8.9.08

Pot Noodle

The boy that amazed you.
The date that got you.
The hands that shared you.
The tears that burst you.

The wonder you shared –
now the public eat it,
using spoons, forks, hands.

This is too sweet. From Corpoetics. Found poetry from the websites of well-known brands and corporations.

via Design Observer.


4.9.08

I Met the Walrus

Required viewing, via Presentation Zen.

A 14 year old Torontonian corners John Lennon ca. 1969 in his hotel room. Set to animation some 38 years later by said kid, the 60s peace movement is invoked.

There is no Us and Them

Two very cool talks that have already been out for awhile on TED:

Hans Rosling: Debunking Third-World Myths with the Best Stats You've Evern Seen



Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty and Live Around the World


Adaptive Evolution?

Somehow the article isn't available yet, but this is an advanced Epub on PubMed of a paper in Am J Hum Gen:


Adaptive Evolution of UGT2B17 Copy-Number Variation


Xue Y, Sun D, Daly A, Yang F, Zhou X, Zhao M, Huang N, Zerjal T, Lee C, Carter NP, Hurles ME, Tyler-Smith C.

The human UGT2B17 gene varies in copy number from zero to two per individual and also differs in mean number between populations from Africa, Europe, and East Asia. We show that such a high degree of geographical variation is unusual and investigate its evolutionary history. This required first reinterpreting the reference sequence in this region of the genome, which is misassembled from the two different alleles separated by an artifactual gap. A corrected assembly identifies the polymorphism as a 117 kb deletion arising by nonallelic homologous recombination between approximately 4.9 kb segmental duplications and allows the deletion breakpoint to be identified. We resequenced approximately 12 kb of DNA spanning the breakpoint in 91 humans from three HapMap and one extended HapMap populations and one chimpanzee. Diversity was unusually high and the time to the most recent common ancestor was estimated at approximately 2.4 or approximately 3.0 million years by two different methods, with evidence of balancing selection in Europe. In contrast, diversity was low in East Asia where a single haplotype predominated, suggesting positive selection for the deletion in this part of the world.

Of course this sounds pretty interesting but, from the abstract alone, their title already seems quite lofty. The major beef is if you show polymorphism in both populations, but there is less variation in copy number in one, does that mean it's really adaptive? If you don't know what the function of the gene is, can you call something adaptive? It seems that they actually have a locus which has one of the many hallmarks of positive selection (or a sweep) but that's a long stretch from saying it's adaptive. Out of interest this comes from the same camp as the amylase adaption paper, which was generally well received but is not without it's own faults.

Buddhism broadcasts

I came across some free Buddhist related recording on iTunes. One is a segment from the PRI program To the Best of Our Knowledge. It's part of the East Meets West series and is titled Dharma Days, Yoga Nights. The fist segment is a thoroughly annoying interview with the thoroughly annoying author of Eat, Love, Pray. Basically I'm very much turned off by people who persue a spiritual path and then run around telling everybody about what they have experienced, that's a major sign that they haven't actually gone anywhere, no matter how many clicks they log. I would recommend Cave in the Snow if you are interested in a memoir about following the Buddhist path from a Western female perspective, it's written by Tenzin Palmo who was one of the early Westerners to travel to Tibet. But there is a pretty interesting piece on Dharma Punx, the story of Noah Levine. I think most Western Buddhists will already understand the connection between Punk and Buddhist thought it. That is if you know that punk is not about wearing mohawks and Buddhism is not about smiling all day.

The other thing I stumbled upon is a course at Berkeley, Psychology 107: Buddhist Psychology, taught by Eleanor H. ROSCH. There are now 2 tracks available and if you can get past the banter about being registered for the course, I think she will eventually get to some interesting topics. The couse doesn't assume you have a good understanding of the different schools of Buddhism, which I think is a bit disappointing. I could imagine it would be useful to make Intro to Buddhist History a prerequisite course instead of trying to give a brief history lesson and psychology lesson at once. But I guess the course is geared towards Psych majors and not Religion students.

Anyroad, the last thing to mention is that iTunes has an amazing amount of material freely available, and I don't just mean music podcasts. Check out iTunes U on the frontpage left-side menu. You can find lectures from many universities.

Authors @ Google

On the Talks@Google YouTube channel:

Salman Rushdie
Barack Obama
Noam Chomsky
Michael Shermer
Craig Venter
James Watson
Alex Ross
Junot Diaz

Plus literally hundreds of other people who I have no clue about.

2.9.08

Schriften für jeden Geschmack

Veer markets their typefaces in Germany: