I’ll be yammering this week.

First stop on the yak fest, tomorrow morning, is over in New Haven, where I’ll be running the first session of a two-part science writing workshop for science graduate students at Yale. It’s my second year at this, so I’m hoping it goes smoothly. We’re going to record it and post at least some of it on Yale’s Itunes site as a free podcast. I’ll let you know when that becomes available.

Then I head for Washington DC, where I’ll be moderating a discussion Wednesday about synthetic biology. It’s part of the Seed/Schering-Plough Science + Society Series, in which scientists bring the latest in their field to government policymakers Drew Endy from MIT will be speaking about the science, and Anne-Marie Mazza from the National Academies will talk about how public policy will need to respond to it. Seed has posted some of the videos from previous talks in this series, so I’ll let you know when those go up too.

Thursday, I’ll be in New York for the last gabfest of the week: “The Roles of Emerging Media in Communicating Science.” It’s hosted by the Science Communication Consortium, whose ranks include Kate Seip, grad student and new blogger over at Pure Pedantry. Seed is hosting the event, so if you come you should be able to catch more of the motley crew at Scienceblogs. No recording that I know of, but it’s open to the public.

And home to rest the vocal cords.

A few days ago, my family was wandering the ruins of the Roman Forum. I explained to my daughters that the fragments of pillars around us were very old. Veronica, who is four, wanted to know how old.

They were made before she was born, I explained. Before her sister Charlotte was born.

Before Charlotte was born? she asked.

Actually, before I was born, I said. They were built before I was born, and fell down before I was born.

That last part was a bit too much for her.

Trying to comprehend deep time was actually the reason we were in Rome in the first place. I was invited to give a lecture about mass extinctions, as part of the Rome Festival of Science. I described how understanding the mass extinctions of the past can help us understand the significance of what’s happening to wildlife today.

It was quite an honor to be a part of the festival, which included talks by Nobel Laureates and panels on the future of energy and technology. Italy runs science festivals every year in cities like Rome and Genoa, which regularly attract big crowds and are written up in the country’s leading papers. We Americans lag behind the Italians in this department. Last year Cambridge, Mass., started up an annual science festival. New York is going to launch one of their own, and, being New York, they’re calling it the World Science Festival. There’s some serious heft behind it, though, starting with physicist Brian Greene, a festival co-founder. Here’s wishing it lives up to its name.

The Italian newspaper Il Sole asked me to write a piece for them to coincide with my talk. Below the fold you can find the original English version, which offers a fairly close summary of what I ended up talking about at the festival. Ciao.

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I’m neglecting my blog at the moment, because I have to finish up a bunch of stories before I take off on a pretty long trip. Along the way, I’m giving a talk at the Rome Science Festival about mass extinctions. If, unlike me, you can read Italian, you can get the details here. I’m also supposed to write up a summary of the lecture for Il Sole 24 Ore, an Italian newspaper. I’ll post the original English when I get back for anyone who’s interested.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of good stuff out there to read. For example, check out Linnaeus’ Legacy # 3, a carnival of taxonomy-related blogs including my recent pieces on whale evolution.

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, Darwin, and science writing. And that doesn’t even include talking about my next book, Microcosm.

Anyone interested in having me give a lecture or interview about Microcosm when it comes out in the spring is welcome get in touch. Knopf Speakers Bureau can handle requests for lectures on other topics.

If you live anywhere near my home town of Guilford, Connecticut, I’d be delighted if you could join me Thursday at 7:30 at the Guilford Free Library for a talk, “Will Global Warming Redraw the Map of Life?” (flyer pdf) I’ll be discussing extinction projections, assisted migration, and more.

At the end of February I joined John Rennie, editor in chief of Scientific American, to talk to students at the New York University journalism program about blogging about science. There’s a post about the talk now up, including some podcast excerpts, on the the Scienceline blog from the NYU Science Health and Environmental Reporting Program. More here.

