Life of a Lab Rat

The elder pawn (hmm, that sounds vaguely Lovecraftian) wanted to take her bicycle into school today. Turns out they're doing a project on machines. She asked if I had ever taken the back off a washing machine and when I said I had, she said

'Wow! What did it look like?'

I told her why I had taken the machine apart (to find out how it worked so that I could mend it) and from there went on to say actually, that's what I do at work. No, not mend washing machines — I take things apart to see how they work. I did not use the phrase 'the very fabric of Life' (I was tempted; that kind of thing does not faze nine year olds as much as you might think) but we did have an interesting discussion about dissection and atom bombs and all sorts of groovy stuff.

Of course that kind of discussion over breakfast sets the tone for the day and I (again) started wondering 'why?'. So when I read that one of the guys over at Lablit.com is feeling a bit discouraged I was already primed. I'm going to talk more on the discouragement later, but for now I just want to say I know why we do it.

A non-scientist probably would have a hard time understanding the last line (before the comments) of tideliar's latest results. I understand perfectly, and so would any other scientist. We love taking things apart, we love the thrill of finding out stuff that has never before been found, we even embrace the pain in the disappointment and disillusion. Why?

Because it's a drug.

We are addicted. This draining, destructive vocation calls to us. We can not help ourselves. There is a kind of emotional scurity in the work we do, and despite the lure and bright lights of industry or journalism, we keep coming back to our first love.