For Sale: One Nobel Prize Medal (Slightly Used, By Francis Crick) 179
Hugh Pickens writes "UPI reports that for the first time in the history of Nobel Prize, one of the Nobel Prize medals, along with the diploma presented by the Nobel committee, is on auction — with an opening bid of $250,000. Awarded to Francis Crick, who along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 'for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material,' the medal will be auctioned off in New York City, by Heritage Auctions. The medal has been kept in a safe deposit box in California since Crick's widow passed away in 2007 and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Francis Crick Institute of disease research scheduled to open in London in 2015. '"By auctioning his Nobel it will finally be made available for public display and be well looked after. Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Crick. "My granddad was honored to have received the Nobel Prize, but he was not the type to display his awards; his office walls contained a large chalkboard, artwork and a portrait of Charles Darwin."'"
Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Funny)
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You just divided by zero, OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:4, Informative)
A fraction involves two integers.
True.
0 is an integer
True.
so 0/0 is a fraction.
False.
The denominator of a fraction must be nonzero. A fraction is a number. N/0 is never a number, regardless of the value of N.
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You can express it as the limit of 0/x as x->0. Since your numerator is 0, you end up with 0 from both directions and there is no inconsistency.
Generally only mathematicians care :)
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Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, Crick was a bit of a git anyway (and Watson wasn't exactly what you might call a gentleman). They basically stole someone else's unpublished scientific work to confirm their own data (mainly, it has to be said, because she was only a woman) and without which they'd have ended up with entirely the wrong model. They were loathe to credit her, even after her death, even though others did.
Not saying they *didn't* do a lot of the work, but without her observations, comments, and years of working on data, they'd have been lost for quite a while longer than they were.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. It's pretty low to get all worked up about Watson & Crick's asshattery... and then not mention the individual involved.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it was just some chick after all.
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Also never credited for her inventions of the stove, electricity and mints.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
This claim is, at best, controversial. Some people say that Rosalind's lab partner Maurice Wilkins gave her unpublished work to Watson and Crick without her permission; Watson and Crick say that it was in fact officially released by King's College. I'm not aware that Franklin herself ever stated that she had been robbed. Wilkins was included in the Nobel prize; presumably Franklin would have been also had she still been alive.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware that Franklin herself ever stated that she had been robbed.
According to wiki and whoever they cite, she probably wasn't aware her data was used [wikipedia.org] and died before she would have found that out.
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It's also worth noting that Francis Crick wished to give Rosalind Franklin greater credit, but didn't due to the personality conflicts between Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/11/03/rosalind-franklin-and-dna-how-wronged-was-she/ [scientificamerican.com]
Moreover, she became great close friends with Watson and with Crick. But sheâ(TM)s unlikelyâ"if in fact she felt they had stolen her discovery. She must have known that they were using her data because there were no other dataâ"her data are acknowledged in Crickâ(TM)s paper. And again, in the second paper he published in Nature a month later. What prevented Crick from giving a much fairer acknowledgment to Rosalind Franklin in the original Nature paper, which he wished to do, was that he to negotiate this with Wilkins.
So in his original draft is, he says, "We thank Rosalind Franklin for her beautiful uh photo of DNA," which makes quite clear that this was what he was relying on. Now, at Wilkinsâ(TM) suggestion he crossed out the phrase "beautiful photo." So it was not an adequate acknowledgment but it was a very different story than stealing her discovery, which is the way it has been portrayed.
Elkin: Nicholas, you are absolutely right. There was an earlier, more accurate acknowledgment. It wasnâ(TM)t to Franklin, it was to Wilkins and Franklin and it did say "very beautiful photographs" which only meant Franklinâ(TM)s. And Wilkins was the one who crossed it out. There are actually six drafts. Very interesting to see that.
And also to see how weak, false, even the first two or three were, before Wilkins got it to decimate it more compared to the draft they wrote about the first model, where they very very clearly acknowledged Franklin.
