Ugh. Several days, pretty much day and night, going over the copy-edited Microcosm manuscript with a green pencil. I haven’t had any time to write any original blog posts–or even reply to most of my email. But I can at least point you to three articles of mine that went online while I was buried deep in dangling participles. Looking at them now, I see a common theme: comparison.
Continue reading “Green Pencils, Sleeping Birds, and Aging Possums”
Discover, October 25, 2007
John Doyle is worried about the Internet. In the next few years, millions more people will gain access to it, and existing users will place ever higher demands on our digital infrastructure, driven by applications like online movie services and Internet telephony. Doyle predicts that this skyrocketing traffic could cause the Internet to slow to a disastrous crawl, an endless digital gridlock stifling our economies. But Doyle, a professor of control and dynamic systems, electrical engineering, and bioengineering at Caltech, also believes the Internet can be saved.
The New York Times, October 23, 2007
Last month, a bird known as a bar-tailed godwit took flight from Alaska and headed south. A day later, it was still flapping its way over the Pacific. An airplane pilot would have a hard time staying awake after 24 hours of flight (the Federal Aviation Administration allows pilots to fly just eight hours in a row). But the godwit kept flying for an additional week. After eight days and 7,200 miles, it landed in New Zealand, setting a record for nonstop flight.
“If they spend so many hours flying,” said Ruth M. Benca of the University of Wisconsin, “where do they find the time to sleep?”
Continue reading “In Study of Human Patterns, Scientists Look to Bird Brains”
At least for me, getting to see the cover of a new book for the first time is a great morale boost. The designer usually finishes it up right around the time when I’m starting to wonder if the book will ever become real. Recently I got the new cover of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. I wrapped it around another book and stuck it on my mantelpiece, to remind myself that soon (May, actually), the book will be in bookstores. But I can show it to you now, because it’s been posted at Amazon and at the Random House web site.
Continue reading “Microcosm: Unveiling the New Book (Or At Least Its Cover)”
Thanks for all the questions for my talk with Craig Venter for bloggingheads.tv. I didn’t end up reading questions verbatim a la Emily Litella (“a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee New Jersey asks…”) But the questions definitely shaped the conversation.
Some readers have been asking when our talk will be posted. Answer: Saturday morning. I’ll post a link when it’s live, and you can also check bloggingheads.tv directly.
Update: It’s up. Comments are welcome over there or over here.