Supermodel microbes? You bet. Check out this gallery of lovely, sometimes whimsical microbe colonies.
Microbial Art
The Four Finches [Science Tattoo]
Duygu writes, “I am a developmental biologist by training. Actually, my Ph.D. thesis does not really have an evolutionary focus because I study joint regeneration in embryonic chick limb. However, I have been an evolution enthusiast and also an activist for educating public about the theory of evolution for a long time. I could not imagine a better tattoo: Darwin’s finches arranged to look like a butterfly…I got it in 2009–Darwin’s 200th anniversary and On The Origin of Species‘ 150th anniversary. I spent last few years reading and writing a lot on evolution, as well as playing the “editor-in-chief” for translating UC Berkeley’s Understanding Evolution website into Turkish (Evrimi Anlamak – a completely volunteer work by our group called Hard-workers for Evolution). All in all, I am a biologist and ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution‘… So, I celebrate it with four finches on my shoulder!”
The Last Thing The Mosquitofish Saw
Peter Wainwright and his colleagues at UC Davis study the weird ways in which fish eat. Two years ago I wrote about their creepy work on moray eels for the Times here. Now they’ve got a Youtube channel for their surreal films. Mick Jagger, meet the Red Bay Snook. And Mr. Mosquitofish, meet your doom. (h/t Jonathan Eisen)
Alternative Landscapes
Leave it to the Boston Globe’s Big Picture to pick out a staggering portfolio of pictures of Mars.
Tangled Bank News: An Excerpt and More
The Tangled Bank is now officially out; I’m getting word back from readers that it’s actually showing up from Amazon. If you’re curious about it, here are a couple ways to find out more.
1. I’ve set up pages on my web site where you can download the introduction, look at some of Carl Buell’s artwork for the book, read reviews, and get contact information if you’re a teacher interested in a desk copy.
2. The New York Academy of Sciences has published an excerpt in the new issue of their magazine. It’s about the evolution of the eye, and you can read it online here.
3. Discover has another excerpt, about coevolution, in their November issue. The print issue is out now, and it should be posted online some time soon.
Podcast: An Embarrassment of Genomes
Many blog and Twitter readers may be acquainted with Jonathan Eisen, a biologist at UC Davis. In my latest Meet the Scientist podcast, I spend an hour chatting with Eisen about what you can learn by looking at the genomes of particularly weird microbes–from radiation-resistant critters to bugs that live in the guts of insects or on the bellies of deep-sea worms. Check it out.
Pwnage Made Easy
I smell an anthology here: a collection of the all-time greatest take-downs, in which scientists expose lazy thinking. How about, The Best Pwnage of 2009?
My own latest nomination:
In the new book Superfreakonomics, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner make lots of provocative claims about global warming. For example, they say that solar panels would absorb so much heat they’d be useless for bringing the planet’s temperature down by cutting down carbon emissions.
Raymond Pierrehumbert, who, like Levitt, is a professor at the University of Chicago, shows why that’s wrong–not with calculus or some other fancy-schmancy mathematics, but with some embarrassingly simple arithmetic.
Be sure to check out the map at the end. Ouch.
Teach The Lizard Overlord Controversy
Who says there aren’t any disagreements over human origins? Not this guy.
[hat tip the Twitterati]
Congratulations, Magnetic Movie
I had the pleasure of serving as a judge for the Scientific Merit Award at the Imagine Science Film Festival, which just closed over the weekend. You may have seen the winner we picked, Magnetic Movie, which I’ve embedded below. There was a huge variety to choose from, some wonderfully beautiful, and some finding great emotional depth in just a few minutes. But Magnetic Movie, in the way it reveals the hidden weirdness that surrounds us, was tops.
Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Ten Evolution Picks For Nova
NOVA isn’t just a great television series; it’s also a formidable web site. (And, as with so many things media these days, it’s hard to draw the line between the two.)
They’ve just launched an evolution-rich site, with information on their evolution-related shows and lots of other goodies. (As you can see, it’s still beta.)
As part of the unveiling, NOVA asked me if I’d pick ten of the most important developments in evolutionary biology over the past decade. I came up with a far-from-exhaustive list. Check it out.
Where I’ll Be Talking (Now That I’m Conscious)
After weeks of manically scrubbing my hands with soap, Purel, and eye of newt, I ended up getting swine flu anyway. It’s not terribly surprising, since my entire town seems to have become a Petri dish for the viruses this week. I find a stunning clarity to the flu–you don’t feel a little sleep-deprived, or a little raspy. You are just a slave, heeding your body’s call to go to bed. I’m grateful that I am now on the mend, but I’m worried that with so many of us conking out, even a small percentage of serious cases will wreak havoc on hospitals. Someone please remind me why we still make our flu vaccines in chicken eggs?
It just so happens that swine flu was going to be one of the things I plan to talk about over the next few weeks as I head out for a series of talks to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species. I’d rather have to speak about the evolution of swine flu second-hand, but I guess I’ll talk as a former host.
Here are my movements…hope to meet some Loom readers along the way (but only if you’re healthy!)
Sunday November 1. Pasadena, CA: Caltech.
Thursday November 12. New Haven, CT: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
Saturday November 14. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University [details to come]
Thursday November 19. Vancouver, British Columbia: Beaty Biodiversity Museum
Thursday, December 3. Denver: Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Friday, December 11. Amherst: University of Massachusetts [details to come]
Saturday, January 16. Research Triangle Park, NC: Science Online 2010. (This is the only talk that’s not a public lecture. I’ll be on a panel discussing science journalism online. You have to register for the entire workshop. But this is definitely one workshop I’d recommend you sign up for.)
