By STEPHEN FRY - GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Added: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:00:00 UTC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/stephen-fry-endangered-species


I first met Douglas Adams some time in 1983. I can't imagine what we actually did for the first seven months of our friendship – twiddle our thumbs and yawn, I suppose – but at last, in January 1984, the first Apple Mac was launched, and from then on we visited each other every day to swap and play. Our interests for the next year or so centred entirely around inanimate electronic equipment and its habit of not working – if we gave the natural world a second thought, it was when we looked out of the window and wondered if a thunderstorm was brewing. Lightning strikes could cause a power outage or even a spike or surge in the line that might damage our precious toys. So much for nature.

Time passed. One day, much to my surprise, Douglas went off to Madagascar on a peculiar journalistic mission that had to do with a rare species of lemur. On his return I began to notice an alteration in my reliably geeky-nerd companion. He read Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker and gave me copies, telling me that my life would be changed. Which it was. What Niels Bohr said of quantum mechanics is true of evolution: "If you're not shocked then you haven't understood it properly."

I had been sharing a place in Dalston at this time with a group of friends from university, but we were now at the stage where it was possible to consider splitting up and buying our own flats and houses. I wanted to find a place in Islington, but also felt that I needed time to look around and wait for the perfect property. Perhaps I should rent first? I offloaded my tedious residential worries on Douglas one afternoon as we sat in his study staring at a Mac and wondering, for the thousandth time, if we could stop it going "boing" and closing down whenever we tried to do something unusual with it.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/stephen-fry-endangered-species

TAGGED: BIOLOGY, EARTH SCIENCES