Under a Blood Red Sky

The sunsets here in LA the past two nights remind me of the storyline from “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. I read it in one sitting on a flight back here. Creepy. (I also ordered his book Blood Meridian.) My best wishes go out to my neighbors to the North and South.

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I am eagerly anticipating getting to read Venter’s new biography (A Life Decoded: My Genome—My Life). I also found some interesting archived speeches from the TED conference. A few notes from Venter’s speech:

Microbes make up about half the Earth’s biomass
Animals make up 1/1000 Earth’s biomass
Each mL of seawater contains 1 million bacteria
Each mL of seawater contains 10 million viruses

I’m pretty sure the number in LA bay is a bit higher. Ick.

And the always controversial Richard Dawkins, “The Universe is Queerer that we can Suppose”:

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