"There are many machines on Ix."

Future Mars astronauts have radiation on their minds (New Scientist Space article)

Third puffed-up planet discovered (New Scientist Space article)

and

Ageing may be a lifestyle ‘choice’ for bacteria (New Scientist article)

In a slightly related fashion that’s really something of a tangent, the above makes me think back to a biophysics video I once watched about telomeres. Something to the effect of ‘telomeres fall off; cells go “Oh, hey! Necrosis.” and that’s that’. I had something to say about that a little while ago but it might have actually been something unpleasant to do with speeding up the process really. As for binary fission, for the most part if it’s unrelated to Southern blotting, I’ll probably be lacking the required level of interest.
All of which means that I may yet bumble my way through more political theory in a few days time, having just revised some basic biomedical lab practice instead. But when you think about it, political affiliation is like a lambda phage in a way; different standpoints can be mapped in a circular fashion but they never do form a complete circle because the Far Right and the Far Left don’t actually have the complimentary sticky ends to match up.

I could also do with one of these for sheer novelty value.