The Story
“Neither Models nor Miracles: A Look at Synthetic Biology”
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/systems-and-synthetic-biology-neither-models-nor-miracles.ars
by Robert Fortner
Ars Technica, 2010
The Pitch
From: Robert Fortner
Subject: Re: Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition To: John Timmer
Date: Sunday, May2, 2010, 12:43 PM Hi, John:
I considered proposing this piece for Ars Technica, but it doesn’t follow the usual technology storyline of ineluctable advance.
I’d be very interested in your thoughts about this story and usual storylines. Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition
Thanks very much, John.
-Bob Fortner
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From: John Timmer
Subject: Re: Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition To: Robert Fortner
Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 4:17 PM
Bob –
It’s funny – I’m a bit swamped right now, and haven’t had time to look at it but someone else from the site found the piece via Reddit, and has been highly recommending it to everyone – the consensus seems to be that it was exactly the sort of thing that Ars should be running.
I’m hoping to get around to reading it later this week, but figured i’d let you know that now, in case there were any other ideas you were interested in pitching to Ars.
Cheers, John
John R. Timmer, Ph.D. Science Editor, Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/
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From: Robert Fortner To: John Timmer
Sent: Wednesday, May 5, 2010 4:01 AM
Subject: Re: Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition Hi, John:
I have (as usual) a handful of article ideas which might be fruitful to talk about.
But I also have this finished piece, attached, that I was going to publish on my blog this Sunday.
For Ars, I think the article could actually use terms like “eukaryotic” and have graphs with log scales in scientific notation. But more significantly, the section on synthetic biology could be expanded because it’s so directly inspired by computer science. But the article is already close to a thousand words, not to mention finished!
Let me know if you are interested, and I’ll hold off putting it on my blog. I’m trying to catch the end of the crazy, 100,000-hit wave the speech recognition article created.
Thanks very much, John.
-Bob
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