Next week I’ll be heading to Utah. Southern Utah University asked me to be their Visiting Eccles Scholar, which means that I’ll be spending a couple days talking with students and faculty. I’ll also be giving two talks that are open to the public. The first, Wednesday evening, will be on global warming and extinctions, about which I wrote an article for the New York Times a couple months back. The next evening I’ll be talking about E. coli and the meaning of life. It’s the first time I’ll be speaking about my book in public, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of the stuff I learned while writing it. So if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Cedar City, come on out.

SUU – College of Science: Zimmer Presentations

Tomrrow I’m heading down to New York to take part in the “Inside Out” speaker series at New York University’s Department of Journalism. John Rennie, editor-in-chief at Scientific American, and I will try to answer the question, “Can two prominent magazine journalists find happiness blogging?” The inquisition, run by LA Times reporter and NYU writer-in-residence Lee Hotz is open to journalism students and faculty. It will take place the fifth floor atrium of 10 Washington Place, at 6 p.m on Tuesday. See you there.

In celebration of Darwin’s 198th birthday, there will be lots of events–talks, etc.–going on around the world next week. I’ll be doing my part, heading to the Rockies to talk at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. My talk is entitled, “The Descent of Man, From Darwin to DNA.” I’ll be speaking at 7 on Tuesday, February 13, in the Kebler Ballroom at the College Union Building. It’s free and open to the public. (Map)

Here’s a guide to a lot of the planned events at the official Darwin Day site. (Full disclosure: I’m on the board of advisors.) This year is distinguished by a big roll-out of the movie Flock of Dodos, Randy Olson’s wry look at shenanigans over evolution in Kansas and elsewhere. (Check out my report on the movie and Randy’s musings from last year.) By my count, he’ll be hitting 31 screens from Boston to LA. Venues include the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the San Francisco Exploratorium.

This success has earned Randy the Mooney Treatment. The Discovery Institute, your source for all things Intelligent Design (i e, the progeny of creationism), is promising many posts on Flock of Dodos at their site, Evolution News and Views. “We will be issuing more detailed responses to Olson’s film throughout this week, leading up to Darwin Day, Feb. 12 when it is scheduled to be screened in a few small science venues,” they write.

Let’s review. Few=31. Small science venues=some of the biggest science museums in the country. Are we clear?

I’m sure this is just a taste of the sort of quotable gems we can look forward to from the Discovery Institute in the next few days. May Randy get his very own flaming Pinto of design!

Update, 2/7/07 4 pm: Wow, Randy doesn’t get a lousy Pinto. He gets his own web site, hoaxofdodos.com. It’s really just a collection of old gripes from the Discovery Institute, but they appear to be trying to strike terror in our collective hearts with a picture of three menacing dodos. Please, try not to laugh:

Well, the talk at Cornell last week went very well. Thanks to everyone who came. If you want to hear me wax rhapsodic about parasite manipulations (and explain how scientists study their evolution), you’re in luck. Cornell has put the video of the talk online. The image is pretty small on the screen, so I decided to post the slide show on my web site here. I suggest opening two screens and advancing the slides as the talk progresses.

At first the sound is a little scratchy on the video and the light balance takes a while to get properly adjusted. But don’t give up–it evens out. You may also hear a baby gurgling from time to time.

Near the end, when I talk about cuckoo birds as parasites, I refer to their host in one of the pictures as a cowbird. I should have said a reed warbler.

And if you are curious to find out more, check out my book, Parasite Rex.

Update: Apparently the video doesn’t work for some readers. I am at a loss.

Attention all Loom readers in the Cornell University area: I’m heading up to Ithaca to give a talk tomorrow on a subject near and dear to my heart–how parasites turn their hosts into puppets and slaves. I’ll be at the David Call auditorium in Kennedy Hall at 4 pm. The lecture is open to the public and will, of course, include a very creepy Powerpoint. Details here, map here.

Just an update to my post about talking this weekend at the National Association of Science Writers meeting: in addition to the panel I was originally scheduled to join–on book publicity–I’ve also been added to a panel talk on Friday afternoon called “Navigating the New Media.” I’m subbing for writer Rebecca Skloot, who cannot come.