Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • The Odyssey - Emily Wilson translation

    I have just finished Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of The Odyssey and I can see what Keats meant. I felt I'd seldom read anything which more clearly supports the idea that "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there".[4]

    I had studied The Iliad at university and of course I knew the story of the Trojan war from its prominence in everything from children's storybook versions of the classics to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, but what I knew about The Odyssey could have been written on a Post-It note, so I went into it with few preconceptions. In particular I had decided not to see the Christopher Nolan film which is currently in cinemas.

  • Another Death Notice

    Via Facebook, from one of the profs who ran the research lab I was associated with: the admin assistant in charge of grad studies when I was there has passed away. Not young - in her 80s now - but still a little sad. She was kind and calming. I remember her English accent. Bottle-blonde hair, always in an up-do. The constant smell of cigarettes.

  • my elephant and I

    my elephant and I 
    are listening to the trains again
    wondering what stories 
    do the travelers carry
    what are their reasons 
    to sleep across the country
    and when will this room be empty
    and us two
    on our way to adventur
    

  • amazing prompt for making recipes

    I am sitting here eating a vaguely Mexican-inspired bowl of assorted sauteed vegetables, beans, and spices that looks weird but tastes amazing.

  • my little battle cry

    within the context of the song, this verse is -- of course -- an expression of love and devotion, of the subject's willingness to put their own life at risk to protect someone they cherish. as of recently, though, in a weird way, it's become a sort of private little battle cry for me.

    I've struggled a lot with anxiety; over the years it has caused me to miss out on a lot of life. I've gotten better at getting past it, but it's still a very real obstacle, a little battle I have to fight every time I journey out of my comfort zone; something I'd been doing quite a bit in the recent times.

• Technology and Free Software

  • An Introduction to Systems Biology: Simple Regulation Model

    To explain again my interest in this subject: after reading the first paper by Truman, et al on "Cells Are Integrated Multiprocessing Analog Computing Devices", I am now able to see a connection between biological systems and analog computing, the latter being something that I know a lot about. In some correspondence with Dr. Truman, he recommended some additional study material, and I was able to get a copy of "An Introduction to Systems Biology Design Principles of Biological Circuits" (2nd ed.) by Uri Alon.

    Alon is clearly not a Biblical Creationist, and he assumes in the book that evolution is true and a process involving only random chance, in contrast to the processes of human engineering design. Yet, the fundamental goal of his book is to demonstrate that biological systems are highly modular "biological circuits" with input, output, and feedback, which are remarkably similar to human engineered systems, even though in the biological systems there is no actual intelligent engineering. There is, supposedly, only tuning of the network parameters (e.g., promoter production rates) due to "selection pressure".

  • Hill Function

    I'm working through An Introduction to Systems Biology (2nd Ed.) by Uri Alon, as part of my studies in the idea of modeling cellular systems as analog computing circuits.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Digging a little gopher hole

      There's no reason for anyone else to care, but I've been playing with my new account on sdf.org. I've been using linux for a few years, but even so it's a learning curve: similar enough to look familiar, different enough to be confusing. I'm getting there, though. My first "gopher hole" is up and running. I'll share the link below, even though there is nothing really there to see yet.