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The Open Notebook peers into one my articles

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:42:49 +0000

Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann have started a cool project called The Open Notebook, in which they talk to science writers about how they put together a particular story. For their latest dissection, they chose my New York Times story from last year on the microbes that swarm in our bodies. They talked to me about how I wrote that piece, and my approach to writing in general (short answer: chaos). They even included an audio excerpt from one of the interviews I did for the story. If you’re curious about the sausage around here gets made, check it out.

[Image: My microbiome Moleskine]

Teenage turtles on the loose!

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:12:13 +0000

A good end to a stormy day: after the snapping turtles came to our house this summer and laid their eggs, the eggs hatched and the hatchlings became vivacious teenagers. Here’s one that turned up by the front door, which we then rescued from the curiosity of our cats.

Dawkins meets giraffe: the full show

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:36:15 +0000

Thank you, hive mind. (Actually, Dallas in particular.) Here’s the whole episode of Inside Nature’s Living Giants in which Dawkins ponders the anatomical wonder and goofiness of the giraffe.

Greetings From Beijing

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:03:56 +0000

I’m in Beijing for a few days on assignment. I have (selectively) great Internet access. So I’ll be blogging, but I won’t be immersed in social networks. More anon.

[Image: d'n'c/Flickr]

Evolution in Alabama

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:26:27 +0000

Earlier today I noted a weird situation in Alabama, with a teacher-union-funded ad attacking a candidate for governor for believing in evolution, and the candidate declaring himself a defender of creationism in the schools. I wondered who would speak up for science in Alabama. But I’d be remiss not to point out that good research in evolutionary biology does get done there. For example:

Beatrice Hahn studies the evolution of HIV from chimpanzee-infecting viruses.

Marshal Abrams studies the philosophical foundations of fitness.

Phillip Harris studies the evolution of diversity in freshwater fishes.

John Yoder studies the evolution of new organs.

Steven Secor studies the evolution of digestion in reptiles and amphibians, and what they surprisingly say about the evolution of our own species.

Jeannette Doeller and David Kraus have designed an innovative course on integrating evolution and medicine.

I could go on (and please feel free add other scientists in the comment thread). Suffice to say, there’s good stuff going on in Alabama. Too bad it’s not better known there.

Friday at Yale: A Talk About Science and the Media

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:15:00 +0000

Attention, people of Yale, New Haven, and environs! I will be giving a talk Friday called “Science and the Media: A Match Made in Heaven, or a Cosmic Train Wreck?”

I’ll offer my bipolar musings on the once and future state of science journalism. It’s free and open to the public

It’s sponsored by the Yale Training Program in Biophysics, the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics, and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale.

Here are the details:

When: Friday, April 23, 2010 4:00 PM
Where: Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology (BASS), Rm. 305
266 Whitney Ave., New Haven, CT 06511

More information here. and here.

The Mighty Power of Blogosaurus?

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:21:08 +0000

Over the past few days, I’ve been following a tale of paleontological woe with a surprisingly happy ending.

Matt Wedel, a paleontologist, has been blogging about his experience with a television show on the Discovery Channel called Clash of the Dinosaurs. It didn’t go well. The producers edited Wedel’s interviews to turn his words around 180 degrees. For example, remember that old notion of big dinosaurs having a second brain along their spinal column? Not true! Wedel explained this, but if you tune into the show, you see Wedel essenitally saying, True!

Wedel understandably flipped out. He complained to the producers and got back a non-apology that just made him angrier. He was transformed into the terrible Blogosaurus, and with his resonant nasal cavity he let out a clarion call for his fellow blogosaurs to stampede the production company

I’ve heard this sort of story many times before, and this is where it usually ends. Blogosaurus slinks back to his office and sulks.

But today the story has another ending. Wedel now reports that someone from the Discovery Channel called him up ...

Teach The Lizard Overlord Controversy

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:24:55 +0000

Who says there aren’t any disagreements over human origins? Not this guy.

[hat tip the Twitterati]

The Loom and the Rest of Discover Go Mobile

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:01:30 +0000

Take the Loom with you. Discover has now set up a mobile version of the entire site, including this blog. It looks good on my Itouch, I have to say, but judge for yourself. And let us know if you find any bugs in need of fixing.

Ardipithecus Is Ready For Her Close-Up

Carl Zimmer — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:32:02 +0000

Tomorrow the Discovery Channel will show an Ardipithecus documentary. I’ve embedded a couple preview clips they’ve been sending around. I don’t have cable myself (the same way an alcoholic doesn’t keep cases of gin). So I’ll leave it to commenters to offer reviews tomorrow.

