I'm up in Ann Arbor, doing a little mathematical modeling of gene regulation here at the U. of Michigan.

On my way to find some Chinese food, I stumbled upon an amazing book store called Dawn Treader. Always in quest of finding old paperbacks on my list of post-apocalyptic sci-fi (I've been intending to write more about a little science and post-apocalyptic fiction project I've been working on; unfortunately my days are limited to 24 hours), I went in and found a treasure trove of sci-fi, especially from the 30's-70's.

Here's my haul, at $2-3 a piece:

When Worlds Collide - Philip Wylie&Edwin Ballmer, 1932

Nature has put up some free pieces on syntehtic and systems biology on their Synthetic Systems Biology Web Focus. Unfortunately they haven't made it all free, but you can go read this one: Five hard truths for Synthetic Biology.

The conclusion? Complex biological systems are hard to deal with:

Jeffrey Shallit takes down creationist nonsense about information theory in Stephen Meyer's latest creationist offering, Signature in the Cell:

In Signature in the Cell, Meyer talks about three different kinds of information: Shannon information, Kolmogorov information, and a third kind that has been invented by ID creationists and has no coherent definition. I'll call the third kind "creationist information"...

And why they make a lot of money, according to The Economist:

Via Nobel Intent: A man with the non-existent but increasingly believed-in electromagnetic sensitivity disorder is suing his neighbor to get her to shut off her wi-fi and stop using her cell phone.

Apparently, fluorescent lights and dimmer switches are bad for this guy too.

Unfortunately, this guy is going to need to shut off a lot more if he's really sensitive to electromagnetic radiation: TV signals, radio stations, and the sun: