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Posts by this author
May 9, 2008
At last we come to the fifth winning question about Microcosm, from Ceph. Once again, thanks to the ~240 people who entered the contest. I hope my answers to these five questions give you a sense of what my book's about and why I'm so excited by this little germ. If you want to learn more about it…
May 9, 2008
Here's the fourth winning question about Microcosm, from Sigmund:
Creationists often point to the bacterial cell and say something to the effect of "the cell is so complicated it is highly improbable that it could have spontaneously formed - therefore God-did-it. Are there any particular features…
May 9, 2008
Now we come to the third winning question about Microcosm. Kenatiod writes,
Long ago, in bacteriology class, the teacher (an ex-nun at an ex-Catholic college) was telling us about the type "F" pili that are used to pass DNA so coli can have sex. One of the students asked "Why do they call them type…
May 9, 2008
Here's the second winning question about Microcosm, from Kevin:
E. coli is a bacteria commonly found in the intestines of some animals. What distinguishes the common and harmless strains from those that can cause illness and death?
A lot of people asked this question in the contest. But my sense is…
May 9, 2008
If you're just tuning in, on Tuesday I offered five free signed copies of my new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life to readers if they sent in a question. I was quite stoked to see the huge reaction. I can tell from the quality of the questions that the sheer volume was not just…
May 8, 2008
Thanks to everyone who submitted the 240 or so questions about Microcosm, E. coli, and life in general. I'll pick five of them tonight and answer them tomorrow and start signing copies for the winners. And if you didn't enter, why not considering getting a copy anyway?
May 8, 2008
From the blog of Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Mind Wide Open
Go Buy Microcosm Right Now
Carl Zimmer may be my favorite science writer around today (others seem to agree), so I'm excited to report that his new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life hit the shelves…
May 8, 2008
Just a quick reminder--I'll be keeping the contest for a free autographed copy of Microcosm till 5 pm this afternoon. Think of a question about E. coli (and what it can say about life itself), and get in the running for a signed book. I'll post answers to the winning responses tomorrow by noon.
(…
May 8, 2008
In case you missed it, there's a great article in Smithsonian about hyena intelligence, focusing on the work of Kay Holekamp, the subject of my recent piece in the New York Times. The author, Steve Kemper, spent time with Holekamp in hyena country in Kenya, seeing just how brutal (and fascinating)…
May 7, 2008
by the old man of the blogs, Andrew Sullivan, and even the editorial page of the New York Times. Who knew a few clever flies could win so many friends?
May 6, 2008
I'm in a celebratory mood. Microcosm is published today. In my mind, I can see the books moving out of warehouses onto trucks, off to book stores and front door steps. This morning I read a great review from Mykola Bilokonsky at Newsvine. ("What are you waiting for?" he asks.) And tonight I'll be…
May 5, 2008
In tomorrow's New York Times, I take a look at the evolution of intelligence. Or rather, I look at its flip side. Scientists and the rest of us are obsessed with intelligence--not just the intelligence of our own species, but any glimmer of intelligence in other animals. I've written plenty of…
May 5, 2008
Tomorrow is the publication date of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. I'll be celebrating by sending out some signed copies (details tomorrow), but in the meantime, here's an interview that just came out this morning about the book over at Newsvine, on the nature of life, how to…
April 30, 2008
In my last post I wrote about how scientists are learning about the origin of animals by studying their genomes. One of the surprising findings of the latest research is that a group of animals called comb jellies (ctenophores) belong to the oldest lineage of living animals. Comb jellies look a bit…
April 28, 2008
Today in the Boston Globe, I write about how scientists are revising their understanding of the evolution of animals, thanks to more DNA and more weird animals. My favorite quote comes from biologist Mark Pallen, who says that the human genome would have been worthless without understanding how…
April 24, 2008
I recorded a video for my Facebook page about the Microcosm book tour, which I've cloned below. Still fine-tuning my video interfaces...how does YouTube embed, compared to blip.tv?
April 21, 2008
With two weeks to go till Microcosm's publication date, I'm happy to direct your attention to an adapted excerpt that's running in tomorrow's New York Times. In this passage, I discuss what I like to call E. coli's fingerprints.
We like to think that genes equal identity. If that were true, then…
April 19, 2008
Click here to watch it on blip.tv (you can even watch in full screen, if you dare...)
April 18, 2008
NOTE: I'VE SET UP A FLASH VERSION OF THIS TALK HERE. DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME VERSION I DESCRIBED IN THIS POST.
Recently I gave the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, in which I talked about new developments in evolutionary biology. They sent me a DVD of…
April 18, 2008
In my new Dissection column over at Wired, I take a look at a remarkable new experiment on E. coli. Scientists randomly rewired the network of genes that control much of the microbe's activity and found that it generally just kept humming along.
One thing worth adding...in an accompanying…
April 16, 2008
Three weeks away from the publication of Microcosm, and another kind review has come out, this time from Library Journal:
To display a broad swath of the people, scientific processes, and discoveries involved in biology, science writer Zimmer (Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How It…
April 14, 2008
I'm heading to Colorado to give a talk at the University of Denver tomorrow. The subject of the talk is my book Soul Made Flesh, about the birth of neurology in the 1600s (see PZ Myer's kind review here). I'll also be talking about the experience of writing books about science. Of course, the first…
April 13, 2008
Radiolab is a show about science that briliantly uses radio's greatest strength--sound--to bring stories to life in ways we print goons can only dream about. I wrote a story about how animals sleep. The Radiolab folks played the sound of brain waves from a sleeping cat. And so on.
I'm particularly…
April 12, 2008
Today on bloggingheads, I talk to Gary Marcus, NYU psychologist and author of the new book Kluge, about all the telling ways in which our minds let us down, and what those shortcomings tell us about how it evolved.
April 10, 2008
Yesterday is the birthday of the man who froze the gallop and thawed it out again.
From, of course, Wikipedia.
April 4, 2008
A new map of some of the connections neurons make in the frontal cortex of a monkey's brain. From PLOS Computational Biology. Bigger image here.
April 4, 2008
My newest "Dissection" column is up at Wired.com. This time around, I take a look at how our brains relay signals. They turn out to do a terrible job. What's impressive is how they clean up their own mess. Check it out.
[Image via Vesalius Gallery]
(update 4.4.08 9:30 am: link fixed)
April 3, 2008
In yet another sign of the growing respectability of the online world for communicating science, this year the National Academies have set up a new "online/Internet" category for their annual communication prize. Here's what they want:
Entries original to the Web which published in English online…
March 31, 2008
These biologists are holding out on me.
I've been writing about biology for quite some time now, and sometimes I think I've got a pretty good sense of the scope of life. Neurosurgeon wasps--got it. Eels with alien jaws--check. And then I stumble across something new, or should I say, new to me.…
March 31, 2008
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 to my latest book. I think it's part of the late-stage madness that sets in during the third…