people are still starving around the world. So the genes we developed over the long evolutionary history to make the storage of energy expedient and efficient and the expenditure of it economical are still favorable to them or even to me.  Let me tell my childhood story.

I really do not have to go far to use the un-developed or war-torn countries as an example.  I can simply use my own childhood story (This is something Jo wanted me to write; this was when I grew up in that village that Jo and Sean once visited. Janice and Joy never had the good fortune to do so.)  I vividly recall that all children in every household were excited for a feast, which is defined as ‘having a chicken on the table' on certain religious days; anticipation was on the air.  In those days all meats (pork or poultry) were so scarce and expensive; having meats on the table often signifies special occasions.  On special religious days all these ‘sacrifices’ had to be dedicated to Buddha or many generations of ancestors before we could enjoy it.

The eldest son of my eldest sister is only 5-6 years my junior and we all lived in that village and my sister’s family might join us for the ‘feast.’  Unfortunately a chicken only has two legs, so my mother often had to hide at least one leg for me and one for my younger brother, lest my sister’s son, Ming Hong, grabbed it.  My sister told this story saying how much my mother loved me!  And she didn't have the luxury to show her affection to her own son!

You can never imagine that there was much more love than protein in that little chicken leg.  Chickens were also lean and mean without much food available in those days