So this weekend was no big deal. I ran a 5k and had lunch with the guy who isolated serotonin. I achieved all of my running goals: beating Heidi, 24minutes and that cocky looking older guy who looked like a Cary archetype.
The meal proved to be an interesting insight into the field of chemistry, or really science on the whole. Science is advanced in a sequence of educated guesses and lucky turns. The path to that most famous of neurotransmitters began with rabbits ears and cows blood. Giant vats of cows blood filtered with cheese cloth. (Meredith wouldn’t stand much of a chance of being part of PETA and still hanging out with her family.) Serotonin was originally researched as a vascular constrictor, the effect of which was quantized by injecting the substance into a severed rabbits ear then measuring the flow of the drops on the return.