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The Loom

A blog about life, past and future

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Zimmer133.jpg 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

Books by Carl Zimmer

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NOW ON SALE!
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life



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Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition



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"As fine a book as one will find on the subject."-- Scientific American

Revised with a new introduction





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"Superb...a non-stop delight."-- New Scientist





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"Fascinating...thrilling... Zimmer has produced a top-notch work of popular science." --LA Times





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"A fascinating story, which Zimmer unfolds as a tale of high-stakes scientific sleuthing...thanks to marvelous lucid writing." --Booklist





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Why the Loom?

"...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 27, 2007

Jesus and Journalists

Category: General

This morning I noticed that on top of my blog there's an ad for an upcoming show on the Discovery Channel that claims to reveal the tomb of Jesus and his family. I haven't seen a preview of the show,...

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Conservapedia: Don't Mess With Noah's Flood

Category: Evolution

I suspect poking around Conservapedia will become one of my new tools for procrastination. You're guaranteed a jaw drop within a couple minutes of searching on this Wikipedia for conservatives. It occurred to me that I had not yet bothered...

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February 26, 2007

In the footsteps of my lactose-intolerant ancestors

Category: Evolution

My ancestry forms a smear across northern and central Europe, a region of the world where many people have a peculiar gift: they can drink milk as adults. Almost all people can digest milk sugar (lactose) as babies, but in...

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Calling All Readers at NYU

Category: Upcoming Talks

Tomrrow I'm heading down to New York to take part in the "Inside Out" speaker series at New York University's Department of Journalism. John Rennie, editor-in-chief at Scientific American, and I will try to answer the question, "Can two prominent...

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February 24, 2007

Evolving Robotspeak

Category: Evolution

Loyalty, teamwork, cruel deception: welcome to robot evolution....

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February 23, 2007

Koufax Nomination!

Category: General

The Koufax awards are among the biggest honors out here in the blogmos. It just came to my attention that the Loom has been nominated in the category of best writing. Of course, I'm packed in with lots of excellent...

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February 22, 2007

Woman the Hunter?

Category: Evolution

There was a time--in the 1960s and 1970s--when the phrase "Man the Hunter" enjoyed a lot of popularity. Some researchers claimed that the evolution of hunting played a key role in the origin of our lineage. That's what we made...

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February 21, 2007

Sources, sources

Category: Evolution

Behold conservapedia, which calls itself "an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America"--and where we don't like Wikipedia at all. My fellow Sciencebloggers have been finding all sorts of factual troubles with the site over the...

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February 19, 2007

Build Me A Tapeworm

Category: The Parasite Files

Darwin gave a lot of thought to the strangest creatures on this planet, wondering how they had evolved from less strange ancestors. Whales today might be fish-like warm-blooded beasts with blowholes and flukes, but long ago, Darwin argued, their ancestors...

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February 7, 2007

Dodos: The Terrors of the Night!

Category: Evolution

The latest joy from the Discovery Institute: an attempt to make dodos look scary....

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Ulcers of the World, Unite

Category: Evolution

There are six and a half billion human stomachs on this little planet of ours, and over half of them are home to a microbe called Helicobacter pylori. Scientists have known about the bacteria since the late 1800s, but it...

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February 6, 2007

Darwin Day Festivities

Category: Upcoming Talks

In celebration of Darwin's 198th birthday, there will be lots of events--talks, etc.--going on around the world next week. I'll be doing my part, heading to the Rockies to talk at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. My talk is...

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