There’s a piece in the Wall Street Journal today about biohacking: people experimenting with genetically engineered microbes and viruses at home. It tries to inject anxiety into your brain right from the start, with a headline, “In Attics and Closets, ‘Biohackers’ Discover Their Inner Frankenstein–Using Mail-Order DNA and Iguana Heaters, Hobbyists Brew New Life Forms; Is It Risky?”

Continue reading “The Worry of Biohacking: Closet Frankensteins or Kafkaesque Government?” →

[Update 4:30 pm: I left off one of the covers (Tiktaalik3) from the original poll. You can re-vote now.]

Greetings, readers. I write to you from that frenzy towards the end of writing a book when everything has to be done at once and the sight of the incoming pincers makes me freeze like a deer in the…pincers. See, I can’t even come up with a good metaphor right now.

Continue reading “A Request For The Design Hive Mind: Vote For A Tangled Bank Book Cover” →

This piece in Agence Science Presse appears to be about the future of science journalism. If Google Translate is right, my place in that future appears to be in some type of shrubbery.

Perhaps someone who hasn’t forgotten quite so much of his or her high school French will understand what’s going on here.

Originally published May 6, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.