Re: orthography and pronunciation

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Padraic Brown wrote:
> >On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > >PPS Somebody suggested that the ultimate method for perserving
> >information
> > >is to encode it into the junk-DNA of some bacterium. As the bacterium
> > >multiplies the information is multiplied, and the inevitable slow
> >corruption
> > >of the DNA won't mean much since you'll be able to reconstruct the
> >original
> > >very faithfully if you've got a decent number of bacteria to reconstruct
> > >from.
> >
> >And the ability to extract and reconstruct the data! All the smart
> >bacteria in the world won't do any good if all you've got left to
> >work with are simple tools and rag-tag society.
>
> Hey, it wasn't my idea!
I saw that idea some years back in some humorous _Analog_ SF story.  This
random biologist had been looking at our junk DNA and had uncracked the
code and had "invented" a stardrive and other random things.  <G>

YHL