I Like Junk

I’m slowly unteaching myself to fear junk. When it comes to advanced processing, unneccessary cycles aren’t a problem. In fact, when I’m inclusive toward outliers, I’m always surprised by results I didn’t anticipate.

This would just be another ordinary entry to my modelling practices, except that my junkie behavior has gotten me thinking about so-called “junk DNA”. I recently read this quote in an article:

“Evolution is tinkering much more with the controls than it is with the genes themselves,” said Broad Institute director Eric Lander. “Almost all of the new innovation … is in the regulatory controls. In fact, marsupial mammals and placental mammals have largely the same set of protein-coding genes. But by contrast, 20 percent of the regulatory instructions in the human genome were invented after we parted ways with the marsupial.”

Sounds like an MVC framework to me. (God uses vim? Really??)

Anyways, don’t fear the the junk. If a lot goes a little ways, that’s just fine.

**Update: **More support for embracing (some) waste.