The Loom » General

The tedious inevitability of Nobel Prize disputes

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:22:05 +0000

Once more we are going through the annual ritual of the Nobel Prize announcements. The early morning phone calls, the expressions of shock, the gnashing of teeth in the betting pools. In the midst of the hoopla, I got an annoyed email on Tuesday from an acquaintance of mine, an immunology grad student named Kevin Bonham. Bonham thought there was something wrong with this year’s Prize for Medicine or Physiology. It should have gone to someone else.

Kevin lays out the story in a new post on his blog, We Beasties. The prize, he writes, “was given to a scientist that many feel is undeserving of the honor, while at the same time sullying the legacy of my scientific great-grandfather.” Read the rest of the post to see why he feels this way.

Kevin emailed me while he was writing up the blog post. He wondered if I would be interested in writing about this controversy myself, to give it more prominence. I passed. Even if I weren’t trying to carry several deadlines on my head at once, I would still pass. As I explained to Kevin, I tend to steer clear of Nobel controversies, ...

Time to vote for the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize

Carl Zimmer — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:51:19 +0000

The folks at 3 Quarks Daily are winnowing down the entrants for the best science blog post of the year. They want you to help select the finalists by voting for your favorite post from the 87 nominees. (The Loom makes an appearance at #76 with “The Human Lake.”) You can vote till June 8, 11:59 PM EST.

Lisa Randall to judge this year’s 3 Quarks Daily science prize. Send in your nomination!

Carl Zimmer — Sun, 29 May 2011 03:25:07 +0000

The blog 3 Quarks Daily awards an annual prize for the best science blog post of the year. This year, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is judging the entries. The deadline is May 31 11:59 pm EST. If there’s a blog post that has really stood out in your memory from the past year (since May 22, 2010 to be precise), go here to nominate it.

We’d rather sell than pack!

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:33:17 +0000

The Zimmer clan is preparing for some renovations to the house, which means boxing up all my books. We’ve got a particularly tall stack of copies of my first book, At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales With Legs, and How Life Came Ashore and Went Back to the Sea. We’d rather sell these books than pack them. And so, from today till Friday, I’ll be offering autographed copies at my Amazon store for the low, low price of $5. (Imagine me shouting all this, Crazy-Eddie style.)

If you’re not familiar with the book, you can check out its carlzimmer.com page or check out this review in Times Higher Education, in which the reviewer writes, “It is wicked, I know, but I have the habit of turning over the corners of pages whenever I chance upon something unexpectedly interesting, exciting or informative. Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge quickly became the most dog-eared book on my shelves.”

Update 5/16 9:50 am: Whoa! I put this post up this morning before I caught at cab to LAX. By the time I got through security at the airport, ...

“Treasure your exceptions”

Carl Zimmer — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:39:27 +0000

“If I may throw out a word of counsel to beginners, it is: Treasure your exceptions! When there are none, the work gets so dull that no one cares to carry it further. Keep them always uncovered and in sight. Exceptions are like the rough brickwork of a growing building which tells that there is more to come and shows where the next construction is to be.”

–William Bateson, in The Method and Scope of Genetics, 1908. [pdf]

[Image: National Portrait Gallery]

Ashes to Ashes, Soap to Soap (Or Maybe Ashes to Soap)

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:40:55 +0000

To make soap, you must mix grease or fat with lye or some other alkaline substance. Sometimes, however, the stuff makes itself. If, for example, water laced with alkaline soil seeps into a coffin, it can transform a human body into soap. (This cadaver soap is known as grave wax or adipocere.) Here’s a picture of a “soapman” in the collection of National Museum of Natural History in Washington, just posted in the Smithsonian’s “Snapshot Series.” It belongs to a man who was buried in Philadelphia around 1800. His body was discovered in 1875 during an excavation to build a train depot. This particular example of grave wax is kept under lock and key in the museum’s “Dry Environment room,” so this is the closest you’ll get to seeing it. But if you want to see grave wax in person, be sure to get to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which keeps its eerie “Soap Lady” under glass.

Help a science teacher, o mighty hive-mind

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:17:13 +0000

Chris Farnsworth, a seventh-grade science teacher with an awesome tattoo, has a question for which I’d also like an answer…

Do you know of a good place to find popular science writing for middle and high school students? I wind up using the same places, like Discover, or The Best American Science Writing, but I feel like I am in hit-or-miss mode. Any ideas?

