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
NOW ON SALE!
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
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
"...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 31, 2008
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Earlier today, I took a walk in the blustery winds of Washington DC with Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist from MIT. We had just been talking with Congressional staffers about the promise and perils of being able to manipulate life....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:35 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 28, 2008
Category: Upcoming Talks
I'll be yammering this week. First stop on the yak fest, tomorrow morning, is over in New Haven, where I'll be running the first session of a two-part science writing workshop for science graduate students at Yale. It's my second...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:21 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General
I know you read every one of the Scienceblogs. But if you still have some extra free time to kill in an interesting way, check out my updated blogroll over to the left. It's a selection of some of the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:03 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2008
Category: Science Tattoos
"Here are my two Copernicus/scientific revolution homages. I teach science at a public school in eastern MA. It's nice to see the size of the subculture of science geeks that are also tattoo geeks." --Chris They're two of the newest...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:26 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Writing Elsewhere
So the news came out yesterday that Craig Venter's crew has now synthesized an entire microbe's genome from scratch. This does not send a chill down my spine. Does that mean I'm missing a piece of my brain? Judge for...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:57 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Category: Evolution
How do new kinds of bodies evolve? It's a question that obsesses many scientists today, as it has for decades. Yesterday, Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist and book author, published a blog post entitled "The Monster is Back, and It's...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:43 AM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 22, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
Before I left for Rome earlier this month, I finished up a bunch of projects. They started trickling into public view while I was away. I was going to post them all in my article archive, but I just realized...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:31 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 21, 2008
Category: Upcoming Talks
A few days ago, my family was wandering the ruins of the Roman Forum. I explained to my daughters that the fragments of pillars around us were very old. Veronica, who is four, wanted to know how old. They were...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:07 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2008
Category: Upcoming Talks
I'm neglecting my blog at the moment, because I have to finish up a bunch of stories before I take off on a pretty long trip. Along the way, I'm giving a talk at the Rome Science Festival about mass...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:10 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 2, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
Bora and his hard-working crew have picked the entries for the next anthology of science blogging, Openlab 2007. My entry on how tapeworms evolved into parasites made the cut. See the full list here....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:12 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Meta
I've been nosing around Facebook and Myspace for a few months now, trying to understand how these kinds of sites will influence the work of writers like myself. No terribly clear answers yet, but some interesting experiments underway. Facebook, for...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Sorry to start the New Year on a down note, but the January 1, 2008 issue of the New York Times has a review I wrote about a book called No Way Home. It's a sobering look at the decline...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
