(urth) Short Story 5: Mountains Like Mice and the purple dye

[Marc Aramini]

I was driving to work and I had a DOH! moment.
 
Of course with the dominant metaphor of Mountains Like Mice (actually it's a simile, huh?) I should have realized WHY the main character is being dyed deep purple at the beginning.
 
My undergraduate degree is in Biochemistry; I remember starting every invasion assay of metastasizing cells or even any cellular research with a good purple dye like crystal violet stain so that you could see the cells under the microscope.
 
Since only the biological sciences or left, this staining begins the experiment.  The simile of Mountains Like Mice really does indicate that Dirk is the experimental factor being introduced into the biological environment.  
 
So the dye is just part of the scientific method for these cellular biologists on a macrocosmic scale.  
 
Neat, huh?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120328/6c11a090/attachment-0003.htm>