Here at UnBeige, we're a sucker for the interdisciplinary (just look at the breadth of our post category list over there on the right), so we're superexcited by the news of an upcoming conference at the University of Utah that promises to address everything from poetry and architecture to string theory and morality. The topic that can connect all of these disparate threads? Scale.

"The issue is, how does where you are standing and what you are looking at influence your perception of reality?" says University of Utah professor Katharine Coles, co-organizer of the symposium and poet laureate of Utah. "This issue remains regardless of whether you are examining physics, biology, literature, architecture, or philosophy." Taking place February 21-23 in Salt Lake City (and free to all who register), "Measuring Scale: A World in a Grain of Sand" will bring together three keynoters who rarely get the opportunity to share a stage: physicist Lisa Randall, poet Linda Gregerson, and writer/designer/philosopher Sanford Kwinter.

Kwinter, co-founder and editor of Zone and Zone Books at the MIT Press [awed silence], promises a presentation on the way information is carried through time, a topic he'll somehow relate to the mysteries of African polymeter in both music and "rhythmized textiles" (hurry, someone tell David Byrne!). May we suggest reading in advance Kwinter's book, Architectures of Time? Perhaps a few times.