The end of Sex Week and the start of SciFoo

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:08 +0000

I hope you enjoyed Sex Week (in a purely intellectual way, of course). I’m now off to a confab called SciFoo, which I’ve heard a lot about over the years and am now finally able to attend. Each year, Google and O’Reilly Media bring together a motley crew of scientists, writers, and others, and basically tell them to make up a conference on the spot. There are a whole bunch of people on the attendee list that I’ve waited years to meet in person, so it will definitely be worth the trip to California. But if there are any SciFoo vets out there with advice for making the most of the experience, I’d love to hear it.

I will try to report on my experience, either in a measured reflection next week, or in a torrent of half-baked tweets.

And You Are…? [Feeding the Meme]

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:45:29 +0000

A couple years ago, Ed Yong, blogger/whippersnapper, asked his readers to describe themselves in a comment thread. It was a very successful experiment, one that many science bloggers have since replicated. Now Ed’s reviving the meme, which seems as good a time as any for me to join in (especially after a day so hot that my brain was parboiled inside my skull like some exotic delicacy). So, to quote from the memester:

In the comments below, tell me who you are, what your background is and what you do. What’s your interest in science and your involvement with it? How did you come to this blog, how long have you been reading, what do you think about it, and how could it be improved?

But really, these questions are a rough guide. I’m working on the basis that what you have to say will be far more interesting than what I think you might say.

So…who goes there? I’m curious.

Best Name For A Disease?

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:04:01 +0000

I’m at the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting, swimming in a lot of excellent new research. I also just learned about a disease I never heard of before, with a truly awesome name: Burning Mouth Syndrome.

When I posted this on Twitter, the writer Michael Paul Mason immediately responded with his own favorite: Smoking Stool Syndrome.

So what’s your favorite?

New York Times Obituary of Jack Schoenherr

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:05:17 +0000

Lovely tribute in the Times to the Great Bear of Locktown.

Returning to the Internet Cave

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:19:22 +0000

I’ve been away visiting relatives who somehow survive without WiFi. So now I’ll be catching up with a series of quick posts over the course of the day.

In Memory of the Great Bear of Locktown

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 03:05:05 +0000

Today, I’m very sad to say, the artist John Schoenherr passed away. Among his honors, Schoenherr earned a Caldecott Award for his paintings for the book Owl Moon. His dark, textured artwork did justice to all manner of life, from a Canada goose to a giant sandworm.

I met Jack when I was just ten years old, through his son Ian. He was not the typical father of your fifth-grade friends. He got up not long before noon, sat for a while at the kitchen table with some coffee, making a few jokes, and then headed to his barn, where he would paint till midnight or later. His barn was filled with dismantled MG’s, Japanese swords, a complete collection of National Geographics, snapping tortoise shells, camera equipment, years’ worth of paintings, and an atmosphere suffused with good cheer. We kids were always welcome, whether we wanted to ask questions about the latest painting on his easel, or if we just wanted to wander along his rough bookshelves and be alone in his company. I learned some of my most important early lessons about nature from Jack, and ...

Cosmology? Human Cell Cultures? The Colbert Report, Of Course

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:06:46 +0000

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Stephen Colbert is the twenty-first century Mister Wizard. He’s had guests on to talk about great experiments in physics and shock their fingers, addressed the thorny issue of species delimitation, reveled in microbes, and even screamed in horror at the sight of tongue-eating parasites. If you still doubt me, look at the list of videos at Colbert Nation tagged “science.”

What? You think science is a thing of the past on the show? Well, consider this: Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance will be on March 3, and Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, will be on in the second week of March. Tune in.

National Academies Communication Award: Nominations Open

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:13:19 +0000

I’ll be a judge again this year for the National Academies Communication Award, a $20,000 prize for excellence in reporting on science. The prize is awarded in four categories:

Book Magazine/Newspaper Film/Radio/TV Online

The nominations are now open. More information can be found here.

News of the Superfabulous Sort

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:00:59 +0000

The winners of this year’s AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award have just been announced. I’m honored to be the winner for large newspapers. (I submitted some of my articles over the past year in The New York Times.)

