sophie's fair

Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. James D. Watson (c) Associated Press
Fruitful DNA Extraction (c) Exploratorium

"I used what I call the 'Gossip Test' to decide what I wanted to do. The gossip test is simply that whatever you find yourself gossiping about is what you’re really interested in." -- Francis Crick (June 8, 1916-July 29, 2004), Winner, 1/3 of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.

i am writing in honour of two gentlemen, dr. francis crick and dr. james watson whose scientific discovery made a great impact in the 20th-century. dr. francis crick passed away on 29 july 2004 at 88. even as a young boy, he was highly inquisitive, interested mainly in the nature of the galaxy, chemistry and how things were made of atoms. his parents, harry crick and annie elizabeth wilkins, presented their son a children's encyclopedia that contained extensive subjects, from history and music to science. drs. crick & watson met and hit it off at cambridge university where the two worked in the cavendish laboratory. it was in that same lab where they uncovered the structure of DNA. the intense friendship and youthful pranks they shared are fondly remembered by dr. watson -- one of which was a woman in a birthday suit marking dr. crick's 50th birthday.
the 'gossip test' helped with francis crick's decision to pursue his main interests which in the future would be called molecular biology. dr. crick inspired me to tackle the gossip issue here:

Pinocchio & Jiminy Cricket (c) The Walt Disney Co

psssst!!!
what is GQ?? Gentlemen's Quarterly? no, Gossip Quotient!
have we asked ourselves what automatically comes out of our mouths? where does our line of thinking lead us -- the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid or the neighbour's catastrophic lifestyle? "great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about things, small minds talk about other people."
we babble on what enthralls us, never mind if it's about the rest of the world as long as it's entertaining. the inclination to choose our conversation also has to do with numbers. we have more than 5 billion people on earth so the topic of people is broad and very diverse. the word thing branches out in 5 categories in accordance with roget's 21st century thesaurus: a thing could mean something felt or perceived, it might be an act or a deed, an aspect or characteristic, an idea or obsession, or it could very well mean personal possessions. the bible often referred to things as the stars in heaven (Gen 22:17) or the sands on the seashore (Is 10:22). well, how about ideas? how many quotes or simple thoughts can be constituted using only the english language? look into the pages of a book or dictionary and we'll get about 615,000 english words with the exception of technical terms and slang. phrases and thoughts summarize our ideas, no matter how ridiculous they seem.
whatever subject we come up with, it is up to us to make ourselves sound at the very least, interesting. perhaps even wait for the battery to die -- that is, if we could hold our conversation well.