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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"...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
January 28, 2005
Category: Evolution
Thanks to the many people who left comments on my recent post about some recent work on the intersection of stem cells and human evolution. I noticed that several people expressed variations on the same theme, one which deserves a...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 5:08 PM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2005
Category: Evolution
Recently I assisted the folks at Soundprint with an hour-long radio documentary about how humans are driving evolution in new directions. Here's the show, available on Real Player....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:21 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 23, 2005
Category: Evolution
Last October, word leaked out that something might be seriously amiss with the embryonic stem cell lines approved by President Bush for federally funded research. Today, the full details were published on line in Nature Medicine. It's an important paper,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:43 PM • 83 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 21, 2005
Category: General
My thanks to Nova for becoming my first blog sponsor. I've always been leery of the random scattershoot of ads you see on many blogs, and so I was relieved that I wound up with a better fit. (Full disclosure:...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:20 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2005
Category: Evolution
The Guardian has a long but disjointed report about the dispute over Homo floresiensis. Articles like these rarely give a very good picture of scientific disputes, since all parties involved only get a couple catchy quotes apiece. I've been particularly...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 14, 2005
Category: General
Unscrewing the Inscrutable has been updating progress of the Huygens probe as it screeches towards the surface of Titan. So far (8:20 am) it still seems to be going well. The first real data will come later this morning. Of...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:23 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2005
Category: Blink ›
Scrape off those stickers! AP reports that a judge has ruled that those goofy "Evolution is just a theory" stickers must be taken off of textbooks in Georgia. Now, how about those "Continental drift is just a theory" stickers on...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:41 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blink ›
More to read: The Tangled Bank--The Tangled Bank is a semi-regular banquet of posts from various blogs on biology. Thanks to the powers that be for including one of mine in the latest issue. Go read it for the rest,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:29 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2005
Category: Blink ›
Dinosaur-eating Mammals (You heard me right): Jeff Hecht at New Scientist has a good write-up of the discovery of a dog-sized 130-million year old mammal with dinosaur bones in its gut. Most mammals may have been humble little critters during...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:23 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 10, 2005
Category: Evolution
The more time I spend talking to biologists, the more they remind me of detectives. I have two stories in tomorrow's New York Times that make this connection particularly clear. In the first, E.O. Wilson attempts to solve the mystery...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:13 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 8, 2005
Category: Evolution
Not long ago I had a remarkable experience: I got to visit the nursery for what might prove to be a new form of life. At Michigan State University, a group of computer scientists, biologists, and philosophers run the Digital...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:22 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 6, 2005
Category: Evolution
When you consider a tapeworm or an Ebola virus, it is easy think of them as being evil to their very core. That's a mistake. It's true that at this point in their evolutionary history these species have become well...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:58 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
