Nine years ago I had the opportunity to visit southern Sudan. With a few other reporters, I flew from Nairobi to Lokichokio in northern Kenya, where we prepared to cross the border. A man took our passports and told us he’d hold onto them till we got back. We climbed into another plane loaded with medical supplies and took off again, into a land that had been at war for 15 years.

I found the place eerie in its quiet. We were far from the front lines, and so you could forget that there was a war going on, except for the occasional word of government planes in the air, potentially carrying bombs.

Continue reading “The Hidden Herds” →

Whoosh. A year has passed since I got my passport stamped with a scienceblogs.com visa. Thanks to all who have come this way and shared your thoughts. May the next year bring more of life’s surprises. 

Originally published June 10, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.

For the past few years, Craig Venter, the human genome pioneer, has been trying to build an organism from scratch. While Venter is no shrinking wallflower (see, for example, a recent interview in Newsweek), he has been keeping his synthetic-life cards pretty close to his vest. I spoke to Venter in 2003, shortly after he announced the project, and he provided some basic details which I wrote up in a news article in the journal Science (I’ve archived it here). I was startled to find my article being cited in scientific papers about synthetic biology, but one scientist (Eugene Koonin of NIH) told me that there was no scientific paper he could cite. But now it seems that Venter is turning over one or two of his cards.

Continue reading “New Life, New Patent” →

Okay–we’re moving again. I await your comments (as usual, there will be small delay for moderation.)

You’ll have to make up for my appalling silence today as I work on (gasp) magazine articles. I know, I know, how very dead-tree of me…. 

Originally published June 5, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.