networked inference

I'm finding that Quora, the Internet's favorite place to ask pretty dumb questions that really seem earnest but might be trolling, is pretty good for getting me back to writing when I'm distracted. Just a free tip for my freelance friends who might have trouble writing on occasion when they don't know who their audience will be. I came across this question, which I guess isn't dumb, but isn't answerable directly really, but ripe for a go with, if not science, the philosophy of science. "What are the smallest things with which all living organisms are made up of?" All living things contain the same nucleic acid, deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA . There are smaller types of structures that are common in a general way, that is, kinds of cells or cellular function, but even though DNA is not identical between even members of the same species, it contains the basic common record of life on this planet. Carl Zimmer writes in A Planet of Viruses of   “1

I'm taking a job as the reporter for a biweekly paper in the Upper Plains. It's probably OK with my future boss to disclose the name of the paper, but I kinda don't want to jinx it. I'm set to start in March. It's close enough to Colorado that I could get off work in the summer and be with my dog in the Rockies by sunset, and it's two hours from the closest store to "really buy men's clothes," I'm told. If you know it, don't tell me, maybe I'll see you there. It probably has decent internet access, but I don't want to stay plugged in anymore, so I don't really care. The paper doesn't have any online presence, the publisher says they don't need one, so I'm going to train to be his lead reporter/editor, and layout the copy and take it to the printer. I'm going to learn something new every day on my own, and almost definitely keep doing blog posts here on the same material, but maybe not. I'm going to b