Standing Stones Before They Stood (In LEGO)

One of my favorite TV documentaries is the History of Britain series hosted by Simon Schama. It's rewarding to watch multiple times, and I hardly think that about anything on TV. But what could make it even better? That's right, LEGO.

Here's a History of Britain series (no direct relation to Schama, I don't think) done entirely in LEGO. Truly eductational toys at multiple levels. Personally, this particular one makes me think of Brave for several reasions:

Thanks once again to the Brothers Brick for the heads up.

A Music Box Made of Planets

"Natural" music doesn't often sound very musical -- except once in a blue moon. Here's some that does. This example of "natural" music works, and even makes a point. The astronomer Alex Parker put this together by assigning different tones to six different planets observed circling around a distant star (the Kepler-11 system), as explained on the YouTube notes:

Here, I’ve taken each transit seen by the observatory and assigned a pitch and volume to it. The pitch (note) is determined by the planet’s distance from its star (closer=higher), and they are drawn from a minor 11 chord. The volume is determined by the size of the planet (larger=louder).

Even my untrained ear can tell the tones never converge or coincide, they keep plinking along like raindrops, and so this music shows that the planets never come together into "orbital resonance". It's just doing it with music rather than numbers. Or numbers as music, that's more like it. I think someone should expand this and maybe combine it with DNA music. (A challenge for the next generation of composers!)

"Why Are You Putting So Many Chemicals in Your Food?"

Most chemists' pet peeve is the label on food that says "chemical-free." Last I checked, most food was made from atoms, and all food is therefore made of chemicals. Nathan Myhrvold researched chemistry and food, published the five-volume, beautiful (but inaccessibly priced) Modernist Cuisine, and in much briefer form summarizes the counterargument to the "chemical-free" label here. My favorite part is this connected article in which he opens up his pantry and tells you what chemicals are in there and why. There's a recipe for chemical-laden grilled cheese if you like.

I sense some biochem exam questions coming on ... but what do you do if you run out of sodium citrate? It's not like you can run over to your neighbor and ask for a cup ...

New Protein Science Publication

Protein Science is one of my favorite journals, so I'm doubly excited to have a publication accepted by it. I'm also happy with the long list of student co-authors on this one; it was really an amazing team effort. The article was accepted only a short while ago and it's already online. Here's the link to the official abstract.

LEGO-Builders of Catan

So what if the cool 3-D version of Settlers of Catan costs more than $1000 if you're lucky enough to find one? Build your own out of LEGO! (Unfortunately it may cost about that much to buy all the specific bricks ... but it's still incredibly cool.)

See more detail and other photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ltdemartinet/7462222332/

Thanks to Brothers Brick for the original link.

Book Review: Evolution: A View From the 21st Century

This was like going to a scientific seminar with a high-profile speaker that you knew was going to be good, and when it was over you realize it was REALLY good. (If you've never experienced that, it's one of the consolations for years of Ph.D. study, and it's a nice feeling.) James A. Shapiro wrote this book to argue that evolutionary change is not only much less gradual than many biology textbooks insist, but it's also directed by the cell and therefore has the hallmarks of intentional engineering. I am most excited about Shapiro's willingness to re-introduce teleology into evolution, and there are many threads and references he drops off that I will follow up for my own chemistry-based angle. I have a few comments, not even really criticisms: basically he ends up downplaying the single-mutation mechanisms to the point that the general reader may not even know that those exist, and he spends so much time away from the protein level that he neglects a few examples that sort of coincide with his thesis but involve the dreaded single-mutation type change (in particular, I'm thinking of Susan Lindquist's work on the way heat-shock proteins can "buffer" destabilizing mutations during normal times, allowing for more rapid change in times of stress -- if this was among the 1000+ references, I didn't see it). But honestly, this book is not for the general reader, even though Shapiro makes some faint stabs in that direction. You really need a master's degree in a related field to read this book. But I've seen biology slowly moving in Shapiro's direction, especially with the observed large changes of DNA that are not small or incremental. Another minor quibble is that he insists on going after Darwin as being wrong, when Darwin's mistakes were perfectly understandable, and, like a blurb on the back says, Darwin would have been excited by this book. It's not about Darwin, it's about role of randomness and a possible role for intentionality (and therefore order). It's about whether biology is just a branch of thermodynamics or if there might be something more to it. And it's exciting to have all of this evidence in one place, especially for a chemist like me who didn't know, for example, how plant biologists make new species (by hybridization, not small incremental change). Shapiro is definitely onto something here, and I look forward to seeing this story continue to unfold. By the way, this book is all the things The Signature of the Cell wanted to be but wasn't -- including right.

Book Review: What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

This collection by Nathan Englander may be enough to get me to regularly read short stories. Almost half of the stories were outstanding, and the rest were at worst very good. I figure a short story deserves a short review of its own, so here goes:

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank": Starts out like the story I expected, in which four Jewish parents meet in a house and talk, but quickly turns funnier, sadder, weirder, and more meaningful than I expected, with a devastating ending. (Would make a good play.)

"Sister Hills": My favorite, jumps through time with the relationship of two women who founded a settlement in Israel, and has incredible resonance and character. I don't know of a better story that simulataneously faces the paradoxical tragedy of these settlements head-on and yet fits it into the long Jewish story. Almost Biblical. This one was so good that I was slightly disappointed with all that followed.

“How We Avenged the Blums”: Sort of run-of-the-mill growing-up-Jewish story, but it gets a lot right that Inglourious Basterds got wrong, and especially, the last line is perfect.

“Peep Show”: Outlandish and dream-like, but I'm left wondering what the point is. The setting is a stroke of brilliance.

“Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side”: This one didn't even make much of an impact on me. Maybe because it didn't translate well to audiobook.

“Camp Sundown”: This is more like it, with a bizarre set of circumstances at camp and guilt underlying the farce. A little too bizarre, actually.

"The Reader": I found this one exciting because part is set in the old Elliot Bay Bookstore, and it uses the setting very well. But otherwise it seems a bit like Englander's version of one of Stephen King's "write about being a writer" stories, and I just don't get that genre.

“Free Fruit for Young Widows”: The third outstanding story (after the first two), again with a strong historical grounding, and the one that is most directly about the Holocaust, after that tragedy is hanging around outside the windows in each of the other stories.