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Posts by this author
November 30, 2007
A quick heads-up: I'll be talking about the tree of life tomorrow morning on NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition. The segment will be archived on their "Science Out of the Box" web page. We'll be talking about everything from animals to mushrooms to the unclassifiable viruses that graft the tree of life…
November 28, 2007
The Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology has rolled out the "Stevens Seventy," the seventy greatest science books since 1900. If you click all the way through to Z, my 2000 book Parasite Rex ends the list. Many thanks.
As the introduction to the list points out, these…
November 27, 2007
I just noticed that in the new issue of the New Yorker Michael Specter has written an article on the viruses in our genome. I wrote about this research in the New York Times a year ago. I haven't had a chance to read the article through yet, but I was mortified to come across this line...
Until…
November 27, 2007
For my latest "Dissection" column in Wired, I take a look at the tree of life, and the way it changed dramatically thirty years ago this month. To get a sense of what the tree looks like today, I pointed readers to the wonderful interactive tree of life at the European Molecular Biology Lab. But I…
November 20, 2007
Once the writers' strike is over, anyone in the mood to make a new monster movie might consider this beast, described today in the journal Biology Letters. It's Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, a "sea scorpion" that lived 390 million years ago. Based on a fossil of its enormous claws was found in Germany,…
November 20, 2007
"This neuron tattoo was done a few months ago. When I was 18, my dad passed away from Lou Gehrig's, which is a disease of motor neurons that innervate muscles. His battle with neurodegeneration helped me decide on a career in medical research, and I am currently pursuing my PhD in Neuroscience."--…
November 20, 2007
The deja vu is hitting hard.
Two years ago a Pennsylvania court was hearing a challenge to introducing intelligent design into a public school in the town of Dover. At the time, I argued that people should look south to understand the stakes of the conflict. Down in Florida the state government…
November 20, 2007
A couple months ago, I wrote a feature for Discover about the intriguing possibility that life might have originated more than once on Earth--and that maybe those alternative life forms were still alive among us today. Paul Davies, one of the scientists who has explored this idea in recent years,…
November 20, 2007
My fellow bloggingheads John Horgan and George Johnson took some time on their latest science talk to dissect my New York Times article on swarms (you can jump to that section here). John wonders if I'm just discovering all the complexity stuff he and George were writing about back in the 1990s. I…
November 20, 2007
I'm back from California and the award ceremony I mentioned last week. The trip was fun but a little absurd--I flew across the country and back within 36 hours. It's time for some serious carbon offsetting. I got to hang out with ABC's Robert Krulwich without having to go into a forest, and was…
November 13, 2007
Not much blogging this week--I'm heading out to California to receive the National Academies prize I wrote about a while back. In the meantime, let me direct your attention to my lead article in this week's Science Times section of the NY Times. I wrote about swarms, herds, schools, gaggles, and…
November 12, 2007
I agree with Phil that it's a good term. In fact, when I have to talk about intelligent design, these slides are how I illustrate its evolutionary roots.
November 9, 2007
1. From this week's crop of new tattoos: Abraham writes: "I got mine in grad school (PhD materials science and applied physics, 2004 Cal). The tatoo is a convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) image of 6-4 Ti alloy (hexagonal, or beta phase) one of the first 'super alloys'. Being light-…
November 8, 2007
This is a new and fascinating map. It shows how next spring is probably going to come early here in New England, as it has come earlier and earlier for the past few decades. But in Florida it will probably come late. Both changes stem from the same source: our carbon addiction. I explain why in my…
November 8, 2007
A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I'll be teaching a workshop in January at Yale about science writing. The response has been fantastic, with 90 people signed up at my last count. What makes the response particularly interesting is that a couple subjects of my own articles (like this) will be…
November 6, 2007
I am a bone geek, I confess. On my bookshelves are a bunch of coffee-table books full of skulls, femurs, and xyphoid processes. They include From Lucy To Language, loaded with hominid remains, Human Bones for our current anatomy, and Fossils for a quick hit of Deep Time. An excellent addition to…
November 3, 2007
I've updated the talks page on my web site after a long stretch of neglect. I've included links to podcasts and video of previous appearances, and what information I have at this point about upcoming talks. It's going to be a fairly busy spring, with talks hither and yon on extinctions, whales,…
November 2, 2007
Sorry about the mistake on the last post's headline. (Vengeans? Sort of like vengeful vegans?) Spell-checkers have turned my brain to mush.
November 1, 2007
"Here is a picture of my serotonin tattoo. I don't know that it needs much more explanation than it's my favorite neurotransmitter."--Hayley
I thought there were more science tattoo out there. Last week brought nothing, but this week brought the collection up to 85.
October 30, 2007
For those who may have come to the Loom after seeing me talking about autumn leaves on ABC News this evening, you can learn more about the science in these posts (plus this article I wrote for the New York Times).
Scientists continue to investigate why leaves change colors--check out this new post…
October 30, 2007
A quick note: I just found out I'll be on the ABC evening news tonight, about 5 minutes before the end of the show, talking about the mystery and glory of autumn leaves. I'll post a link when I find it.
Update: Voila.
October 30, 2007
I'm sometimes asked who my favorite science writers are. I don't like science writers per se; I like science writing, or rather some science writing--the passages and chapters and books that remind me just how good science writing can get, just how high above the wasteland of hackery, dishonest…
October 29, 2007
Matthew Chapman, writer and producer, writes an op-ed calling for presidential candidates to have a debate on scientific issues. It's an entirely reasonable piece, but if you stop to think about it, its publication raises two disturbing questions--
1. Why should anyone have to plead for science to…
October 26, 2007
It appears that I didn't receive a single new science tattoo this week! Could it really be that on the entire planet, there are only 81 people passionate enough about their science to go under the needle? If so, thanks to everyone for a fascinating experiment. If not...keep them coming.
October 25, 2007
Ugh. Several days, pretty much day and night, going over the copy-edited Microcosm manuscript with a green pencil. I haven't had any time to write any original blog posts--or even reply to most of my email. But I can at least point you to three articles of mine that went online while I was buried…
October 22, 2007
At least for me, getting to see the cover of a new book for the first time is a great morale boost. The designer usually finishes it up right around the time when I'm starting to wonder if the book will ever become real. Recently I got the new cover of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of…
October 19, 2007
Thanks for all the questions for my talk with Craig Venter for bloggingheads.tv. I didn't end up reading questions verbatim a la Emily Litella ("a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee New Jersey asks...") But the questions definitely shaped the conversation.
Some readers have been asking when our talk…
October 19, 2007
"I am a biochemist, studying to be a molecular biologist, and the tattoo I am sending is the entry for carbon on the periodic table of elements. Since all living things on this planet at least are carbon based, from a chemical standpoint, it doesn't get much more basic than carbon. Hence the tattoo…
October 17, 2007
[Update 10/18 8:30 am: Honestly, when I wrote this post last night, I could only access the first couple paragraphs of the op-ed in question. But now the link takes you to the full text. Could it be that my cries were heard?? Doubt it, but open access is always nice.]
In today's Wall Street Journal…
October 16, 2007
Permit me a wee bit of nepotism. My brother Ben is on ABC News: World News tonight to celebrate National Dictionary Day. He talks about how language evolves in weird ways. It's already on their web cast here