Jacques Ravel in the New York Times

I'm back from Australia (although jet-lagged), and looking through the NYT science articles that I'd missed over the past week and a half, I discovered this article about the techniques used to establish that the mailed anthrax powder that killed photo editor Robert Stevens in 2001 was from the RMR-1029 strain (indirectly suggesting Bruce Ivins as the culprit, although the article stresses that is still as yet unproven, despite Ivins' suicide). 

It's a very interesting article, but I have to admit that what drew me in initially was the photo of my former TIGR colleague Jacques Ravel - while articles featuring Craig Venter are too common to mention these days, it's nice to see some coverage of other people I've worked with.

My 15 minutes (or 30 seconds) of fame

I've worked with people like Carl Woese and Jonathan Eisen who routinely get interviewed by the media, but this is the first time that I've been in the spotlight. In May, Chris Condayan interviewed me along with several other bloggers attending the ASM 2007 meeting in Toronto, and he's edited them into an edition of his MicrobeWorld series dealing with microbiologists who blog.

Besides me, the featured bloggers are John Logsdon, "Yersinia", Tara Smith, Elio Schaechter, and Larry Moran.

Tara seems to think that she is too "animated", but I think she is undervaluing the value of animation. After all, this week, the animated Ratatouille beat out the latest "Die Hard" movie....

I could complain about my segment too, but it's probably pretty representative of me (not that I tend to talk into phones without calling someone first...)