Category: Curiosities of Nature

Gleick, master of science writing

The NY Times has a review of James Gleick’s new book, The Information:

“The Information” offers this point-blank characterization of its author: “James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and modern technology.” This new book goes far beyond the earlier Gleick milestones, “Chaos” and “Genius,” to validate that claim…“The Information” is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly.

Chaos and Genius are on my list of all-time greatest science books. If The Information is in their company, then this is going to be _the_ science book to read this year. I’m not sure what “aspirational reading” means, but The Information is sitting on my desk and I’m ready to savor it.

In the Beginning. . .or Icky Genesis Genetics

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
– Genesis 1:1-2 (King James Version – KJV)

And then he made humans, at least twice-ish[1]. Embarrassingly, he seemed to only make one family, which meant that when it came time for Adam and Eve’s son, Cain[2], to go looking for a bride, he was not going to go looking very far from home.

If you are not descended from a line of Egyptian pharaohs, now is the time to say “EWWW!” and start wondering why all of humanity doesn’t look like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Continue reading “In the Beginning. . .or Icky Genesis Genetics”

Vonnegut on science communication

Three people in a bar, talking about science:

“He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day,” the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. “Didn’t I read in the paper the other day where they’d finally found out what it was?”

“I missed that,” I murmured.

“I saw that,” said Sandra. “About two days ago.”

“That’s right,” said the bartender.

“What is the secret of life?” I asked.

“I forget,” said Sandra.

“Protein,” the bartender declared. “They found out something about protein.”

“Yeah,” said Sandra, “that’s it.”

– from Cat’s Cradle (p. 25 in the 1970 Dell paperback.)

Gene Logic: Finding your (micro)Identity

The secret to success in life is to find your identity, particularly if you are a cell. Achieving and holding an identity is the prime concern of life at its most fundamental, cellular level; it is the key to engaging in behavior which best meets the challenges and demands of the molecular thicket that is the environment of the cell. Life can downright bewildering on the micron level. An identity makes this world navigable. Identity determines how a cell looks, what it eats, and the company it keeps. It specifies what environmental signals can be received, and what responses those signals elicit. An E. coli bacterium metabolizing a favorite monosaccharide in your gut, a yeast cell looking to hook up with one of the opposite gender, a nerve cell in your brain primed for an electric response, that light-detecting rod cell in your retina, the myocyte harboring a molecular power train in your bicep, and a cancer cell gone rogue: each of these has at its core an identity that dictates its behavior.
Continue reading “Gene Logic: Finding your (micro)Identity”

Science vs getting a life

That seismic rumble you feel is 100,000 postdocs and grad students nodding their heads:

Goodbye academia, I get a life:

The ones I’ve seen thriving in Cambridge, apart from geniuses (there are a few), are the guys who cling to a simple ecological tenet: Find your niche, where you are indispensable, and keep it in your claws at all costs. This means basically that these people do always the same thing, over and over again, simply because it’s the lowest-risk option. I could have done the same (I was pretty skilled during my Ph.D. in a quite obscure but interesting biophysics experimental technique) but I thought that doing science properly was also about learning and broadening your expertise. How wrong I was.

You can imagine yourself what does it mean also for research in general: Nobody takes risks anymore. Nobody young jumps and tries totally new things, because it’s almost surely a noble way to suicide your career. Continue reading “Science vs getting a life”