The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.

...

Knowing the pattern, they were able to predict the placement of about 50 percent of the nucleosomes in other organisms.

The pattern is a combination of sequences that makes it easier for the DNA to bend itself and wrap tightly around a nucleosome. But the pattern requires only some of the sequences to be present in each nucleosome binding site, so it is not obvious. The looseness of its requirements is presumably the reason it does not conflict with the genetic code, which also has a little bit of redundancy or wiggle room built into it.

...

In the genetic code, sets of three DNA units specify various kinds of amino acid, the units of proteins. A curious feature of the code is that it is redundant, meaning that a given amino acid can be defined by any of several different triplets. Biologists have long speculated that the redundancy may have been designed so as to coexist with some other kind of code, and this, Dr. Segal said, could be the nucleosome code.

WOOT!

Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA - New York Times

A. ALPHA WORLD CITIES (full service world cities)

12: London, New York, Paris, Tokyo

10: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
B. BETA WORLD CITIES (major world cities)

9: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich

8: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo

7: Moscow, Seoul
C. GAMMA WORLD CITIES (minor world cities)

6: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, D�sseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington

5: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw

4: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich, Shanghai

GaWC - Inventory of World Cities

Card and his father, Alan, both operators of a charter fishing boat and experienced marlin fishermen, had just hooked the fish Saturday when it suddenly leapt out of the water, impaled Ian Card just below his collar bone and knocked him into the ocean.

Man hooks fish. Fish hooks man. Poetic justice.

Fish Hooks Man - Fisherman speared by blue marlin off Bermuda - Jul 24, 2006

The ABA group, which includes a one-time FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, said the president has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

"This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy," said the ABA's president, Michael Greco. "If left unchecked, the president's practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries."

ABA: Bush violating Constitution - Jul 24, 2006 - CNN.com

Territoriality in Collaborative Tabletop Workspaces

Casual piling of paper-based media during traditional tabletop collaboration is an important practice that helps coordinate task and group interactions. Previous research has shown that the ability to move piles around on a table plays a critical role in accessing and sharing task resources. However, existing casual storage techniques for digital workspaces only provide access to stored items at the periphery of the workspace, potentially compromising collaborative interactions at a digital tabletop display. To address this issue, we introduce storage bins, a mobile storage mechanism that enables access to stored items anywhere in the workspace. We also present an exploratory user study involving the use of mobile and peripheral storage mechanisms on a large, hi-resolution collaborative tabletop display. Findings from this study demonstrate the utility of storage bins and further our understanding of the impact of mobile and peripheral storage mechanisms on collaboration at a tabletop display.

In addition, current interfaces do not effectively support collaborative work at a tabletop display because standard interface components are not appropriate for large, horizontal displays. Consequently, the fundamental components of tabletop groupware interfaces must be reconsidered. New interface components and interaction techniques must be developed to provide the basic building blocks for tabletop groupware designers, analogous to the interface components used by designers of desktop systems (e.g., buttons, sliders, and drop-down menus), before effective tabletop groupware systems can be developed.

Territoriality in Collaborative Tabletop Workspaces - Innovis Research - EPS

Plug and Play Wall Display

While interest in large displays is growing rapidly, they are still not common-place. Significant technical knowledge is required to construct and maintain current display wall systems. Our goal is to make large tiled-projector displays essentially ‘plug and play’. We want a design that can be incrementally expanded and reconfigured at will. We want a software environment that is identical to a standard desktop computer, with no need for rendering clusters and special libraries. We have designed a display wall solution that meets our needs. With our Modular Ambient Display (MAD) boxes, a variety of high-resolution large display configurations can be quickly assembled. By integrating interaction hardware into each box, we have created a stand-alone interactive large display component. Our system permits experimentation not only with the wall software, but the physical wall configuration as well.

Plug and Play Wall Display - Innovis Research - EPS

When men spend the night in the same bed with someone else their sleep patterns are disturbed, even if they do not have sex. This leads to poorer performance in intelligence tests the next day, UK’s Daily Mail newspaper said quoting an Austrian scientist’s research.

Women, too, get disturbed sleep if they share a bed, but their mental ability is not affected. Professor Gerhard Kloesch of the University of Vienna and his team used eight young unmarried, childless couples for the study.

Holy fuck. She's making me stupid.

Share a bed makes men dull

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim - ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.

Positive Sharing » Top 5 reasons why “The Customer Is Always Right” is wrong

Suitable for a whole variety of uses and offering a perfect solution for just about every imaginable application - the pens and markers of the Lumocolor range are true standard-setters.

Thanks to the innovative ink technology, products remain ready for use at all times, even when really put to the test, and excel with their long service life and superb writing and marking performance on all kinds of different materials.

I've taken to using these for my scribbling/designing on a Vellum pad with artsie markers. These pens are the BOMB. S, F, M and B sizes, get them all!

STAEDTLER Lumocolor Pens/Markers

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

So I guess that means have unti Dec. 5 to finish Ulysses.

Amazon.com: Untitled Thomas Pynchon: Books: Thomas Pynchon