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Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the family of Dr. Crick reexamined the value of a Nobel Prize when a Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Barack Obama
What exactly is the problem with you people who can't tell the difference between the Nobel Peace prize and the prizes for Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine? What makes you think the two categories have anything to do with one another, either administratively or politically? They could give the Peace prize to Bashar Assad this fall and it would still have zero relevance to the worth of the chemistry prize.
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You mentioned Obama's Peace prize, not me. If you think the controversies surrounding various science prizes devalue the award, you should have said that instead of pointing to irrelevancies. I'm guessing you had never heard of these other controversies until you Googled them just now; they're generally of interest to science geeks and ignored by the general public. (Except for the time when Damadian made an ass of himself - buying a full-page ad in the NYT tends to attract attention.)
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Moving those goalposts around must be pretty tiring. Why don't you take a rest?
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Did you read them? All four of the chemistry ones are related to controversies about whether (all) the right people were properly credited for important advances. Did this person's work constitute the discovery, or was it this person who really launched the new field? None of them are on par with vagueness or political motivation of the peace prizes, which have been given to attempted coup leaders, terrorists, random people like Obama and Al Gore, for popularizing global warming.
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Good point, and furthermore, while some of these controversies are not without merit, there is zero evidence that any of the science prizes (at least within my lifetime) were awarded for political reasons, unlike the Peace prize. (Some people have claimed that Raymond Damadian was denied the prize because he's a young-earth creationist, but I think it's more likely that we was denied it because he'd pissed off too many people in general.)
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kissinger, like him or loathe him, actually DID something on the world stage BEFORE he got the award including the actual negotiation of peace accords, even though the accords ultimately failed to succeed.
Obama was a not even inaugurated President-elect whose main achievement was being in the U.S. Senate for a couple of years and having one kickass campaign PR team.
You can make a good argument why Kissinger was overrated, but I was absolutely stunned that Obama got an award not even for trying to bring peace, but simply promising to do so.
The Peace Prize is definitely a different category of award than the others, and it has a tendency to become political due simply to the subject matter, but they used to at least point to actual work or achievements, the quality of those actions admittedly being up for argument.
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None of the Nobel committee's failings are Obama's fault. He was stuck accepting a prize any reasonable man would rather not receive. It boils down to a bunch of Europeans infatuated with a new magic negro.
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Agreed. I don't believe that the award reflects on Obama himself. If they gave me the award, I'd scratch my head, but probably accept it. I mean, why not?
Still, it does reflect on a new, and pretty serious low for the award selection itself, because when it comes down to it, Obama had not done much more than any normal person specifically for the cause of peace. There are numerous movie and rock stars who have done demonstrably more concrete things for peace than Obama had done at that point (and potent
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> I mean, why not?
Well, if you think the way the award is being given is not ok.
It's certainly been done with Nobel prizes in the past, including the Peace Prize (admittedly, there are only two instances of people refusing a Nobel of their own volition).
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He was stuck accepting a prize any reasonable man would rather not receive.
I would have had tremendous respect if Obama had refused the prize and insisted that they give it to somebody more deserving.
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It's simple, really. He was awarded the prize as a gigantic, "fuck you, good riddance" to the Bush Administration.
It doesn't say anything good about the award or the institution. In fact, I imagine that Obama would (privately) say the same.
Re:Portion of the proceeds? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet head of state and dedicated communist who conducted the final stages of the Cold War against the U.S. and other NATO countries, received the prize in 1990.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War, you mean? Do the words "perestroika" or "glasnost" ring any bells?
Yes, he was a leftie, but he genuinely sought out peace.
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In many ways the Nobel Prize has become somewhat of a joke, even if one were to discount the award presented to President Obama.
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I agree on most points, but I'm pretty sure almost no one is going to pay money to look at a Nobel Prize.
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This Slashdot story paid for by Heritage Auctions ... hoping that at least one Slashdot reader has $250K to drop.
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Yup, I think the same thing. It would be interesting to do some research on the granddaughter and see exactly where she is in life, and to find out exactly how much she plans on "donating" and how much she plans on pocketing. Cause stunts like this always seem shady to me.
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It's hers to sell. She shouldn't have to justify it to you or anyone else. You're an ass for suggesting that she should. Being neither a member of the family or the Nobel comity, it's none of your damned business.
Auction House Cut (Score:2)
Could just be legalese to the effect that the auction house usually takes a percentage, but who really knows.
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250000 can buy more than a car in the driveway. Would you rather have grandpa's Nobel Prize than, oh, a college education? Or an expensive medical treatment?
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Then again, I'm not sure how that's would even be a possibility considering that college education you have in mind should cost that same $250k.
I think the thing to keep in mind is somewhat more akin to what jooromancer conveying. If grandpa didn't care, then do what you will, but realize that it can't be undone. If grandpa did care, then at least TRY to honor those wishes rather than piss something so valuable away on
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However, I did want to add something. I think this person should be able to spend her money on whatever she wants. After all, it is hers. We might still gossip about it, but it's hers and if she wants to buy $250000 worth of rubber duckies then so be it. I'm sure the rubber ducky manufacturer will be quite happy
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Would you rather have grandpa's Nobel Prize than, oh, a college education? Or an expensive medical treatment?
If you have a quarter of a million USD you don't need a college education. You can just retire right out of high school.
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1/4 million at 5% generates $12,500/year in income. You'll be living like a fucking king.
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That's more than I make now albeit only slightly. Lots of people make less than that. In fact most of the world makes less than that. Far, far less. And you can live like a king on that much in many places. Nice places too. You just have to leave the womb to do it. Of course if someone wants to spend their whole life as a wage slave corporate lackey company man only to be fired when they get over the hill then that's fine, but when you've got a quarter mil it's a choice not a necessity. Very, very few peopl
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Personally I would rather have grandpa's NOBEL FUCKING PRIZE on my mantel than some bullshit car or boat in the driveway
Another wealthy slashdotter who seems put on this earth for the sole reason of making me feel poor. The only thing you can think of to do with a quarter of a million dollars is buy a boat, or even more improbably, a car? How about a fucking house?! Or how about enough money to live on without working for the rest of your life? I know being rich warps your perspective, but please at least try to realize that most of the rest of the world is thinking more in terms of food and rent and basic survival than buyi
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Sucks to be you. You seem to think 12.5K is big money.
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Well to most of the world it is big money. And, actually, $12,500 really does seem like a lot of money to me as well. You can buy a half decent new car for about that much. And as an annual income it's actually not too bad even in the US. More than minimum wage I think.
Maybe compared to you it does suck to be me, but what can I say? Just that we can't all be rich. Someone has to clean your toilets and follow your barked orders with downcast eyes. Still, I don't envy all rich people. Some have awful jobs th
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Crick didn't need to sell it, as he could get paid fairly well.
He had the only reserved parking spot at the Salk Institute. His car had the greatest personalized plate in history: ACTG
Well through 2003-2004 he frequently attended grad students' and postdoc's seminars. Asked good but very tough questions.
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Well, family should respect the wishes of their deceased.
This is by no means a universally held belief. I tend to think that the wishes of someone who is dead are irrelevant -- because once they're dead, they're not in any position to care about it anyway.
Sure, I'd probably hang on to grandpa's Nobel Prize too -- but I don't think that their family has some moral obligation to do so. Maybe they feel that the knowledge that their ancestor won the prize is of more importance than the physical artifact.
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Wha'ts wrong with it? How is this different from selling the family house after the parents are deceased? Or selling the vintage auto that dad took so much care of? Or selling off the antiques that have been in the family for generations?
A medal's not too big though. So the choices are either to keep it in a drawer forever, give it to someone else, or sell it to someone else. If you can sell it and much of the money goes to support the institute, then that's a good thing. If you can keep some of the m
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Wha'ts wrong with it? How is this different from selling the family house after the parents are deceased?
