The News Can Wait
Category: General
Really, it's not like I've discovered a new element or anything. See you tomorrow....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:22 PM • •
The Loom
A blog about life, past and future
Profile
Carl Zimmer is a science writer. PLEASE VISIT THE LOOM AT ITS NEW HOME.
Books by Carl Zimmer
"Essential reading"--Publisher's Weekly
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
Assorted Links
Swatches from the Loom
- The Wisdom of Parasites
- Eyes Part One: Opening Up the Russian Doll
- Hamilton's Fall
- Old Hands and New Fins
- The Origin of the Ridiculous
Search this blog
Recent Posts
- The Loom Ends. The Loom Lives!
- The News Can Wait
- Almost Ready...
- Some News...
- A Tapeworm Mystery: Which Way Is Up?
- Microcosm in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review
- A Talk With Paul Ehrlich About The State of the World
- Nice and Weird: Dispatches from The Depths of Parasitology
- The Ten-Mile-Wide Bullet
- Reminder: I'm talking tonight in Los Angeles
Science Tattoo Emporium
Recent Comments
- Harlan on Some News...
- hardindr on Some News...
- Bob O'H on Some News...
- Neerali on A Tapeworm Mystery: Which Way Is Up?
- Michael Balter on Microcosm in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review
- Owlmirror on Of Bacteria and Throw Pillows
- Bishop Pontoppodan on Of Bacteria and Throw Pillows
- themadlolscientist on A Tapeworm Mystery: Which Way Is Up?
- Pteryxx on Nice and Weird: Dispatches from The Depths of Parasitology
- Pteryxx on Of Bacteria and Throw Pillows
Blogroll
Archives
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
Data
The Original Home of the Giant Flatulent Raccoon
Subscribe via Email
Stay abreast of your favorite bloggers' latest and greatest via e-mail, via a daily digest.
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
The Loom has moved! Make sure to update your bookmarks and feed readers.
June 30, 2008
Almost Ready...
Category: General
...to spill beans. Any minute now, honest....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 5:06 PM • •
Some News...
Category: General
...at 5 today. [That's 5 pm EST--sorry for the confusion.] [Hint...I've turned off the comments till then.]...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:12 AM • 3 Comments •
June 28, 2008
A Tapeworm Mystery: Which Way Is Up?
Category: The Parasite Files
I'm sure you'd like to pretend that you have nothing in common with a tapeworm. A tapeworm starts off as an egg which then develops into a cyst. Inside the cyst is a ball-shaped creature with hooks that it can...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:36 PM • 5 Comments •
Microcosm in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Science writer Peter Dizikes reviews my book Microcosm for the New York Times. It's great to see that he gets it--i.e., he understands what I'm trying to do with E. coli in the book. I actually appreciate that more than...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:22 PM • 3 Comments •
A Talk With Paul Ehrlich About The State of the World
Category: General
I'm back on bloggingheads.tv, talking this week with Paul Ehrlich about everything from climate change to Polynesian canoe oars to the origins of human culture to why cars are best for teenagers to make out in. Check it out....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:00 AM • 1 Comments •
June 27, 2008
Nice and Weird: Dispatches from The Depths of Parasitology
Category: The Parasite Files
It feels like a homecoming: I'm among hundreds of people who live for parasites. I arrived in Arlington Texas this afternoon to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists. I'm going to give a talk tomorrow about...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:51 PM • 4 Comments •
June 26, 2008
The Ten-Mile-Wide Bullet
Category: Evolution
In 1980, Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues proposed that the dinosaurs had been exterminated by an asteroid that smashed into the Earth. I was fourteen at the time, and that mix of...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:38 PM • 5 Comments •
June 25, 2008
Reminder: I'm talking tonight in Los Angeles
Category: Upcoming Talks
I'm bound for LA today to talk about Microcosm. My talk is part of the Zocalo lecture series. I'll be talking tonight at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the details....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 5:38 AM • •
June 24, 2008
Of Bacteria and Throw Pillows
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The strange thing about E. coli, as I explain in my book Microcosm, is that it has played a central part not just in the modern science of life, but in the political conflicts over life. It may come as...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:05 PM • 18 Comments •
On the Radio Today: Mass Extinctions, Past and Future
Category: Upcoming Talks
At noon EST, I'll be talking on "Word of Mouth," a radio show coming from New Hampshire Public Radio. The topic will be my recent article on global warming and mass extinctions in Yale Environment 360. You can listen live...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:18 AM • •
My Microbial Muse
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The British edition of Microcosm is coming out on July 3 (Brits can pre-order here, and here's a link for Americans). In conjunction with its publication, the Telegraph asked me to explain why I love E. coli so. Here's why....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:09 AM • •
June 23, 2008
Microcosm Infects The Journal Science
Category: Microcosm: The Book
It's nice to get book reviews in both the popular press and academic journals. I hope everyone will read my books, but I also hope that scientists will consider them good science. And, speaking of Science, the journal of said...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:02 PM • 1 Comments •
June 22, 2008
The Octopus: Smart, Dumb, Other?
