James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

Last Friday was dragon day on campus. So I thought I’d post a pointer to my new pictures on Flickr. What is dragon day? Basically it’s a way for students to blow off steam the day before Spring Break. The first year art students stay up all night building a dragon, which they then parade through campus accompanied by lots of students in costumes, finally burning the dragon in the middle of the Arts Quad. Meanwhile the rest of us, except the Engineering students, line the street and cheer as the dragon goes up in flames. The reason the Engineering students aren’t there to cheer is that they’re building a separate Phoenix as a challenge to the Art students. The Phoenix is very hit or miss, but this year it was a definite success.