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
October 30, 2007
Category: Evolution
For those who may have come to the Loom after seeing me talking about autumn leaves on ABC News this evening, you can learn more about the science in these posts (plus this article I wrote for the New...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
A quick note: I just found out I'll be on the ABC evening news tonight, about 5 minutes before the end of the show, talking about the mystery and glory of autumn leaves. I'll post a link when I find...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:16 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General
I'm sometimes asked who my favorite science writers are. I don't like science writers per se; I like science writing, or rather some science writing--the passages and chapters and books that remind me just how good science writing can get,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:41 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2007
Category: General
Matthew Chapman, writer and producer, writes an op-ed calling for presidential candidates to have a debate on scientific issues. It's an entirely reasonable piece, but if you stop to think about it, its publication raises two disturbing questions-- 1. Why...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:20 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 26, 2007
Category: Science Tattoos
It appears that I didn't receive a single new science tattoo this week! Could it really be that on the entire planet, there are only 81 people passionate enough about their science to go under the needle? If so, thanks...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:34 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2007
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Ugh. Several days, pretty much day and night, going over the copy-edited Microcosm manuscript with a green pencil. I haven't had any time to write any original blog posts--or even reply to most of my email. But I can at...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:12 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 22, 2007
Category: Microcosm: The Book
At least for me, getting to see the cover of a new book for the first time is a great morale boost. The designer usually finishes it up right around the time when I'm starting to wonder if the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:08 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 19, 2007
Category: General
Thanks for all the questions for my talk with Craig Venter for bloggingheads.tv. I didn't end up reading questions verbatim a la Emily Litella ("a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee New Jersey asks...") But the questions definitely shaped the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:49 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science Tattoos
"I am a biochemist, studying to be a molecular biologist, and the tattoo I am sending is the entry for carbon on the periodic table of elements. Since all living things on this planet at least are carbon based, from...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 17, 2007
Category: Global Warming
[Update 10/18 8:30 am: Honestly, when I wrote this post last night, I could only access the first couple paragraphs of the op-ed in question. But now the link takes you to the full text. Could it be that my...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:13 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 16, 2007
Category: General
Permit me a wee bit of nepotism. My brother Ben is on ABC News: World News tonight to celebrate National Dictionary Day. He talks about how language evolves in weird ways. It's already on their web cast here...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 5:20 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Upcoming Talks
If you live anywhere near my home town of Guilford, Connecticut, I'd be delighted if you could join me Thursday at 7:30 at the Guilford Free Library for a talk, "Will Global Warming Redraw the Map of Life?" (flyer pdf)...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:26 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 12, 2007
Category: Science Tattoos
It is an approximation of the locus of connectedness for the Julia sets of the family of functions f(z) = z^2 + lambda/(z^2) (rotated by pi/2). This is analogous to the standard Mandelbrot set (which applies to the family...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:01 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 11, 2007
Category: Evolution
We do a pretty good job at appreciating the visible intricacies of nature: the antennae and legs and claws of a lobster, the geometrical order of the spots on a butterfly's wings. But a lot of nature's intricacies are hidden...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:08 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 10, 2007
Category: Evolution
Science writer Jessica Snyder Sachs has an interesting op-ed in today's New York Times, explaining why you should get your flu shot and skip the chicken pox parties. It's a taste of the material in her excellent new book, Good...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General
Chris Sloan, a senior editor at National Geographic Magazine, points me to a cluster of new blogs he and others at NG have just launched. Sloan's own blog includes a refreshingly frank discussion of the forged-fossil controversy NG was involved...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:11 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 8, 2007
Category: General
Last week I appeared on bloggingheads.tv, talking about life in all its weirdness with science writer John Horgan. The folks at bloggingheads.tv wondered if I'd come back, perhaps bringing along a scientist to talk to. I said, Of course. The...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:33 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 5, 2007
Category: General
In January I'll be running a workshop for science graduate students at Yale about how to write about science for non-scientists. It's going to be the second time around for me; last year's trial run was a wonderful experience, which...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:31 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science Tattoos
"Just wanted to jump on the bandwagon with my own tribute to my scientific style. This is a tattoo of the word for Body, Spirit, Person, People, and Life in Owens Valley Paiute, written in International Phonetic Alphabet. I...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:01 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 3, 2007
Category: General
I just installed a new banner from Carl Buell up top. Sort of 2001 meets parasitoid wasps. It's making the rest of the blog act funny for reasons I cannot divine, so the tech gods have been appealed to....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:22 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Meta
Last week I groused about having trouble with MySpace, which led others to leave some nasty comments of their own. In the interest of full disclosure, I should now report that I figured out the problem: I was not entering...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:11 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 1, 2007
Category: Meta
Good news--I've just won the National Academies 2007 Communication Award. Each year the prize is given out jointly by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the Institute of Medicine in three...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:58 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
