loom | May 31, 2008In case you couldn't make it to my World Science Festival panel this afternoon, check out my conversation with co-panelist/journalist/book author Peter Pringle on bloggingheads.
loom | May 31, 2008I'm heading to the New York Botanical Gardens to moderate a World Science Festival panel on crops, biodiversity, seed banks, and the amazing life of the Soviet scientist Nikolai Vavilov. (For some background, see this New Yorker article from last year.)
If you come to the panel, stick around for the Cafe Scientifique afterwards. And check out the "Darwin's Garden" exhibit. You'll find me snooping around the cycads and ferns.
loom | May 30, 2008E. coli is, arguably, the one species that scientists know best. If you type the name "Escherichia coli" into PubMed, the database of the National Library of Medicine, you'll get over a quarter of a million titles of scientific papers. Scientists have sequenced about 30 genomes of different strains of E. coli. It's the microbe of choice for those who want to figure out how to tinker with life. There's one problem with all this attention--how are scientists supposed to make sense of all this data? Scientists have created sites to aggregate E. coli data in one place. The newest and broadest…
loom | May 30, 2008I would love to introduce him to a certain resident of his gut. (Hat tip: Tree of Life)
loom | May 29, 2008I have been meaning for some days now to point your attention to my new article in the June issue of Scientific American called, "What Is A Species?" The hard copy is worth tracking down because it's got a lot of excellent illustrations and sidebars. SciAm has the full article online for subscribers, and I've posted the text over at carlzimmer.com.
There's so much I could say on the topic--pointing out how the recent news on polar bear extinction raises the question of how distinct polar bears are, for example--but I am scurrying in the shadow of a rising wave. (Attention people of Portland,…
loom | May 26, 2008As I mentioned previously, I'll be moderating a panel at the World Science Festival in New York on Thursday. It will be about art, science, and homeland security.
In 2004 artist Steven Kurtz was accused of terrorism when police came across bacteria and biological equipment in his house. After the terrorism charges were dropped, Kurtz still faced charges of mail and wire fraud until last month.
Kurtz will be speaking for the first time in public about the case since the charges were dropped, and he'll also be joined by critic Eugene Thacker and bioethicist George Annas. Here are the specifics…
loom | May 21, 2008Blogs are abuzz with the news that E. coli can solve classic math puzzles like the Burnt Pancake Puzzle. The paper itself is available for free here.
Judging from the Frankensteinian anxiety this news seems to be triggering, people must think that life is normally not capable of the logic that we're familiar with in computers. In fact, however, E. coli was carrying out a natural sort of computation long before some undergrads starting tinkering with it. In Microcosm, I show how the genes that build E. coli's flagella act like a noise filter circuit. (Here's a new paper on the digital control…
loom | May 19, 2008I'll be giving three talks in the next couple weeks in New York.
First up, my lecture at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn Tuesday. It's possible I'll be able to post the video of the lecture later--I'll let you know. (Out of curiosity--anybody know a good way to combine video and powerpoint slides online? I've seen it done, but not on any open social video sites.)
Then come two appearances in the World Science Festival.
First up: Thursday, May 29th 7 pm, I'll be moderating a panel about Steven Kurtz, the bioartist who was charged with terrorism. (He was also the subject of a movie,…
loom | May 18, 2008Had another author told me his publisher was sending me a copy of a book on Escherichia coli, I would have been perhaps quietly unenthusiastic. But best selling science writer Carl Zimmer is a master story teller and superb researcher. He's also renowned for effortlessly slipping a giant payload of scientific knowledge into the reader, sweetened with human drama, one so comprehensive a student struggling with a dry textbook would have had to hammer into their head over the course of an entire semester.
