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Carl Zimmer is a science writer. PLEASE VISIT THE LOOM AT ITS NEW HOME.
"Essential reading"--Publisher's Weekly
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
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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
August 30, 2006
Category: Global Warming
From time to time, my Seed magazine hosts throw out a question for bloggers to answer. Today's question is concerns a column by James S. Robbins on global warming in the National Review Online. Robbins claims that global warming will...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:53 PM • 30 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
August 28, 2006
Category: Life Elsewhere
I'll admit, I was a bit surprised when Popular Mechanics got in touch with me a while back about writing a story about aliens. I had always associated the magazine with people who knew how to take their car apart...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:26 PM • 8 Comments •
August 25, 2006
Category: Evolution
The language of DNA is written in a four-letter alphabet. The four different chemical units of DNA (called nucleotides) create an incomprehenisbly vast range of possibility codes. Consider a short sequence of 41 nucleotides. There are over 4.8 trillion trillion...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:58 PM • 14 Comments •
August 24, 2006
Category: Evolution
Cut-and-paste creationism? Yesterday I pointed readers to a column attacking evolution by Jack Kemp on the web site Town Hall. Today a sharp-eyed commenter pointed out that it is almost entirely identical to a column from Phyllis Schlafly from August...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:39 PM • 21 Comments •
August 23, 2006
Category: Evolution
Scoop up some dirt, and you'll probably wind up with some slime mold. Many species go by the common name of slime mold, but the ones scientists know best belong to the genus Dictyostelium. They are amoebae, and for the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:01 PM • 12 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Category: Our Dear Leaders Speak
From his latest column: Liberals see the political value to teaching evolution in school, as it makes teachers and children think they are no more special than animals. Childhood joy and ambition can turn into depression as children learn to...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:07 AM • 11 Comments •
August 22, 2006
Category: Evolution
I'm happy to report that the eyes are back. My third book, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, came out in 2001. It's a survey of the history and cutting edge of evolutionary biology, from the origin of new species...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:10 PM • 7 Comments •
August 21, 2006
Category: Evolution
Like many parasites, a species of bacteria called Wolbachia takes charge of its own fate. Wolbachia can only survive inside the cells of its hosts--invertebrates such as this lovely common eggfly. This way of life limits Wolbachia's opportunities for long-term...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:48 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Hobbits (Homo floresiensis)
The Sunday Times in the UK reported yesterday on an upcoming paper that claims that the ever-fascinating Homo floresiensis (a k a the Hobbit) is not a new species, as previously reported. Instead, it was a human with a genetic...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:45 AM • 10 Comments •
August 18, 2006
Category: Evolution
I was happy to see that my post on Tuesday about the evolution of whales attracted a lot of readers. One commenter asked about seals and manatees. As other commenters kindly explained, those mammals descend from other ancestors (relatives of...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:17 AM • 9 Comments •
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
Orac 11.06.2009
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
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revere 11.07.2009
