

The Unsettling Beauty of Lethal Viruses - pseut
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/02/the-unsettling-beauty-of-lethal-viruses/

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samatman
Neither E. Coli nor the malaria plasmodium are viruses, which I'm sure is the
ignorance of the author rather the the artist. I'd expect better of the
Smithsonian.

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dthunt
For the love of god. It's the very first fricking sentence of the article,
too. I don't think I've ever quit reading an article so fast.

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chii
ignore the article, and watch the video near the end.

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nnq
...if you want to learn about the _true beauty_ of viruses, learn about how
they work, how their genetic code is written and "executed" to produce the
simplest and smallest possible viable replicator (though not an independent
replicator), grab a molecular virology textbook like [1] (it's not that hard -
you can skim a more general molec bio book like [2], which is written in a
style very friendly to all technically oriented people, including coders). Or
check out a really cool virology blog - <http://www.virology.ws/> (by one of
the authors of book [1]), though latest posts are more about politics and
social implications than cool basic science.

I have a feeling that von Newman would be extremely fascinated by modern
molecular virology if he'd be alive today, considering his interest for
minimal universal replicators [3]. _If you think about it, modern computer
science may very well owe its existence to von Newman's and Turing's interest
in mathematical models of life itself!_

(...if you want to learn more about the topic above, just google "von newman
universal constructor" or "turing morphogenesis" or "schrodinger what is life"
and start exploring, I don't want to spoil anyone's fun of finding out about
this for yourselves :) )

\--- [1] <http://astore.amazon.com/virologyws-20/detail/1555814433> [2]
[http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-
Alberts/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-
Alberts/dp/0815341059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360312028&sr=1-1&keywords=Molecular+Biology+of+the+Cell)
[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construct...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor)

