Blogreading
May. 23rd, 2004 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
A few months ago, Neil Gaiman posted a link to Mainly Martian, a blog that follows all the latest news on Mars exploration. The timing coincided with the start of my freshman seminar on the evolution of intelligent life, which began with a lot of discussion on Mars, so I bookmarked the link and occasionally checked back on it when I was bored/procrastinating. I have to admit that I haven't actually paid all that much attention, and about all that I remember is that there were a lot of entries on the detection of methane. But I was incredibly impressed by the sheer number of connections and up-to-date information that the writer amassed so quickly--it was like a hotline to all the latest scientific research in that narrow area of interest, and I thought, "Surely someone out there has a blog like this for origin-of-life research."
Lo and behold, there is. Carl Zimmer, at The Loom. Ah, the magic of the Internet. I wish the author would create a syndicated feed to LJ so I could just read it along with the rest of my friends page, but in any case, I'm sure I can take the effort to take a daily look at the blog. I'm so terrible these days about keeping up with the news. I have almost no idea about what's going on in the world, and as for science--well, the other day I finally took a look at the NatureAlerts arriving regularly in my inbox and was shocked to learn that John Maynard Smith had died last month. I read one of his books while I was crazily researching everything I could find on the RNA world--it was a pretty general book, meant for the lay reader, so it didn't say anything specific, but I cited it in my final paper. Anyway, that's how oblivious I am to the outside world.
Of course, after finding myself subscribed to the CGR mailing list, I'm getting emails about seminars and conferences that really have nothing to do with me, but do give me a sort of "inside look" at the scientific world in its current state. There's supposed to be a researcher coming on Tuesday to speak on "Molecular Mechanisms for Beak Morphological Evolution in Darwin's Finches" (if you've read Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch, you'll understand why I perked up at this), but since I'm not actually part of the lab yet, I think I'll feel awkward if I went to hear him speak. (Not to mention that I'll also probably be completely lost.) Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to the weekly lectures that we get to attend as CGR interns. ^_^ I should spend these next few weeks getting acquainted with papers.
Oh, and by some judicious link-clicking, I've also found a biotech blog: Living Code. It seems that bioinformatics and genomics really are the way of the future; no biologist in the next few decades will manage to do research without learning how to use BLAST and CLUSTALW.
...Tari
Post-script: Also, if you're obsessed with Darwin--which I'm not, actually, as hard as it may be for you to believe--you'll get a kick out of Web of Affinities. They have a countdown to Darwin's birthday, of all things.
A few months ago, Neil Gaiman posted a link to Mainly Martian, a blog that follows all the latest news on Mars exploration. The timing coincided with the start of my freshman seminar on the evolution of intelligent life, which began with a lot of discussion on Mars, so I bookmarked the link and occasionally checked back on it when I was bored/procrastinating. I have to admit that I haven't actually paid all that much attention, and about all that I remember is that there were a lot of entries on the detection of methane. But I was incredibly impressed by the sheer number of connections and up-to-date information that the writer amassed so quickly--it was like a hotline to all the latest scientific research in that narrow area of interest, and I thought, "Surely someone out there has a blog like this for origin-of-life research."
Lo and behold, there is. Carl Zimmer, at The Loom. Ah, the magic of the Internet. I wish the author would create a syndicated feed to LJ so I could just read it along with the rest of my friends page, but in any case, I'm sure I can take the effort to take a daily look at the blog. I'm so terrible these days about keeping up with the news. I have almost no idea about what's going on in the world, and as for science--well, the other day I finally took a look at the NatureAlerts arriving regularly in my inbox and was shocked to learn that John Maynard Smith had died last month. I read one of his books while I was crazily researching everything I could find on the RNA world--it was a pretty general book, meant for the lay reader, so it didn't say anything specific, but I cited it in my final paper. Anyway, that's how oblivious I am to the outside world.
Of course, after finding myself subscribed to the CGR mailing list, I'm getting emails about seminars and conferences that really have nothing to do with me, but do give me a sort of "inside look" at the scientific world in its current state. There's supposed to be a researcher coming on Tuesday to speak on "Molecular Mechanisms for Beak Morphological Evolution in Darwin's Finches" (if you've read Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch, you'll understand why I perked up at this), but since I'm not actually part of the lab yet, I think I'll feel awkward if I went to hear him speak. (Not to mention that I'll also probably be completely lost.) Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to the weekly lectures that we get to attend as CGR interns. ^_^ I should spend these next few weeks getting acquainted with papers.
Oh, and by some judicious link-clicking, I've also found a biotech blog: Living Code. It seems that bioinformatics and genomics really are the way of the future; no biologist in the next few decades will manage to do research without learning how to use BLAST and CLUSTALW.
...Tari
Post-script: Also, if you're obsessed with Darwin--which I'm not, actually, as hard as it may be for you to believe--you'll get a kick out of Web of Affinities. They have a countdown to Darwin's birthday, of all things.