The whole enterprise of handing out awards for science journalism is fraught with gloomy undertones these days, of course. Last year’s newspaper winners actually lost their jobs by the time the awards were announced. But even as we struggle on, it’s reassuring that there are chances to get some recognition for striving to do our best, to make as much sense of the world as we can manage in plain English. And I’m particularly grateful that the folks at the New York Times indulges me in my curiosity about basic questions about the nature of life–like why fireflies flash.

The Last Thing The Mosquitofish Saw

Carl Zimmer — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:08:19 +0000

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)

Pwnage Made Easy

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:30:16 +0000

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.

Congratulations, Magnetic Movie

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:47:25 +0000

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.

Nobel For Telomeres

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:22:54 +0000

Congratulations to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this morning. They won for their discovery of telomeres, the caps on the ends of chromosomes that keep them from degrading and ward off aging. The Nobel site has posted some useful information about why this was such a profound discovery.

carlzimmer.com: It’s up. No, it’s down. It’s up again. No, it’s really down.

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:31:28 +0000

Just a technical note, with shades of exasperation: After my web site got hacked earlier a couple months back, I changed ISP’s and spent a lot of time bringing it up to date. Now I’ve discovered that it’s not working again, because of some mysterious error. I’m getting help with it, but it may take a few days for everything to get back in place.

Science On Shoals Is Live

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:45:36 +0000

I’ve posted the first two stories from students in my science writing class over at Science on Shoals. (plus an explanatory introduction). One piece is about the mysteries of bird migrations, and the other’s on a new technology for seeing skeletons in motion in 3-D. And there’s plenty more to come. Check it out.

Beach Teacher

Carl Zimmer — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:30:37 +0000

Now these are good office hours. I’m sitting in front of a big tide pool on a hot day at Appledore Island. My children are playing some Byzantine game involving princesses on the raft in the middle of the pool. A student of mine has just walked passed me, snorkel and goggles in hand. “I’ve just sent you an outline for my project, and I’m going to take a break,” she says. As she floats off to gaze at the algae and the crabs, I use the awesome wireless on this island to check my email The outline is in my inbox. So by the time she’s done snorkeling, we can discuss it.

I’m doing my best to counter this tranquility by editing these students nearly to the point of tears. But my impersonation of John Houseman in the Paper Chase just can’t measure up on a day like this.

Parasite Island and Hagfish Knots

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:28:31 +0000

We’re three days into the science writing class here at Shoals Marine Laboratory, and the exhaustion and enlightenment are neck and neck.

Monday we arrived on Appledore Island and settled in among the squawking herring gulls, which grudgingly walk out of our way as we walk by, as if to say, it’s our island. Tuesday morning we marched out to the northern edge of the island to learn about the intertidal zone, the place where the ocean meets land in necklace of pools and rocks battered by waves and coated in slimy algae.

A wicked lightning storm promptly drove us back to safety, and we spent the morning learning the intricacies of parasites that reign supreme in the intertidal zone, infesting snails, crabs, fish, and those squawking gulls. In the evening we were able to return to the intertidal zone in peace, to inspect cages where hapless crabs must wait to be infected by their parasite overlords. We were disturbed only by mosquitoes, which seem to be able to hammer nails into the skin. It turns out that these parasites (flatworms called trematodes) don’t just affect their host species, but can ...

Attention, Bulldogs

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:49:22 +0000

I’ve been quiet on the blog front for the past week thanks to some cross-country traveling for work and a few deadlines I must wrap up before turning to a new kind of experience–the pedagogical sort.

Next week I’ll be teaching a science writing class at Shoals Marine Lab on the lovely Appledore Island (see here and here for my past trips to this exceptional place). I’m not sure the students realize how good they’ll have it. They’ll be learning to write about science by going on four field trips in a week–one to collect hagfish, one to the island’s intertidal pools, one to an archaeological site on a nearby island, and one to a bird banding station. Of course, if horrible weather sweeps in, as it sometimes does, we may stay inside and pore over a recent issue of Current Biology. In any case, I’ll blog some of our exploits.

After I return from the island, I’ll have a couple weeks’ respite before I turn green, explode in Hulk-like fashion, and transform into a lecturer at Yale.

I’ll be teaching a class called “Writing About Science and the Environment.” (My request for ...