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
"...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
Greg left a comment: You know, Carl, if you don't have one of these yet, you might consider picking one up to accompany you on your (hoped for) book tour. Greg, I always try to find a plush toy related...
My recent piece on Slate about E. coli, evolution, and germ warfare is now on their podcast. You can listen to it with this embedded player below, or grab the mp3 file. It is very weird to hear someone else...
My latest Dissection column for Wired.com takes on the old tug-of-war between Nature and Artifice. As I write in my new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, scientists began to manufacture strange versions of the microbe...
Having just written a book all about E. coli, including its evolution, I came to wonder what Darwin thought about microbes. I've searched far and wide. I've looked in biographies, for example, and the awesome site Darwin Online. I have...
Well, we're down now to seven weeks till Microcosm hits the book stores. Here and elsewhere I'm going to discuss some of the fascinating things I discovered about E. coli--and life in general--while working on the book. For instance, I...
A few weeks ago I moderated a discussion about synthetic biology down in Washington. Excerpts from the talk (including the one above) are now posted here....
Science writer Edmund Blair Bolles is in Barcelona at the Evolution of Language conference, and he's live-blogging like crazy. Fascinating stuff well worth checking out. [Link fixed-cz]...
If you're a scientist mysteried by the media, AAAS has set up a nice site to help. Included are a series of interviews with members of that dubious profession, including Science Friday's Ira Flatow talking about radio, and the New...
I'm heading to Sarasota, Florida, to talk tonight about the evolution of whales. If anybody bearing oranges gives me a hard time, I'll let you know. The talk will be part of Mote Marine Laboratory's public lecture series. Here are...
How old is the Grand Canyon? One answer is easy: a lot older than a few thousand years. A more precise answer is harder to get at, however. You have to climb into the caves of the Grand Canyon and...
My talk last week at Carleton University in Ottawa went well--here's an interview with the university's magazine, and here's a report from someone in the audience. More talks are coming up-- Next week: The evolution of whales at Mote Marine...
Hyenas are fascinating in many ways, such as the way female spotted hyenas are equipped with a penis of sorts (pdf). In tomorrow's New York Times, I look at a new kind of fascination: hyena brains. Hyenas have a remarkably...
When one of the founders of cognitive neuroscience is helping you plumb the mysteries of consciousness, the self, free will, and the two minds that coexist in our skulls, it helps every now and then to touch your nose. To...