A blog about life, past and future
Carl Zimmer is a science writer. His articles appear in the New York Times and many magazines. He is also the author of six books about science. Send messages to blog/ at/ carlzimmer/ dot/ com
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Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life
Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition
"As fine a book as one will find on the subject."-- Scientific American
Revised with a new introduction
"Superb...a non-stop delight."-- New Scientist
"Fascinating...thrilling... Zimmer has produced a top-notch work of popular science." --LA Times
"A fascinating story, which Zimmer unfolds as a tale of high-stakes scientific sleuthing...thanks to marvelous lucid writing." --Booklist
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"...among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters, heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad."
--Moby Dick
February 29, 2004
Category: Evolution
As biologists figure out more about how life is, they can then figure out how it got to be that way. First there were genes. Mendel noticed that somehow the wrinkles on wrinkled peas could be transmitted down through the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:40 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2004
Category: Evolution
Apologies for the long radio silence. Travelling and the obligatory pre-travelling frenzy shut down the blogging assembly line for a couple weeks. Having wrapped up my west-coast jaunt (thanks to the great crowd that came out for the CSPAN taping...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:57 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 18, 2004
Category: Brains
If you live in the Bay Area, please join me noon on Monday, February 23, at Stanford University for a talk about Soul Made Flesh. (Here are all the details.) The talk is sponsored by the Stanford University Center for...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:14 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 12, 2004
Category: Evolution
My wife and I have two lovely daughters: Charlotte is two and a half, and Veronica is seven weeks. And we are tired. We think of ourselves as being on the losing end of a tag-team wrestling match--particularly at about...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:12 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 9, 2004
Category: Brains
I'll be on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today, talking about Soul Made Flesh. If you miss it today, it will be archived at the show's web site....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:08 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 6, 2004
Category: Evolution
“Abominable” is not the sort of word that most people may associate with flowers, but for Darwin, it was a perfect fit. He saw life on Earth today as the result of millions of years of victories and defeats in...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 5, 2004
Category: Evolution
A while back I had the pleasure to join a team of scientists and teachers to build web site that explains evolution. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation, it charts the history of evolutionary...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:40 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Georgia's State Schools superintendent Kathy Cox has backed down from her ban on the word evolution. While this is excellent news, Georgia is still left with an incompetent superintendent. For one thing, she thinks Intelligent Design is an acceptable theory...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:33 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
"Conservative board members said they wanted to make sure that schools teach sound science, arguing that evolution is a flawed theory that cannot be proven." --"In Kansas, key decision on teaching evolution" Associated Press, August 12, 1999. If the new...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:59 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General
Check out Chris Mooney's post on the latest move in Washington to gut government science, which cloaks itself in bogus terms like "sound science." This dreadful campaign probably won't get much attention in the national media, but its effects--on conservation,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
