3QD Finalist!

It looks like my MSL: Mars Action Hero post is a finalist in the 3 Quarks Daily science blogging contest. The winners will be chosen by none other than Richard Dawkins. I am incredibly honored to be among the finalists, and it's a real thrill to know that sometime in the next week or so, Richard Dawkins will read something that I wrote! I have said before that if I had discovered his books at the end of high school instead of Carl Sagan's, I'd probably be a biologist right now. I owe much of my understanding of genetics to The Selfish Gene, and it's really an unexpected treat to have such a gifted science communicator reading my blog post.