{"id":134,"date":"2008-05-09T19:41:40","date_gmt":"2008-05-10T02:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=134"},"modified":"2008-05-09T19:46:38","modified_gmt":"2008-05-10T02:46:38","slug":"i-hate-you-carl-zimmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"I Hate You, Carl Zimmer!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gohastings.com\/Catalog\/Item\/Item.asp?prodid=265581466\" target=\"_newWindow\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;\" title=\"Front cover: of 'Microcosm'\" src=\"http:\/\/www.athastings.com\/internet\/images\/CoverArt\/muze\/books\/large\/9780375424304.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><a title=\"A Carl Zimmer blog post at scienceblogs.com\" href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/loom\/2008\/05\/09\/new_scientist_microcosm_is_exc.php\">Carl Zimmer wrote a book.<\/a> Of course, that&#8217;s no reason to hate him, and I don&#8217;t hate him for that.<\/p>\n<p>His book is all about <a title=\"NCBI Taxonomy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/Taxonomy\/Browser\/wwwtax.cgi?id=562\">Escherichia coli (&#8220;E.coli&#8221;)<\/a>.  The friggin&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=47\">&#8220;Microsoft&#8221; of the biotech world<\/a>.  Accursed E. coli, hogging up all the print space and protocol development and sucking up electricity for -80?F freezers.  I mean, come on people!  You could be doing transformation of <a title=\"NCBI Taxonomy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/Taxonomy\/Browser\/wwwtax.cgi?id=1423\">B. subtilis<\/a> and related organisms instead, which form nice, sturdy endospores which you can dry out and keep in an any cool, dry place, no -80?F freezer needed!  Or you could use something like <a title=\"NCBI Taxonomy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/Taxonomy\/Browser\/wwwtax.cgi?id=358\">Agrobacterium tumefaciens<\/a>, and as a bonus be able to then transfer your nice transformed genes into plants, too!  But NOOOOOooo&#8230;.it&#8217;s always &#8220;E.coli, E.coli, E.coli.&#8221;  DAMN YOU, E.COLI!<\/p>\n<p>Of course, none of that is Carl Zimmer&#8217;s fault, either, so this is also no reason to hate him.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if his book was lousy, that MIGHT be a reason to hate him, but as far as I can tell there&#8217;s no reason to think the book is lousy, so this is no reason to hate him either.  In fact, that&#8217;s kind of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>No, the reason I Hate Carl Zimmer is that he&#8217;s written a book about friggin&#8217;, stage-hogging E.coli&#8230;and I want it.  (Well, a copy of it anyway.)   It sounds like a very interesting book.  I feel like a Republican who wants a copy of &#8220;The Audacity of Hope&#8221;.  Or a Democrat who wants to plan a vacation to visit the George W. Bush Presidential Library.  The cognitive dissonance torments me, and it&#8217;s <strong>all Carl Zimmer&#8217;s fault!  CURSE YOU CARL ZIMMER!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Okay, got that out of my system.  A review might follow eventually if I manage to get a copy of the book.  Meanwhile, for a change of pace, anybody want to hear about my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asterisk.org\">Asterisk<\/a> setup?  Or should I just get back to the fermentation stuff?<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Here&#8217;s a bit of trivia for you: &#8220;Frig&#8221; is apparently an old-English word meaning &#8220;to wiggle&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carl Zimmer wrote a book. Of course, that&#8217;s no reason to hate him, and I don&#8217;t hate him for that. His book is all about Escherichia coli (&#8220;E.coli&#8221;). The friggin&#8217; &#8220;Microsoft&#8221; of the biotech world. Accursed E. coli, hogging up all the print space and protocol development and sucking up electricity for -80?F freezers. I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=134\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I Hate You, Carl Zimmer!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,25,4,13,15,6,24,11,58],"tags":[138,141,139,67,91,45,140,136,134,135,112,137,566,142],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brew","category-computer-nerdity","category-feedback-solicitation","category-me-me-me","category-methods","category-microbiology","category-politics","category-rant","category-want","tag-agrobacterium-tumefaciens","tag-asterisk","tag-bacillus-subtilis","tag-bacteria","tag-biotechnology","tag-books","tag-carl-zimmer","tag-coli","tag-ecoli","tag-escherichia","tag-fermentation","tag-genetic-engineering","tag-microbiology","tag-voip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}