Carl didn't disappoint: within a few short pages he had me completely, delightfully hooked…
loom | May 17, 2008Blogging briefly from Chicago. Today's talk at the Field Museum went well--I managed to lure a fair number of people inside from a beautiful spring afternoon to hear me talk about a gut germ. I also had a chance to walk through the fabulous Shedd Aquarium. The Field Museum has an acquarium of its own--filled with 520 million year old creatures. They set up three gigantic screens on which they have a mind-blowing animation of Cambrian animals--slithering, flapping, wiggling, and looking quite alien. I found it mesmerizing. The animators have a movie you can watch online, but if you ever get a…
loom | May 15, 2008
The platypus genome, which was published for the first time last week, has proved to be a Whitman's sampler of biological treats. In case you missed the initial reports, you can check out a good summary from PZ Myers (and also take a look at Ryan Gregory's take-down of the bad coverage). But today I just happened to come across another treat that, to my knowledge, hadn't yet been picked out from the box. It's a paper that came out today in Genome Biology. It concerns a very cool side of evolution that not many people appreciate. Species can evolve when their genes are modified, or when they…
loom | May 15, 2008Do you live in Brooklyn? Or a subway ride from SUNY Downstate Medical Center? Are you free Tuesday May 20 at 4 pm? Then swing over for a lecture I'll be giving on the evolution of mind. Here's a copy of the poster (full size here). And while I'll certainly be talking about human minds, you can expect other species to make cameos, from smart flies to clever hyenas to mindless E. coli. They all fit together into a big picture. See you there.
(PS: Just a reminder--I'll also be at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge on Friday and the Field Museum in Chicago on Saturday to talk about Microcosm.)
loom | May 14, 2008The New York Sun has a positive review of Microcosm today, and part of me just wants to point you in its direction, let you read about the book's "ecstatically reflective moments," and leave it at that. But there's one puzzling passage that makes me wonder if some printer bent on mischief swapped my page 31 for one that I didn't write. The reviewer observes, correctly, that much of the book is dedicated to drawing parallels between E. coli and us--and all living things as well. While he thinks this works for the most part, he thinks sometimes the comparison is "perhaps too glib."
Mr. Zimmer…
loom | May 13, 2008
Last fall the Loom was awash in tattoos from scientists. Since then, I've moved them over to my Science Tattoo Emporium. If you haven't checked it out recently, let me invite you over. Incredibly, someone sends me a new science tattoo just about every day. I post them as fast as I can, but I've still got a backlog. And most of them are astonishingly cool--both beautiful and enlightening. I particularly like today's post, today's post, an homage to Darwin's finches. Plenty more where that came from.
loom | May 12, 2008I'm heading to Boston on Friday to speak at the Harvard Book Store about Microcosm. It's at 7 pm, and it's free. Information is here. Then it's on to Chicago, where I'll be talking at the Field Museum on Saturday at 2. Here are the details. I hope some Loom readers can make it! (For those who don't live in either fine city, please check my talk page.)
loom | May 10, 2008Following up on the last post, here's George Johnson with Stephen Colbert. Where else on TV could someone recreate one of Faraday's experiments? The new Mr. Wizard?
loom | May 10, 2008As long as I can remember, I've been a fan of George Johnson's writing about science. He has always kept focus on the deep mysteries of existence, even while writing in a deliciously clear style. So it was a real pleasure to talk to him on bloggingheads.tv about my own book, Microcosm. Even though we spent lots of time wondering what E. coli tells us about the universal rules of life itself, we still found time to talk about what it's like to have sex in a Waring blender. Check it out. (And to all those insomniacs--don't forget, I'll be on the radio on Coast to Coast AM tonight at 1 am.)
loom | May 9, 2008From the new issue: "It is a powerful account of the dynamic, complicated and social world we share with this ordinary yet remarkable bug. Evolution and genetics glitter among the pages, as do the lives and experiments of the scientists who have studied them. Microcosm is exciting, original and wholly persuasive of the beauty and utility of looking at the largest of issues from the smallest perspectives."
loom | May 9, 2008I'll be talking on Coast to Coast at a slightly less wee-hours time: 1 am on Sunday.
loom | May 9, 2008Just a quick note to say that, if all goes according to plan, I will be appearing on the Internets on bloggingheads tomorrow, and on the radio show Coast-to-Coast in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning. In both cases I'll be talking about--you guessed it--Microcosm. I'll be swilling coffee Saturday night because I'll be talking from 2 am to 5 1 to 2 am EST Sunday. If you're not quite such a night owl, I believe they'll archive it on their site.
A couple other Microcosm-related notes: Discover Magazine gives a nod: "With Microcosm, this award-winning science writer has turned out an…