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This is an excellent meditation on my thoughts towards value added, and our contributions to making the world a better place.

From Work to Text

Roland Barthes: a work is the final, fixed product, but the text itself is always fluid and malleable. The text is the content, but the work is the deliverable. Typography elevated the text to a standard form, a mass-produced version that links the content directly to the design, so that its spatial features are more permanent. With that, the two could no longer be decoupled, and each idea would now be linked to its form. Another thought: would the multiplicity of form that we find today now render that point moot? We are so overwhelmed by so many renditions of content that we are desensitized to its spatial presentation?

Typography humor

Having good controls is a good principle not just in science, but also in design and storytelling (or basically, life).

From Visual Explanations, by Edward Tufte

#tufte #design #controls #science #graphics #information

Inside each Ebola particle is a tube made of coiled proteins, which runs the length of the particle, like an inner sleeve. Viewed with an electron microscope, the sleeve has a knurled look. Like the rest of the particle, the sleeve has been shaped by the forces of natural selection working over long stretches of time. Ebola is a filovirus, and filoviruses appear to have been around in some form for millions of years. Within the inner sleeve of an Ebola particle, invisible even to a powerful microscope, is a strand of RNA, the molecule that contains the virus’s genetic code, or genome. The code is contained in nucleotide bases, or letters, of the RNA. These letters, ordered in their proper sequence, make up the complete set of instructions that enables the virus to make copies of itself. A sample of the Ebola now raging in West Africa has, by recent count, 18,959 letters of code in its genome; this is a small genome, by the measure of living things. Viruses like Ebola, which use RNA for their genetic code, are prone to making errors in the code as they multiply; these are called mutations. Right now, the virus’s code is changing. As Ebola enters a deepening relationship with the human species, the question of how it is mutating has significance for every person on earth.

The Ebola Wars: How genomics research can help contain the outbreak.

#ebola #new yorker #science writing #dna #rna #virus

In preparation for my train journey, I’m absorbing my way through various train-related literature.

First up: Different Trains, a piece by Steve Reich for string quartet and tape. Inspired by Reich’s childhood train travels between his divorced parents in Los Angeles and New York, the piece uses spoken word (gathered from interviews) and train sounds as the basis for the music, building melodies out of those pitches and rhythms.

I’d first heard of this piece in college, when the Chiara String Quartet performed it on campus. I sadly missed that performance (despite even interviewing the quartet and for my radio show!), but the name of the piece always stuck in my mind, and I finally opened it up a few weeks ago when I decided to take the long train ride home.

I think you’ll agree that it’s an absolutely mesmerizing piece, especially in the interplay between the recordings and the music. This was one of the first examples of recorded samples used in “classical” music, and Reich manages to meld everything together into something that is truly synergistic.

There are three movements, each representing a different time and place: the outer movements are America before and after World War II, sandwiching the middle movement of Europe during the war. In the first movement, Reich interviewed his governess, who had accompanied him on his train trips, along with a Pullman porter. The second movement features three Holocaust survivors, and all five interviewees come together in the final movement. The second movement also features European trains, which make noises distinct from their American counterparts.

One description I read somewhere likened this piece to a sort of documentary - an apt comparison due to its historical nature, but quite a stretch considering that it’s not explicitly informative. But then again, if we measure value not by informational content but rather by impact and impression, I think this would win.

#trains #steve reich #electronic music #holocaust #transcontinental #string quartet

Tiny Atlas Quarterly is a lifestyle travel magazine filled with rich, beautiful stories that show readers how it feels to be in the places you are interested in going as well as all the information you need to get there.

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Lake Geneva

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CAMDEN, ME Longtime acquaintances confirmed to reporters this week that local man Michael Husmer, an unambitious 29-year-old loser who leads an enjoyable and fulfilling life, still lives in his hometown and has no desire to leave. Claiming that the ...

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