Three suggestions for beating the rush hour traffic in Baghdad

#1) Drive an armored Humvee.

#2) Tap horn.

#3) Don't be overly concerned about fender-benders.

The place to start is horizontal gene transfer (HGT)

Nature magazine:

The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.

Tracking the remains of Gondwanaland

Via BLDGBLOG, a recounting of an article I missed in the NYT about a month ago:

* * *

Throughout Venezuela, we read, there are dozens of sandstone mesas, or tepuis. These tepuis are "remnants of what geologists believe were the mountains of the ancient supercontinent known as Gondwana."

Added later: Recent flickr photos tagged "tepuis."

Newman

Here I am led at once to expatiate on the grandeur of an Institution which is comprehensive enough to admit the discussion of a subject such as this. Among the objects of human enterprise—I may say it surely without extravagance, Gentlemen,—none higher or nobler can be named than that which is contemplated in the erection of a University.

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1889 (I guess, or maybe sooner?)

U.S.A.

Over the years I've found myself brooding over this excellent trilogy by John Dos Passos:

amazon link

From the Wikipedia:

Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography, biography and fictional realism to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the twentieth century. Though each novel stands on its own, the trilogy is designed to be read as a whole. Dos Passos' political and social reflections in the novel are deeply pessimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States, and few of the characters manage to hold onto their ideals through the First World War.

Strangely, when I brood over Emerson, I always pull it off the shelf to reread it.

Dos Passos stays on the shelf like an unsolved puzzle.

Maybe I'll reread it.