Dear Dr. Nucleus,

Once again this year, I was disappointed not to hear your name among the Nobel Prize recipients. This week it was announced that Doctors Phil Sharp and Richard Roberts received the prize for their discovery of 'nonsense' DNA.
Just what is 'nonsense' DNA? If DNA is indeed the blueprint of life, what does that say about us? Could that be the reason that in certain plays and movies the subject can be as serious as, oh, let's say a gang fight, then the actors suddenly burst into song? Does that explain our fascination with the royal family or the extreme popularity of expensive videos like "Sweatin' to the Oldies" with Richard Simmons?

Even if it does explain all that, why is it so significant? And how does it relate to the 'split jean theory?'

Stretchin' to the Classics
With my Morning Java,
Squeaky


and another reader writes:


Dear Dr. Nucleus

Recently I was bemoaning the lack (in my opinion) of quality radio programming on the central coast. In particular the high density of (gag) Country and Western stations. The person to whom I was sniveling asked if I had heard of the latest C&W sizzler, "High-Tech Redneck". This created an epiphany for me. It occurred to me that as literacy rates have fallen in the United States, the popularity of C&W has risen. I am deeply interested in your thoughts on this matter.

Signed
B. Fuddled

Dear Faithful Readers - Squeaky and Fuddled,

Hurray for you for keeping up with the Scientific world and exercising that gray squishy stuff inside your skulls. No, I don't mean boogers! I have read in a Scientific journal ("People Magazine") that 16% of the prisoners in our penitentiaries have IQs of 140 and higher. Think of that! If these smart crooks were let loose upon problems of the world such as finding a cure for the achy-breaky heart syndrome, well you cannot imagine what good might flow from this. Dr. Nucleus wants to endorse right here equipping prisoners with fully stocked laboratories, cyclotrons, and Tesla coils. Perhaps that program would need Federal funding and someone to administer those funds.

In all seriousness, however, the so-called "Country and Western" music has been a sick ploy to subvert and subjugate the youth of this country under the lash of that industrial giant, nonlaboratory grade ethanol. With the overt excuse of flushing tritium from their bodies, a noble and laudable goal, C&W fiends pour a mixture of alcohol, hops, and water --Brain Excising Ethanolic Ravager (B.E.E.R.) -- into their digestive tracts. Playing background "music" by such T-totallers as Willie Nelson, George Jones, and Boxcar Willie to drown out the anguished sounds of them retching as the effects of the noxious mixture finally makes it to what is left of their brain, these tight boot and tighter jeans wearers reel and stagger in arcane narcospasms. Even when they are blinded by the chronic effects of their imbibing ( "cotton-eyed" ), their fellow fiends ("Joes") hold them up to tramp out their tortuous tarantellas. Disgusting? You bet! Cheap hooch and hootchie-cooing are poor substitutes for the thrill of reagent grade ether and Scientific experimentation.

Later or sooner, the alcohol can even cleave the ties that bind our DNA together. This leads to "nonsense" DNA strands that code for wearing bolo ties and silver collar points on wash-and-wear shirts. "Split jeans" is their patois NOT for pants with holes in them (which every Scientist wears) but for tight clothing which leads an otherwise sane Scientist to forsake ("split") his laboratory. As in, "See that gal over there? She shore is wearin' split jeans." Forty-liter Stetsons are the final "crown of shame" that these unfortunate derelicts effect upon their spongy heads as a recognition sign for their cult of country. The country of the damned, that is.

As far as why we are fascinated with the royal family or Richard Simmons, I am afraid that even Science does not have an answer. I am sorry.

I'm gonna hire a wino to decorate the lab,
Dr. Nucleus