Patterns

An interview with Dr. Geerat Vermeij, a blind University of Maryland malacologist who collects mollusks and examines their shell patterns to determine vulnerability to predators; a look at the shorthand pattern of words, symbols, and gestures used by merchants in the Tokyo fish market; a discussion of Thomas Jefferson's coded correspondence with John Adams; New York Yankees third base coach Dick Howser explains baseball hand signs; an examination of how a meteorologist decodes weather information from tropical cloud formations in order to predict weather; the complex word symbols of the Japanese language; how heat-sensitive photography allows the turbulent patterns of gases and fluids to be analyzed; a look at Spain's Alhambra Palace; an interview with Bernhardt Weunsch of M.I.T., who discusses man's fascination with crystals; and how the Greek translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone allowed linguists to decipher the lost Egyptian language.