Transcription, The Game of Life, and Google

Today I learned:

1) Apparently it's somewhat of an outstanding question how much of the genome is transcribed with any regularity. There are some reports (mostly meta-analyses of hundreds of RNA-seq projects) that suggest that more than half of the genome is transcribed at or above approximately 1 transcript per cell. Then again, there are counter-articles claiming that those are mostly technical artifacts. Then again, there are reports that long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), which play varied and mostly mysterious roles in the cell (and, it seems, are generally very tissue-specific in their expression) may be very common.

Anybody know more about this? Say, Andy Halleran? Christine Gao?

2) The Game of Life (Conway's, not Hasbro's) is intrinsically universal for 2D synchronous cellular automata. That means that you can use the Game of Life to emulate any 2D synchronous cellular automata. Who knew!

Relatedly, I learned a pretty elegant implementation of logical circuits in the Game of Life using glider guns.

Not the source I used, but seehttp://tinyurl.com/plzpe73 for more.

3) Google is now called Alphabet. Seriously. I'm not making this up. Go look it up.

The details -- the company called Google is reorganizing into a new supercompany called Alphabet. The web engine, Gmail, and a couple of other web services will be run by a... new?... subcompany still called Google, but Alphabet will be in charge of a bunch of other subcompanies like Calico, Nest, Fiber, and Google Ventures. I guess this makes it clearer how the whole thing is structured... but why "Alphabet"?

If you were in charge of naming the new company in charge of Google, what would *you* want to call it?