February 2012
4 posts
3 tags
5 tags
1 tag
Coolest Global Warming Ever
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog
Just a quick one…a link to a wonderful site I’ve just, to my shame, come across. A detailed graphic imagining of a globally warmed world (called Dubia, after George Dubya…)along with a bit of biological speculation by Chris Wayan.
And here, as a taster, is Europe…looks great, huh? This is what the world outside the library looks like, no...
January 2012
5 posts
4 tags
Beginning with M
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog
http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/video/lecture-series/changing-world/stem-cells A while ago I blogged about thinking of genomics in terms of things beginning with “M”. Memory was in there…so was machine…so was “mastery”. The above link is to a lecture given at Edinburgh University by Professors Siddharthan Chandran and Charles...
The Fact of Totality
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog
In the play I’m going to write, which is going to be called “The Fly Room”, the characters are the inhabitants of a total library. Like in the legendary Library of Alexandria (of which this is a 19th Century German engraving of an imagining thereof), all the wisdom of the ages, including all the genetic information, is stored in one place,...
Brother, Can You Paradigm?
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog
I asked very early in the residency about whether or not this thing called “genomics” represented what’s called a paradigm shift. This is the confirmation of a scientific idea or principle that fundamentally alters both the general frame of ideas and the daily practices of science and was coined by Thomas Kuhn in his “Structure of Scientific...
3 tags
This Is The Way The World Ends...not with a bang,...
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
H5N1 is a strain of bird flu. Scientists in Wisconsin and Rotterdam have just proved its future transmissability between mammals by repeatedly infecting a chain of unfortunate ferrets, and the virus has evolved along the way, like viruses do. This hellish material now exists in a new strain that is airborne and can pass from mammal to mammal. This research is...
December 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Rare
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
This is an illustration of the Drake Equation, which is a mathematical model that has been used since the 1960s (when CETI was set up) to calculate the number of intelligent life forms “out there” who might have something they wanted to say to us. Even a brief hello…or maybe something in exchange for the transmissions of the X Factor...
3 tags
The Tree of Knowledge: Before the first preview
From Jo Clifford’s blog:
I tell myself there’s no need to be frightened. Or nervous, even… At the start of the week, there were two days of technical rehearsal that were the calmest and most creative I have ever experienced. Everyone was working together so well. As if making up a new theatrical language as they went along - incorporating the text with the set with the lighting with...
10 Small Songs About Everything
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
1 At the heart of Lived and illusory experience Is the feeling that there’s somebody watching That we’re apart from the things we are a part of That there are always two of each of us. That only one of us is us And he isn’t even the real one. 2 Our ancestors became objects of worship So very early on, Because it is unsettling that the dead Stay present in our...
3 tags
In Search of the Great Money River - Bacteria that...
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog
Following on from the philosophical ramblings in previous posts, I think I’m ready for a case study of living in two worlds at once. The source of the story I’m going to attempt to reconstruct is James Watson’s racy and readable account of the making of the DNA business from inception to corporation (DNA : The Secret of Life Random House...
November 2011
13 posts
4 tags
Aristotle in the Cheeseshop
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
“Aristotle’s doctrines were a very strong and lasting influence in the history of the world because of their compatibility with observation. For us, as for Aristotle, it is the sun and the stars that rise and set…As we proceed on our daily tasks it does not appear to us that the Earth is moving at high velocity. If we...
2 tags
Queequeg's Coffin, or The Lifeboat
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
Before I get going, I want to think about this image for a second. This was how it was chosen to “market” the project for sequencing the human genome. We are contained and confined and defined by it. That’s what it says. The gene is the essential us. Every branch of knowledge falls into its helical embrace. Shudder! Like every other...
2 tags
Breaking new ground: Jo Clifford's Rehearsal Diary
From Jo Clifford’s blog.
This is my second day back in The Tree of Knowledge rehearsals. It’s been an extraordinarily happy and productive day. Like all the others. We’re now at the stage where we all know the play pretty well; and we can all co-operate on the business of making the changes that need to be made to make it better. It’s such a joyful process. I’m struck by the extraordinary change...
4 tags
5 tags
Living in the Bacterial World
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
You recognize this fella? Sure, it’s the tree of life as sketched by Charles Darwin in “red transmutation notebook B” early in the 1840s. Famously, the words “I think” are clearly and charmingly visible up in the top left corner. Darwin was lovably and maddeningly diffident. Afflicted with afflatus, he was always reluctant to...
"Eyeless" in Aix
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog.
“This is What I See” becomes replaced by a question: “Is This What I See?” Cezanne famously painted the same views over and over, obsessed with changes in light and atmosphere. As this residency goes on, and as I obsessively ask myself, over and over, “What is Genomics?” - I go through a rotation of answers. It’s a set...
Rehearsal Day 2 for Tree of Knowledge
From Jo Clifford’s blog.
Early on in the play, a character says:
And do we? Know ourselves?
Let us use dialogue to discover!
That’s in a way what we’re doing just now. Or at least I am. Reading the play to each other, pausing to reflect upon it, and ask questions on what it’s about. Everyone asks me, reasonably enough, and I always answer. Or at least try to. But actually the truth is...
5 tags
"Not ashamed to be a theatre". Jo Clifford at Tree...
“The great thing about the first day of rehearsal is that I meet up with the people who somehow have to make all this happen.”
From Jo Clifford’s blog.
Writing plays, as I’ve always tended to do it, is a solitary kind of thing to do. Once the theatre’s commissioned me, I’m generally on my own. (I’m starting to find this quite an oppressive and unhealthy state...
4 tags
The Tree of Knowledge Goes into Rehearsals
From Jo Clifford’s blog.
