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
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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 25, 2005
Category: Evolution
Earlier this month I wrote two posts about the evolution of the eye, a classic example of complexity in nature. (Parts one and two.) I'd like to write now about another case study in complexity that has fascinated me for...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:41 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2005
Category: Hobbits (Homo floresiensis)
The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that the bones of Homo floresiensis, aka the Hobbits, have at last been returned to the team that originally discovered them. The team, made up of Indonesian and Australian scientists, discovered the bones on...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 16, 2005
Category: Evolution
In my last post, I went back in time, from the well-adapted eyes we are born with, to the ancient photoreceptors used by microbes billions of years ago. Now I'm going to reverse direction, moving forward through time, from animals...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:22 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 15, 2005
Category: Evolution
(The first of a two-part post) The eye has always had a special place in the study of evolution, and Darwin had a lot to do with that. He believed that natural selection could produce the complexity of nature, and...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:12 PM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Over the next week or so, I'm going to post a couple two-part posts. I've gotten mildly obsessed with two big topics in evolution: eyes and language. There's been so much fascinating work done on both subjects in the past...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:53 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 12, 2005
Category: Evolution
Readers of the Loom may recall an earlier post about how creationists (including proponents of Intelligent Design) misleadingly cite peer-reviewed scientific research in order to make their own claims sound more persuasive. I mentioned that when the scientists themselves find...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:54 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 8, 2005
Category: Brains
Scientists studying people in minimally conscious states have published the results of brain scans showing that these people can retain a surprising amount of brain activity. The New York Times and MSNBC, among others, have written up accounts. I profiled...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:02 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Growing up as I did in the northeast, I always assumed that the really weird life forms lived somewhere else--the Amazonian rain forest, maybe, or the deep sea. But we've got at least one truly bizarre creature we can boast...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:49 AM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 4, 2005
Category: Evolution
Ernst Mayr has died....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:45 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
