Yammerings: San Diego, New York, and TV

I’ve got some public face time coming up:

Tuesday, May 25, 5:30 pm: In San Diego, I’ll be talking at the American Society for Microbiology. I was asked to speak at the President’s Forum, “Tell the Story of Science.” My own talk is, “Newspapers, Blogs, And Other Vectors: Infecting Minds With Science In the Age of New Media.”

Random House will be kindly providing copies of Microcosm for sale at the meeting. I will spend some time signing them all when I get to the conference Monday. The books will be available at the American Society for Microbiology Press Booth. (I’ll update this post when I know exactly where the booth is located.)

I’ll also plan on hanging out at the booth at some point on Wednesday, hoping that I can meet face to face with some of the Loom’s microbiologist readers. (Again, I’ll update this post about exactly when I’ll be there once I get to the meeting.)

Thursday, June 3, 7 pm: The World Science Festival returns to New York for its third year, and I’m delighted to enter my third year of moderating panels for them. I’ll be part of “Modern MacGyvers,” a gathering of innovative thinkers who are designing solar panels for camels, cook stoves that could save millions of lives, and other important inventions.

I may be asked to moderate other panels; if so, I’ll update this post accordingly. I will definitely be going to some other sessions as an audience member: the line-up looks great.

Thursday June 3, 8 pm and 10 pm: The Science Channel is airing, “Creating Synthetic Life,” a show about Craig Venter’s new hand-made cell. The producers asked me to talk about the research Craig Venter and his team have been carrying out for the past fifteen years on the path to creating artificial life. At the time they interviewed me (a few weeks ago), I knew there was some big news coming down the pike, but wasn’t able to talk about the particulars. So I expect that I’ll turn up on the show speaking in hazy generalities set in the future tense. Feel free to set your TV on mute when I show up. But based on the previews, I think the rest of the show is worth checking out.