It’s a solemn kind of occasion, going into rehearsal. I never quite know what’s going to happen. I want my contributions to be supportive and helpful, if they can be. Because life is so short and there’s quite enough suffering in it without adding more. It makes me blush to think how terrible I was when I first began. I didn’t know what to do. But...
8 tags
3 tags
"A beautifully told story." Kes review
Kes at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
Review by Rhianne Miller, who is working on a week-long placement at our Learning Department.
A beautifully told story unravels from a wonderful cast, capturing the hearts of many. The two man show gives an insight on fifteen year old Billy Casper’s life, and about his best and only friend, his Kestrel. As an older Billy, (Sean Murray) delves into and...
5 tags
Shh...You Know Who....
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
“Among its many roles during development, Sonic Hedgehog patterns spinal cord and limb bud tissue differentiation and controls midbrain and ventral forebrain neuronaldifferentiation” “The Sonic network functions as a genetic switch” ”Drosophilia hedgehog and Sonic Hedgehog, one of its three Mammalian homologs are canonical...
October 2011
7 posts
WatchAnd last a nice chat given in Edinburgh last year on the genome as Memory.
Peter will be discussing these videos at his open discussion workshop, Translating the Genome on Thursday at the Traverse Bar Cafe, 4pm.
More info here
2 tags
Watch
Thursday 27th October 4pm at the Traverse Bar - some things beginning with M we might talk about.
Just a few things to think about for our next wee chat. First, a TED talk on personalised medicine…the genome as Machine…Medicine…Material…all the Ms…
8 tags
Paddling Upstream at the Genomics Forum
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
Traverse Bar…4pm …Thursday 27th October! Back in April when I started this blog, I seem to remember claiming I had a handle on the Genomics…on the science…but was a bit less clear on what the Forum itself was about. The first part of the sentence wasn’t true, as it happens…I had a lot more very enjoyable reading and...
6 tags
3 tags
Adam's Tummy Button
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
Entirely contradicting what I said in my last entry that I’d be talking about this time, I’m going to put a bit of a footnote to my performance last week at the Traverse, where we were exporing the good old God vs Darwin chestnut once again. First by a bit of back reference to my previous residency at the National Library of Scotland and the...
3 tags
Start From Anywhere or All Roads Lead to Genome.
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
I haven’t posted for a week or so…partly because last week I was rehearsing and then performing my Men and Monkeys event…which went well, I think. But I’m not sure how much it tells me about what to do next. As witness my resorting to the appalling title of this post.
It’s just that the thing about this subject matter is that the...
Nice little #SalonProject preview in the... →
September 2011
11 posts
3 tags
Phew! Bang! Oops!
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
At 7.30 on Friday Sepember 30th I’m doing an event with actors about these gents here…an exploration of the seminal God and Darwin slugfest in Tenessee in 1925. These ornery, gallused old bastards are Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan - and we’ll be performing their words…and those of their fictional counterparts in the famous...
4 tags
4 tags
WatchRead Your Own on 22nd September
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
This is another recent TED talk I think is worth a gander…not for those who are already familiar with what is going on in the life sciences so much as for those who aren’t. Like almost everything else I come accross its a mixture of hype and caution for me…and it’s worth bearing in mind that this...
Stewart Laing on The Salon Project | Traverse...
4 tags
WatchGrow me a Robot, Skylar!
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
Just a quick one. I’m just starting to think about synthetic biology…and what I carried in my head as a definition of this was the idea of people building novel organic forms…like clones… Or chimeras…mice with DNA from other organisms…or with chunks of genomes missing…so we can test what...
5 tags
4 tags
The Epigenetic Book List
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
Six months ago, when I was young and the weather was actually quite good, I asked Steve Yearley, who’s the director of the Genomics Forum, for a steer towards stuff I should be reading. And he immediately named a book called “Genomes And What to Make of Them” by Barry Barnes and John Dupre. On dipping into this immediately and obviously...
5 tags
The Salon Project: #SalonProject personnel profile... →
thesalonproject:
salon project personnel profile 7
Alan McKendrick – Guide
I am a guide, and I aided the development stages of the Salon Project
I wake up in the morning, wash, and then I lie. Sometimes I write these lies down and have other people repeat them onstage, on film or set to music. Nice…
Some Slime Reflects at The End of Time
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
I’m just starting to get some notions about this play I’m going to write, and this has maybe got something of the flavour I’m looking for. At the End of Time, a single bacterium looks back: “What they used to call ‘life’ Began (apparently) as sickness When one decent, simple cell Like you or me A long time ago, got invaded...
6 tags
Why Do They Think Like that?
From Peter Arnott’s Genotype blog:
As I write, happily it looks like Nadine Dorries’ abortion amendement to the Health Bill is going nowhere…leaving us time to concentrate on everything else that’s pernicious about it.
But I wanted to take a sideways glance at the controversy and to ask: Why Do They Think Like That? Why does Nadine Dorries think that NHS clinics try...
August 2011
13 posts
13 THINGS I HEARD LAST NIGHT
Monday, 29 August 2011
13 THINGS I HEARD LAST NIGHT
On Friday 26th, I was at an event at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where the topic under debate was the Kindness of Strangers. How do we understand “the good” in an evolutionary framework? Taking part were Oren Harmon, author of the George Price biography I’ve been recommending (The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search...
1 tag
8.7 million and not counting by Peter Arnott
While Ken and Pippa are assiduously covering the book festival, I’m still in my garret dealing with basic texts. I’ve just finished a first draft for my Traverse Event on September 30th…”Of Monkeys and Men”…which is a re-examination of the famous Scopes Monkey trial in Tennessee in 1925…that got dramatised with great success as Inherit the Wind by...