There’s obviously a striking parallel with the TV mania that recently surrounded another primate fossil, Darwinius. Personally, I don’t see anything amiss (a priori, at least), with a documentary coming out right after a journal paper gets published. What I don’t relish is when the publicity for a show distorts the news coverage of a fossil, as happened with Darwinius. So I’d be curious what people who watch the show think.

Colbert, Microbes: A Love Affair

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:44:32 +0000

I would love to introduce him to a certain resident of his gut. (Hat tip: Tree of Life)

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Microbe Beat! www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

The Origin of the Ridiculous

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:01:58 +0000

Whales are beautifully ridiculous. They are majestic divers, in some cases plunging nearly two miles underwater. And yet sooner or later they must rise back to the surface to breathe air. They breathe through a rather ridiculous-looking hole on top of their head. Unlike fish, which often reproduce by spraying millions of eggs and swimming away, whales give birth to one calf at a time, which they proceed to nurse for months. Some whales are like underwater bats, shrieking through their blowholes and listening to the echoes. And perhaps most ridiculous of all are whales that turn themselves into giant filters, thanks to a ridiculous tissue called baleen.

Baleen is a giant frond-like growth that sprouts from the jaws of 11 species of whales. Baleen whales open up their toothless mouths, sucking clouds of krill and other animals. They then ram the water out with their massive tongues, trapping food in their overlapping plates of baleen. Licking off the food, they open their mouths for another gulp.

Whales are ridiculous thanks to their history.They evolved from mammals on land. Their swimming, reproduction, breathing, and other adaptations to life in water are all the ...

Six-Legged History

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 03:05:43 +0000

I’ve got a short piece in tomorrow’s New York Times about the 400-million year history of insects. Some beautiful pictures of the creepers included.

More from Brown on Hobbits

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:17:51 +0000

Peter Brown, anthropologist on the hobbit team, jumps into the comment fray himself on the nature of the fossils he discovered.

Be heard!

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:23:09 +0000

I’ll be talking to science writers about blogging on Tuesday in New York. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, leave your comments here. Thanks.

Monkey Business

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:09:43 +0000

A Bronx cheer for the four-legged hobbit from one of its discoverers. See my updated post.

The Loom: The Podcast Edition

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:52:52 +0000

The science writer/blogging panel I was on over the weekend is now available on Contentious.

Return of the Howlers

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 01:57:05 +0000

Apologies for the long radio silence. Travelling and the obligatory pre-travelling frenzy shut down the blogging assembly line for a couple weeks. Having wrapped up my west-coast jaunt (thanks to the great crowd that came out for the CSPAN taping at Stanford), I can write a bit about some of the new science that has caught my eye.

Crouching on top on the pile are howler monkeys. Howlers have become frequent visitors to the Loom, much to my surprise. For some reason they’ve recently started to have a lot to say about evolution–particularly, as odd as it may seem, about the evolution of our own species. As I wrote in an earlier post, we humans have good eyesight compared to many other primates. We have three genes that make receptors for light in our eyes, each sensitive to its own band of the spectrum–red, green and blue. The combined sensitivity of these genes lets us tell the difference between yellow, organge, pink, and red. Other apes and monkeys in the Old World also have trichromatic vision, as it’s called. On the other hand, almost all monkeys in the New World have only two color genes, as do ...

The Howler Test

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 06:12:13 +0000

If you’ve ever been to a Central American forest, you’ve probably heard the hoots and wails of a howler monkey. But these creatures deserve our attention for more than their howls. They turn out to tell us a lot about the evolution of our own senses. We and some of our close primate relatives are remarkable for having powerful color vision. What triggered the evolution of this adaptation some 25 million years ago? Some researchers have proposed that as the global climate cooled, our ancestors were forced to shift from a diet of fruit to leaves. An ability to detect red and green colors would have helped these early primates detect the best leaves to munch on. The descendants of these leaf-munching primates shifted to other foods in later years, but they held onto their color vision.

Before the ancestors of today’s Old World monkeys and apes acquired color vision, primates had already spread to South America and this continent began to drift away. None of today’s New World monkeys has trichromatic color vision–except for the howler monkey. And a major part of the diet of the howler monkey is, interestingly enough, leaves.

Meanwhile, other scientists have been studying the evolution ...