Small Green Things Study Plan

Published on: Author: Charles Delwiche Leave a comment

This is my attempt to describe my lab’s research using the “Up-Goer Five Text Editor” (http://splasho.com/upgoer5/):

Green things are very old. To get food, they sit in the sun and drink it up. Long ago they used to be two things, one green, and one not-green. The not-green thing ate the green thing, and pretty soon they were happy with each other. So happy in fact that they stayed together ever after. We study how that happened, and how the inside green thing talks to the not-green thing. Sometimes they even give parts to each other, and the heart of the green thing has gotten smaller, while the heart of the not-green thing has gotten bigger. We study how that happened. To do that, we take parts of the heart and read the words that are written there. If the words look the same, then we know that the things must be in the same family. If the words look different, then they must be in different families. So the words in the hearts tell us who goes with who.

If you aren’t familiar with the Up-Goer Five, it is from XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1133/

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