Category: Brains
I've been pretty quiet on the blog while I've been off visiting grandparents in other states this past week. But in the meantime, Slate has published a piece I wrote for them on the beguiling mystery of octopus brains. I...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:50 PM • 3 Comments •
June 18, 2008
Los Angeles Is About To Get A Case of E. coli
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Hey Angelenos! I hope you can come out to catch my next talk about Microcosm. It's part of the Zocalo lecture series. I'll be talking next Wednesday, June 25, at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:16 PM • 2 Comments •
June 14, 2008
Quick! I'm On the Radio
Category: Upcoming Talks
This is a crazy day--an eight hour drive to visit relatives, followed promptly by a last-minute appearance live on the radio show Science Fantastic, hosted by physicist Michio Kaku. I'm about to go on (6 pm EST) to talk about...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 5:59 PM • 1 Comments •
June 13, 2008
Hot Times in Deep Time: My New Piece for the New Yale Environment 360
Category: Global Warming
We've all heard about the dire straits polar bears are facing if they lose their icy habitat to global warming. But just how many species may global warming drive extinct? One way to find out is to look over the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:18 PM • 2 Comments •
A New Step In Evolution, Cont.: Read the Paper
Category: Microcosm: The Book
My recent post about a striking new experiment in evolution (E. coli evolving the ability to eat a new kind of food) is still drawing lots of commenters and links. Very cool! Not so cool are the claims that this...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:55 AM • 20 Comments •
June 11, 2008
Microcosm: Ars Technica feature, and more podcasts
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what's called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 2:19 PM • 1 Comments •
June 10, 2008
Parasite Rock
Category: The Parasite Files
In a couple weeks I head to Texas to the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists to talk about parasites in pop culture. The symposium is called, "Parasitology: Public awareness through literature, art, and film." Our panel has...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:27 PM • 2 Comments •
June 9, 2008
Attention Nutmeggers: Microcosm in Madison, Connecticut
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Thursday I'll be heading up the road to talk about Microcosm at one of my favorite bookstores: RJ Julia in Madison CT. The talk is at 7, and it's free. And for once I don't have to fly to a...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 12:20 PM • •
Breaking Boundaries
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures,...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:07 AM • •
June 6, 2008
Eavesdropping On My Readers' Minds
Category: Microcosm: The Book
A reader of Microcosm blogs: I am literally only 12 pages in, yet Zimmer has already managed to make me catch my breath, clutch the book to my chest, and feel my eyes get a little moist from the emotional...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 10:22 AM • 1 Comments •
The Evolution of Mind: My Talk Online
Category: Brains
A couple weeks ago I spoke at Downstate Medical Center in New York about some of my articles in the New York Times that revolve around how the mind evolved. We can learn from bacteria, fruit flies, hyenas, and our...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 4:00 AM • 2 Comments •
June 5, 2008
Microcosm on MSNBC, Podcasts
Category: Microcosm: The Book
I spoke Tuesday on Seattle, and there's proof now! Alan Boyle, MSNBC's science guru, wrote a great piece on both the talk and the subject, my book Microcosm. Meanwhile, folks from Real Science were taping, and now you can listen...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:21 PM • •
More Goings-on at the Scienceblog Book Club
Category: Microcosm: The Book
Don't forget to check in for the latest posts going up over at the Scienceblog Book Club. My book Microcosm has gotten us into a debate about the nature of life....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 1:09 PM • •
E. coli Evolution Follow-up
Category: Microcosm: The Book
I'm back at last from the west coast leg of the Microcosm tour. Portland had a cloudy, melancholy charm, and at Powell's I gave a reading in front of a collection of hand-made black velvet paintings from the nearby Velveteria....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 11:06 AM • 20 Comments •
June 3, 2008
Stockholm Syndrome For Moths
Category: The Parasite Files
A caterpillar's life is not an easy one. The plants that it eats make toxins to make it sick. Birds swoop in to pluck it away and feed it to their chicks. But the most horrific threat comes from wasps...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:00 PM • 20 Comments •
Carlzimmer.com Will Not Bite You
Category: General
Just a technical note--for some reason my site carlzimmer.com has been put on some bad list by Google, so that you are warned that if you go to the site your computer will melt into a pool of liquid germanium....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 6:15 PM • 6 Comments •
Reminder: A Double-Header in Seattle Today
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The microbial march continues! I'll be in Seattle today, giving two talks on Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. The first is a 1:30 talk at Microsoft Research. Then I'll be giving a public talk at Town...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:34 AM • 1 Comments •
June 2, 2008
A New Step In Evolution
Category: Microcosm: The Book
One of the most important experiments in evolution is going on right now in a laboratory in Michigan State University. A dozen flasks full of E. coli are sloshing around on a gently rocking table. The bacteria in those flasks...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:41 PM • 319 Comments •
Microcosm in the Boston Globe: You Get Old, I Get Old...E. coli Gets Old
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The French biologist Jacques Monod once famously said, "What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant." At the time, he was referring to the universal rules of molecular biology--of DNA and proteins, for example, that are the...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 9:53 AM • 2 Comments •
Reminder: Talking Tonight at Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park, CA
Category: Microcosm: The Book
The E. coli epidemic spreads today to the Bay Area. Please come out to Kepler's to hear me talk about Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life....
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:14 AM • •
June 1, 2008
Introducing the Scienceblog Book Club
Category: Microcosm: The Book
One of the best things to come out of blogging is the blog book club. (See, for example, the book club at Talking Points Memo.) In the bad old days, the only way writers could respond to books was with...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:00 PM • 1 Comments •
Reminder: Talking Tonight at Powell's Bookstore in Portland
Category: Microcosm: The Book
I'm heading cross-country to talk about Microcosm. First stop--Powell's bookstore in Portland tonight. Never been there before, so I'm looking forward to a bibliophile's pilgrimage. Hope to see Portlanders there!...
Posted by Carl Zimmer at 8:03 AM • 3 Comments •
