genomeboy.com

The play’s the thing:

For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.

Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?”

Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”

I was trying to embed the recent Charlie Rose show featuring George Church, Steve Pinker, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki…epic fail on my part. (UPDATE: Jason succeeds). In any event, you should watch it.

Meanwhile, here’s your consolation prize :

How will the poem be encoded?

The poem can be most easily encoded by assigning a short, unique sequence of nucleotides to each letter of the alphabet, as Wong has done. But I want my poem to cause the organism to make a protein in response — a protein that also encodes a poem. I am striving to engineer a life form that becomes a durable archive for storing a poem, and a machine for writing a poem — a poem that can survive forever.

Despite my snarky title,  I love that the poet Christian Bök is doing this (subscription only). Anything that defies people’s deterministic ideas about DNA and serves as a bridge between the two cultures is something we should be open to. That said, once this microorganism mutates for a few zillion generations, Bök’s poem could become gobbledygook…or worse.

Zen has also helped him to learn to “stop whining,” Mr. Cohen said, and to worry less about the choices he has made. “All these things have their own destiny; one has one’s own destiny. The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

Maybe I’m a sucker for methylation, but when it comes to interpretive dance as a means of explaining one’s dissertation, my vote goes to “The role of folate in epigenetic regulation of colon carcinogenesis” by Lara Park of Tufts University.

You can see the rest here.

Mark Ptashne, whose book we looked upon as The Bible of Gene Regulation when I was in graduate school, is featured in a New Yorker article on violin collecting:

He owns a Gyro Swing golf club, which whirs as it responds to his swing and vibrates when he doesn’t keep his left arm in the right position. And—his great passion in life—he owns and plays and lends out violins, two of which are artifacts of the most exacting craftsmanship. He began playing during his adolescence. “They say you can’t really learn at that age,” he said. “Like so much else ‘they’ say, that’s bullshit.” He has made a creditable CD to prove it. And he started a company, Genetics Institute, mainly in order to make enough money to buy one of his treasures—a Guarneri del Gesù. He now owns quite a few other fiddles yet is at pains to make it clear that he is not a collector but a musician and a devotee.

Pardis rocks!