Humpty Dumpty

This morning my (almost) two-year-old daughter thrice discovered the results of disobedience.

In the first case she took her chocolate Easter bunny out of the Easter basket after I told her to put bunny and basket back in the refrigerator. She dropped the unfortunate confection; it broke in two; and she burst out crying. Of course I pointed out to her that it would still be in one piece if she had listened to daddy—

A little while later she brought to me pieces of her mother’s work (cell) phone, which she knows quite well is off limits to her.

“It’s broken,” she said.

She had managed to remove the battery cover, upon which the battery had fallen out. Of course she did not know how to fix it. Daddy put the phone back together and after appropriate disciplinary measures, my daughter resumed playing.

Not so long after, the same little girl came to me, a big crocodile tear rolling down her cheek, and confessed, “the cover came off the ABC book.”

“OK, Mary,” I said, “where is it?”

When I found the book and cover it was clear what had happened. The outer paper cover had been glued to the insides of the back hardback cover and had been ripped off, taking strips of the paper that had been glued to the inside of the hardback cover with it.

Now my daughter has been warned repeatedly about taking the covers off of books, and she was generally saddened by the destruction of a book she liked. I took the opportunity to explain again the consequences of disobedience. It often causes good things to fall, come apart, and be broken. After my lecture, which little doubt did more good for me than it did for the precocious toddler, she helped me glue the cover back on the book, and then we read it together.

Motor Mouth

Walking in the woods you come upon a sports car. The sports car has a powerful working motor, which upon testing can be used to propel the vehicle to great speeds. Now, who in their right mind would believe that the powerful motor, let alone the car, had come to be by chance? Everyone would conclude that the engine was designed to propel the car.

The Rossman (T4) Motor is a powerful molecular machine that packages DNA into the head segment of some viruses during their assembly. According to Michael Rossman, its discoverer, parts of the motor move in sequence like the pistons in a car's engine, progressively drawing genetic material into the virus' head. This motor is proportionally two times as powerful as an automotive engine. Like an automotive engine it is a complex machine that works for a particular purpose, packaging DNA.

In many ways the Rossman motor is like the automotive engine of a sleek Sports Car found in the forest. It thus seems reasonable to conclude that the Rossman motor, like the automotive engine found in the forest, was designed to fulfill its function.