something very weird

 ....but weird in a good way

This was mentioned on Metafilter today (there's also an interesting short article on the "making of")

But it reminded me - I had all but forgotten this - but I have seen the video I linked below. Way back in, as far as I can remember, fall 1989, when I took Biochemistry. 

I took it through the med school at Michigan; we needed it for graduation with a BS in Biology, and our choice was a so-described "Keller Plan" version or taking it through the med school. 

Because I was busy (taking 16 credit hours, as I remember), I thought a self-paced class might be a bad idea - I'd get busy and put off doing units of it, and then have to be scrambling at the end of the semester to catch up. ("Keller Plan" is apparently a grown-up version of the old SRA reading plan that my teachers used when I was a kid in the 70s, and while I LOVED it then (and blew through the whole box before Thanksgiving in fifth grade), I knew I'd not be organized enough to learn biochem that way.

 So, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I trucked off (about a fifteen minute walk, as I remember it) to the Medical Campus, and sat in a big lecture room with people planning on going to medical or dental school, and took notes from four different profs, including one who brought in a roll of that acetate overhead-projector film - literally on a roller - and wrote with one hand and scrolled it with the other, and God help you if you couldn't write fast enough to keep up.

And then when we did protein synthesis, one day, the prof wheeled in a 16 mm projector and set up a film

And it was this.

Sit through the first three minutes of a very square 1970s era chemistry prof talking, then it gets freaky. 

 

 I'm not sure I could have learned protein synthesis JUST from this (I had already done the relevant reading). But,wow. Just wow. I rewatched it just now and sat there with my mouth open and a big stupid grin. It's so SILLY. And yet it works.And there's a joy there. (I'm not sure I accept the claim "I have to tell you, none of us were high for this" but maybe not everyone was....)

I sent it on to my (nearly 30 years my junior) genetics colleague to see how she reacts. I'm not sure if some of the stuff in that is regarded as inaccurate now (now that we've learned more). But it's definitely, as the kids say, a vibe.