I think the objection is not to the sale itself, but to the alleged motive for the sale. Selling one's inheritance is not objectionable, unless you do it under the pretense of funding a philanthropic institute with "part of the proceeds" to get the sales price higher.
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Wha'ts wrong with it? How is this different from selling the family house after the parents are deceased?
I think the objection is not to the sale itself, but to the alleged motive for the sale. Selling one's inheritance is not objectionable, unless you do it under the pretense of funding a philanthropic institute with "part of the proceeds" to get the sales price higher.
Exactly. This. It's just so bloody disingenuous. If I want to give $50K to charity, I'll give 50K to charity. But I sure as hell won't pay someone 200K just for the privilege of being allowed to donate.
Sell, or donate. It's as disingenuous as the bottles of stupidly overpriced designer waters that advertise themselves by saying they will give a penny to building wells in Africa for every £3 bottle you buy...
How much for the chalkboard? (Score:4, Funny)
I'll give you $50!
Here's an idea for a portion of the proceeds (Score:2, Interesting)
Award them to the relatives of Rosalind Franklin.
Donate to the Rosalind Franklin Society (Score:5, Insightful)
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Start up a kickstarter and I'm in.
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Seconded.
"available for public display"? (Score:3)
Are they restricting the bids to museums?
I see no where that private individual cannot buy this to add to their personal collection.
Stephen Colbert should buy it (Score:5, Funny)
That way, he'd be able to claim that he's a Nobel-holding doctor, rather than just a doctor!
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Screw Stephen, Sheldon's got his eyes on it!
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Sheldon would never buy someone else's Nobel. He's going for his own, obviously well-deserved award.
Auction Link? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a link to the item, it is being auctioned off by Heritage Auctions: http://historical.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=6093&lotIdNo=50001 [ha.com]
Re:Auction Link? (Score:5, Funny)
Just in case there are other Nobel Prize winners looking to sell, there's a link of the page labeled "I Have One of These to Sell."
Free parking at UC Berkeley (Score:2)
Hey, what about makerbot? (Score:3)
Poo on buying the medal: they should release the CAD data so we all can download and print our very own 3D copy.
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I've had that idea for awhile, and we've got a high quality 3D printer at work.
Michael Mann (Score:3)
Perhaps Michael Mann would be interested [examiner.com].
Prize Money? (Score:3)
This medal belongs at the Eagle pub (Score:3)
Corpus has the money; it could afford it. It's historically relevant, and I could think of nothing better than to hold a raise a pint in their honour.
And then maybe chase it bitterly with a bottle of Jack Daniels, in tribute to young Miss Rosalind Franklin from whom they stole so much.
A gift is a gift (Score:2)
First Nobel auctioned? (Score:3)
Francis Crick - LSD use...? (Score:2)
why would anyone want this at all? (Score:3)
Why would anyone want it? It's not like they can somehow borrow the achievement that earned it by having it on their mantelpiece. Well I guess they could try to change the name to their own and tell anyone who will listen that they received a Nobel prize. What does the prize look like anyway? Maybe the granddaughter can just write in the name of the auction winner with magic marker or something. Maybe for 300,000+ she would be willing to cross out the other names as well so that you don't have to share the prize. I can't picture the kind of person who would want someone else's Nobel prize even for free let alone for 250k. It's sort of like buying someone else's university diploma.
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Re:For sale: All Nobel peace prizes. (Score:5, Informative)
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Once upon a time, someone *might* have argued that they both had to be earned, and not handed out lightly or for political purposes.
Re:For sale: All Nobel peace prizes. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not worth even that, after Obama got his for sustaining war, torture and murdering own citizens.
Well, he got it for being elected, if they want to give him a prize for sustaining war, torture and murdering own citizens then they're going to have to give him another.
Tom Lehrer famously said that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I think it's been more or less a joke since well before that.
Though it is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee which has different standards and values to Karolinska Institutet or Swedish Academy of Science.
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Wasn't Nobel the guy that invented TNT explosives?
Yes there are non-military uses for explosives, but still. Since the inception it seems a bit skechy to me.
Probably saved a lot of migrant worker lives who didn't have to use a glass vial of nitro for mining I am sure, but then also used to blow up people in times of war also. Could say the same about atomic research I suppose. It is all about how it is applied I suppose.
However somethings are a little more "peaceful" than others.
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I'm amazed you know that much, and yet are apparently still so ignorant. The idea was that dynamite (NOT TNT; they aren't the same thing) and the other munitions he invented would be a terrible thing to be remembered for (an obituary accidentally published prior to his death did in fact make a great deal out of his works in the field of armaments (calling him "the merchant of death"). He established the prizes, donating the vast majority of his estate to the purpose, as a way to further the causes of progre
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Not sure as to why you think I am ignorant. TNT and dynamite are clearly the same thing, AC/DC said so.
As for the rest of your post about creating a "peace prize" so that he wouldn't be remembered as a "Merchant of Death" only proves my point rather than refuting it.
As to how stabalized explosives makes war too costly, I am not sure how that really works. It is essentially a safer way as far as a delivery system to transport a big chemical explosion somewhere (well safer anyway but not foolproof as seen in
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There are many personal pet projects in the Peace Prize committee, Obama and the EU was trumped through the group by Jagland.
(EU is at least a worthy contender, regardless of the current status, though the timing is of course right.)
The way I understand the Obama prize, Jagland interpreted the will with emphasis on the inspiration towards peace efforts, a property which Obama is ascribed in most of Europe. So when people ask what Obama did to deserve it, the answer is that he inspired the masses in a way be
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Re:Vegas Trip (Score:5, Funny)
You're right. It's unique and pretty neat. There's a great story to it. But it's not everyday that someone comes in to the shop looking for a Nobel Prize. It's gonna take up space on a shelf for years.
Re:Vegas Trip (Score:5, Funny)
I have a buddy who's an expert on Nobel Prize for Medicine medals. Let me give him a call.
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Next time, he should check.
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LOL. Maybe the crick in his neck distracted him from checking?
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The typo is in TFA as well, so I'm not sure proofreading would have helped. It is, after all, quite possible her name actually is Kindra Check (it isn't, I checked).
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Maybe they haven't cricked, erm CHECKED it thoroughly.
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That's why I called out Hugh Pickens as well. After I double checked to make sure I was correct. This is some sloppy shiznit, because we're doing the job that the editor is supposed to be doing. Hugh may very well have made the original error, but it should have been caught by Timothy.
*shakes head*. I don't know. After more than a decade as a slashdotter, I may just have to ask to have my account disabled and move on. This is just pathetic.
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The Timothy correction bot is hard at work - two errors I have noticed in today's posts have been corrected within minutes of each other. Yet no post of thanks from Timothy for noticing the discrepancies. I'm depressed.
Re:They can't be worth that much (Score:5, Insightful)
This is totally not off topic, Obama's Nobel metal for not being Bush degraded the reputation of all Nobel prices.
Re:Scientists, sheesh. (Score:5, Funny)
Crick may have been a brilliant microbiologist, but he certainly doesn't know shit about business.
Well, to be fair to Dr. Crick, he's been dead since 2004, so knowing much of anything is probably a pretty big challenge for him.
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If he was a really brilliant microbiologist, death wouldn't have stopped him.
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Naw... Zombies don't need marrow. It's when you're reanimating skeletons that you need to start thinking about that. Not that I'd know, because I don't practice the dark art of necromancy.
(Igor, do you think I got away with that, or do I now need to unleash my undead hordes on the Slashdot readership?)
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Modern economics is all just made up as we go along. Ever increasing house prices? Sure, why not! High risk loans? Yeah, no problem. It we break a million almost-definite-to-default loans into a million tiny little pieces, there's absolutely no risk!
And many claim it was modern economics that sh@t all over democracy at the last UK general election. Minority government? Oh no, that would be bad for our credit rating, so the LibDems signed up to government that they (and more notably their voters) didn