The Long Tail of Life

Saved for future reference from kottke.org:

the Long Tail of Life: During an 11 month study in 2007, scientists sequenced the genes of more than 180,000 specimens from the Western English Channel. Although this level of sampling "far from exhausted the total diversity present," they wrote, one in every 25 readings yielded a new genus of bacteria (7,000 genera in all).

See also: Venter sequences the Sargasso Sea (and download the dataset here!); a review on the emerging field of metagenomics; genomic databases at NCBI (sequences of everything from the human genome to three strains of ebola); Helicos high-speed sequencing; a nice powerpoint on next-gen short-read sequencing and sequence assembly (including notes on Eulerian walks on De Bruijn graphs, the method used by sequence assembly algorithms like Velvet.) Man, guys, sequencing is the coolest.

Hubble Advent Calendar

The 2009 Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar.

The sublime moves; the expression of a person experiencing the full sense of the sublime is serious, at times rigid and amazed. On the other hand, the vivid sense of the beautiful reveals itself in the shining gaiety of the eyes, by smiling and even by noisy enjoyment. The sublime, in turn, is at times accompanied by some terror or melancholia, in some cases merely by quiet admiration and in still others by the beauty which is spread over a sublime place. The first I want to call the terrible sublime, the second the noble, and the third the magnificent. Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a terrifying way.

The sublime must always be large; the beautiful may be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful may be decorated and adorned. A very great height is sublime as well as a very great depth; but the latter is accompanied by the sense of terror, the former by admiration. Hence the one may be terrible sublime, the other noble.

A long duration is sublime. If it concerns past time it is noble; if anticipated as an indeterminable future, it has something terrifying.

(on the Beautiful and the Sublime.)