buzzy_hacker

    It was only in college, when I read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, that I came to understand cells as recursively self-modifying programs. The language alone was evocative. It suggested that the embryo—DNA making RNA, RNA making protein, protein regulating the transcription of DNA into RNA—was like a small Lisp program, with macros begetting macros begetting macros, the source code containing within it all of the instructions required for life on Earth. Could anything more interesting be imagined?

    Someone should have said this to me:

    > Imagine a flashy spaceship lands in your backyard. The door opens and you are invited to investigate everything to see what you can learn. The technology is clearly millions of years beyond what we can make.
    >
    > This is biology.
   
    –Bert Hubert, “Our Amazing Immune System”