biotext.org.uk

In reflective mood, because it’s the end of the year, and prompted by some biographical reminiscences on Charlie Stross’s blog, I just found the contact details for my FidoNet BBS in an old nodelist from 1995.

Happy new year, everyone.

From his Guardian column…

First, Wikipedia’s level of accuracy is remarkable considering its eclectic provenance. And second, readers should always question the veracity of what they read and the motives of whoever wrote it, and in the internet age more than ever. People who allow themselves to be made credulous by stylish typesetting and a serif font are screwed. And if Wikipedia, while being very informative in most cases, teaches a few lessons about questioning sources, then that’s all to the good.

Followed by a quality anti-Tory tirade for good measure

Abishek Tiwari has put together a nice annotated list — thanks

Quote of the year so far…

They [creationists] always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.

Some very clever dudes at Scripps have demonstrated mutual self-replication of a pair of RNA enzymes. They observed evolution of more efficient enzymes, and recombination, providing a proof-of-concept for the RNA World hypothesis. Wired article here or original paper here (probably requires a subscription).

Paulo Nuin is collecting a list over at FriendFeed.

EDIT: Not just bioinformatics but anything with a life-science perspective.