Download Scientific American, February 2010, p

“The Art of Bacterial Warfare”, by B. Brett Finlay, Scientific American, February 2010,
p. 57:
Most bacteria are well-behaved companions. Indeed, if you are ever feeling lonely,
remember that the trillions of microbes living in and on the average human body
outnumber the human cells by a ratio of 10 to one. Of all the tens of thousands of known
bacterial species, only about 100 are renegades that break the rules of peaceful
coexistence and make us sick.
Collectively, those pathogens can cause a lot of trouble. Infectious diseases are the
second leading cause of death worldwide, and bacteria are well represented among the
killers. Tuberculosis alone takes nearly two million lives every year, and Yersinia pestis,
infamous for causing bubonic plague, killed approximately one third of Europe’s
population in the 14th century. Investigators have made considerable progress over the
past 100 years in taming some species with antibiotics, but the harmful bacteria have also
found ways to resist many of those drugs. It is an arms race that humans have been
losing of late, in part because we have not understood our enemy very well.
Historically, microbiologists sought to learn how bacteria cause disease by growing them
in a nourishing broth, then isolating molecules from the bugs’ exterior or extracting their
secretions from the medium, and examining the effects of those substances on human
cells and animals.
“Change We Can Believe In”, by Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, February 1, 2010, p. 24:
How bad do things look for Barack Obama? Some historical perspective is useful. His
approval ratings after one year in office are about the same as Ronald Reagan’s or Jimmy
Carter’s and, in fact, are a bit higher than Bill Clinton’s. The Bushes fared better than all
three of them, but for unusual reasons: 41 because he presided over the collapse of the
Soviet Union in his first year in office, and 43 because the nation rallied around him after
9/11. As the economy improves, Obama’s numbers will surely rebound somewhat.
Still, last week’s special election in Massachusetts is a sign that Obama has a big
problem. The public has clearly registered a protest vote against him, congressional
Democrats, and their signature policy proposal: the health-care bill. The size of the
swing, the issues raised during the campaign and in exit polls, and the migration of
independents all suggest that Obama is confronting not just generalized anger but
dissatisfaction with the course that the ruling party has taken. How he responds will
shape the rest of his term.
A great debate has begun on the nature of that response. My own advice would be
simple: Barack Obama needs to act like a president, especially the president he
campaigned to become.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (English translation) Harper
Perennial 1991 New York. p. 1.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to
remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time
Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water
that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric
eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate
them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged
gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and
kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy
gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades,
put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the
learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal
ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down
from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to
emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had
been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind
Melquíades’ magical irons.