Besides, it has a cool name

The genome of a very common bacterium has been sequenced, and it has only 1354 genes, and apparently none of the redundancy or clutter of the human genome. Pelagibacter ubique doesn't have the smallest genome known, but the smaller ones sequenced are all from obligate parasites. P. ubique floats in the ocean--everywhere in the ocean--billions of billions of individuals.

ETA: That name translates as "Ubiquitous ocean bacterium", if that counts as "translation".

Besides, it has a cool name

The genome of a very common bacterium has been sequenced, and it has only 1354 genes, and apparently none of the redundancy or clutter of the human genome. Pelagibacter ubique doesn't have the smallest genome known, but the smaller ones sequenced are all from obligate parasites. P. ubique floats in the ocean--everywhere in the ocean--billions of billions of individuals.

ETA: That name translates as "Ubiquitous ocean bacterium", if that counts as "translation".

Concatenations of circumstances

When I saw her the other day, adrian_turtle livredor [1] gave me a copy of Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, which I'm partway through. A few pages back, the main characters are described as eating karfouzi and spitting out the seeds. I'm fairly sure Michaels meant that choice of words as a bit of distancing, both reader from characters and characters from Toronto, which they had recently moved to.

Instead, I thought of papersky, who always refers to watermelon by that Greek name. Indirectly, this led me to buying a quarter watermelon this evening, and thus to not buying a crate of clementines (I was walking home from the supermarket; each is heavy, and I didn't feel up to getting both, especially as I also needed onions and a few other things).

I will eat that watermelon and think fond thoughts of the people I love and the largeness and complexity of language and interconnection.

[1] Sorry about the confusion.

Concatenations of circumstances

When I saw her the other day, adrian_turtle livredor [1] gave me a copy of Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, which I'm partway through. A few pages back, the main characters are described as eating karfouzi and spitting out the seeds. I'm fairly sure Michaels meant that choice of words as a bit of distancing, both reader from characters and characters from Toronto, which they had recently moved to.

Instead, I thought of papersky, who always refers to watermelon by that Greek name. Indirectly, this led me to buying a quarter watermelon this evening, and thus to not buying a crate of clementines (I was walking home from the supermarket; each is heavy, and I didn't feel up to getting both, especially as I also needed onions and a few other things).

I will eat that watermelon and think fond thoughts of the people I love and the largeness and complexity of language and interconnection.

[1] Sorry about the confusion.