I have three kids. All of them like to climb. Margot seems unnaturally compelled to climb things — no matter how imprudent. (She broke her clavicle at age 2 after climbing up to, and falling off of, the kitchen table.) Unfortunately, our San Francisco postage stamp yard has no good places to climb. Since I [...]

As many of you know by now, I left Genentech in September to join UC Berkeley as the Chief Scientist of the Genome Commons. I’m part of QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biology (no I don’t understand the abbreviation either).
I’m collaborating with Steven Brenner, Jasper Rine, and Lior Pachter at Berkeley, and Robert Nussbaum [...]

How is it that someone like me, i.e. with substantial geek tendencies, goes this long without blogging? At one time, I surely thought that the young whippersnappers were wasting their time with this blogging thing. I mean, get real, who’s gonna read this crap? It turns out lots of people do.
The real surprise to me, [...]