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
February 26, 2008
Category: Evolution
The Encyclopedia of Life, about which I blogged and wrote about in the New York Times, has gone live earlier than previously scheduled. So go check it out. A few people have left comments here, and others are blogging too....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:37 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 25, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
My latest story for the New York Times is up: it's a sneak peek at the Encyclopedia of Life--a web site that will ultimately contain detailed pages about all 1.8 million known species. Right now it's just a demo site,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:16 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
The history of science is rife with fateful meetings. The astronomer Tycho Brahe hires a young assistant named Johannes Kepler, who will go on to discover in Brahe's observations the law of planetary motion. A bright but aimless British physicist...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:06 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 23, 2008
Category: The Parasite Files
It's fun to write about discoveries, but mysteries are important too. In my latest column for Wired.com, I explore the mysterious death of honeybees, and the trouble scientists are having pinning down a culprit. Honey Bees Give Clues on Virus...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 22, 2008
Category: General
In the comment thread for my post about Microcosm's rave review in Publisher's Weekly, outeast writes, There's been something I've been dying for, and here's as good a place as any to mention it: real coffee-table editions of your books,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:03 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science Tattoos
Let's hope the phylogeny of life doesn't get revised drastically anytime soon, for the sake of this woman...More details--and lots of new tattoos over at my Science Tattoo Emporium. (Plus a cool new category cloud for browsing!)...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:27 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 18, 2008
Category: Brains
For years, fellow scienceblogger PZ Myers has taught us all well why we ought to adore squid, octopuses, and other cephalopods. But I came to a new degree of appreciation when I traveled up to Woods Hole to spend some...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:29 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science Tattoos
After six months of science tattoo madness, the ink keeps flowing. To keep up with the rising tide, please visit their new home: The Science Tattoo Emporium. (You can also get there via http://sciencetattoo.com ) I have an amazing...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 3:26 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 15, 2008
Category: Microcosm: The Book
After a lot of writing and a lot of waiting, the first review of my next book, Microcosm, has just come out. Actually, it's coming out on Monday in Publisher's Weekly, but they apparently couldn't wait, sending out a link...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:38 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 13, 2008
Category: Evolution
I guess it's only appropriate that the week of Darwin's birthday is seeing a bunch of new reports about evolutionary transitions. On Monday there was news about how ancient whales with teeth turned into whales with baleen--thanks to the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:51 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 11, 2008
Category: Evolution
It's time to add a new chapter to the Whale Chronicles.... ...more below the fold......
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:51 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 8, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
Why are modern families so small? Could it have something in common with peacock tails? A fascinating essay in the new issue of Science is the basis of my newest column for Wired. And man oh man, are the commenters...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:21 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 5, 2008
Category: Upcoming Talks
I've got some more information about my upcoming talks. On February 27, I'll be in Ottawa, delivering the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University. It will be called "The Darwin Beat: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Evolution." Here's the link to...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:37 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Via Tara Smith, I learned of the passing of Joshua Lederberg. I came to appreciate the full scope of Lederberg's work while working on my book Microcosm; by discovering the secret sex life of E. coli, he helped build the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 7:55 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 4, 2008
Category: Upcoming Talks
I've got some more talks coming up that I want to let you know about--especially those of you around Lincoln, Nebraska or Sarasota, Florida--as well as those of you who like to go to meetings about parasites... 1. DARWIN DAY:...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:56 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 2, 2008
Category: Writing Elsewhere
A quick favor from anyone who has read any of my books. If there's a passage--sentence to paragraph range--that you're fond of, can you let me know? I'm working on a project that requires a bunch of them. You can...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:49 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Microcosm: The Book
University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward and I are talking again on bloggingheads--this time about aliens. Ward explains why science fiction writers hate him, and why we need to breed tiny astronauts if we ever want to get out of...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:27 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2008
Category: Evolution
I'm always learning something from the readers of the Loom. Yesterday, I wrote about how scientists had inserted their names into a synthetic genome, and how such signatures would erode away like graffiti inside real organisms. But how about the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:05 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
