NYT article on genes

Here, by the incredibly young, handsome and way too successful Carl Zimmer, late of the Seed stable. Carl brings to mind my favourite Truman Capote saying:

It is not enough to succeed. Friends must be seen to have failed.

Anyway, go read the bastard's excellent essay. I will just sit here in my pool of failure.

More like this

Hell, everybody's doing it, so why not me. The rules: "Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe." A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.…
Jonah Lehrer at the Frontal Cortex asks an interesting question: Why is science so much work? But I'm curious why science takes so long. I know this is an incredibly naive question, but why do post-docs have to work so hard? What is it about the scientific process that forces the average researcher…
So, the Big Day has finally arrived - the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable, including me - yeay! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old and new bloggers there. My new blog, a fusion of all three of my blogs, is…
A few weeks ago the Question Du Jour, on Seed's Scienceblogs and elsewhere, was "Why Do You Blog?" Here's my answer -- or rather, here I explaine Why I DON'T Blog More Often, and Why I Won't Be Blogging Here Anymore. With this post -- and with mixed feelings -- I bid adieu to my blogging home…

It's a decent review of the past 50 years of genetics for the lay person. I think that's why Zimmer is so successful; he conveys mind numbing quantities of science into something readable for the average individual with little background in science. In any event, I know most of that, and I'm a bit upset that he didn't go more in depth with how untranslated regions within an a sequence function (like operators), but it was still a decent place to send people for a very general overview.

For a layman like me, it's a great piece of work.

One of the difficulties a non-specialist faces in keeping up with the field is that it changes so quickly, and new discoveries keep happening. That's why I started reading Scienceblogs.

Zimmer is indeed absurdly talented. But reading him was what led me to other fascinating blogs like this one. (Fishing for compliments, John?)

By John Monfries (not verified) on 11 Nov 2008 #permalink