Dear Marion, 

Thank you very very much for your impromptu essay:
"How Genetic Information Dictates Protein Structure"
It's not in the least critical or derogatory when I
recognize your thought as consummate Platonic idealism.
Plato might have made a dialogue of it, - so why
shouldn't we? - Plato couldn't have been more eloquent
about the submicroscopic drama that plays itself out
in our bodies, - or is it our minds ? - and in the
light of the intellectual satisfaction which you 
obviously derive from contemplating and describing
the idealized world where deoxyribonuclease reigns and
supported by legions of servant messengers and ribosomes
and enzymes governs the destinies of literally trillions
of living creatures, Plato will surely forgive your
naughtiness in getting a kick out of the mundanity -
dare I say vulgarity - of the Minnesota State Fair, and
so will I.

My own intellectual efforts have been exercised on a
level far less august, both intellectually and morally,
while I try match wits with the cunning and cruel lawyers
who have crafted the booby-trapped labyrinth of the
Internal Revenue Code for the taxation of decedent's
estates. It's an arduous and dangerous business, made
no easier by a well-meaning chorus shouting at me:
Get an expert. Hire an expert. We know that you don't
know what you are doing, since we don't know what we
are doing. But I proceed nonetheless, because I get a
kick out of trying. Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
hat Schiller gesagt, nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein.

Jochen