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

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