ViroBlogy

Forty years ago today
Neil Armstrong was just learning to say
A giant leap for all mankind….

Apologies to messrs. Lennon & McCartney – but given my obsessive fascinations with (a) vintage rock, (b) outer space, I just HAD to do that.  One might also diffidently mention here the first decent musical commemoration of the first moon landing, which was of course “For Michael Collins, Jeffery and Me“, on Jethro Tull’s “Benefit” album.

“I’m with you, LEM
It’s just a shame that it had to be you
The mothership is just a blip
From your trip made for two…”

And, of course, added to this is the imperative from my professional obsession with inner space, and the vehicles that ferry genetic material across that: viruses, naturally!

Ten years ago, on the 30th anniversary, I included an interactive panel (called “The Virus as Spacecraft”) in my still-unfinished standalone multimedia teaching vehicle, “An Electronic Introduction to Molecular Virology”, commemmorating the date, and the fact that the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) looked exactly like a T-even phage, and why that should be.

Great presentation, I still think; made using a depiction of T4 coliphage as a machine (packed with floppy disks); official NASA images of Apollo spacecraft, Russell Kightley’s T4 pictures, and Linda Stannard’s EMs of T4, using the legendary “Illuminatus” multimedia suite (now a “legacy product”…B-(, with “In-a-gadda-da-vida” as the opening title backing track.  Ah, me….  I still use it, mind; it’s just that the Web is a much easier vehicle to use these days, and students’ access is SO much better.

But lest we forget: