...if you want to learn about the true beauty of viruses, learn about how they work, how their genetic code is written and "executed" to produce the simplest an

...if you want to learn about the true beauty of viruses, learn about how they work, how their genetic code is written and "executed" to produce the simplest and smallest possible viable replicator (though not an independent replicator), grab a molecular virology textbook like [1] (it's not that hard - you can skim a more general molec bio book like [2], which is written in a style very friendly to all technically oriented people, including coders). Or check out a really cool virology blog - http://www.virology.ws/ http://www.virology.ws/ (by one of the authors of book [1]), though latest posts are more about politics and social implications than cool basic science. I have a feeling that von Newman would be extremely fascinated by modern molecular virology if he'd be alive today, considering his interest for minimal universal replicators [3]. If you think about it, modern computer science may very well owe its existence to von Newman's and Turing's interest in mathematical models of life itself! (...if you want to learn more about the topic above, just google "von newman universal constructor" or "turing morphogenesis" or "schrodinger what is life" and start exploring, I don't want to spoil anyone's fun of finding out about this for yourselves :) ) --- [1] http://astore.amazon.com/virologyws-20/detail/1555814433 http://astore.amazon.com/virologyws-20/detail/1555814433 [2] http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360312028&sr=1-1&keywords=Molecular+Biology+of+the+Cell http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/d... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construct...