Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 109

Radio Alert: Science Fantastic Today At 5

Today at 5 pm EST I am going to be on Science Fantastic, the radio show hosted by physicist Michio Kaku. You can call in at 800-449-8255. Here's a list of stations that carry the show, either live or repeated later this week.

Vancouver BC: Infection Commences Tomorrow

[image error]I'm waiting to board my Air Canada flight to the rain-drenched city of Vancouver. Residents of that fair city are invited to come to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, dry off for a spell, and hear my talk tomorrow at 7 about Darwin, the flu, and evolution . It's free, but you have to register here. See you tomorrow.

Math Monkeys

[image error]Math is the subject of my new Discover column on the brain. How do we do it, and when did we (or our primate ancestors) start doing it? The answer, or at least some intriguing new research, is here.

Science Cabaret

Here's a fun talk I had Saturday on Science Cabaret, a radio show on WICB in Ithaca. The host, Jennifer Nelson, is a graduate student at Cornell and has only been interviewing people about science for two months, but she's clearly a natural at this. At the Science Cabaret site, you can listen to her earlier talks, too. .

Sarah Palin On The Origin of Species

Palin "didn't believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea" or from "monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees."

Quoted in Michiko Katutani's review of Sarah Palin's new memoir.

Warning Label

[image error]This is definitely going into the swine flu talk! From Colin Purrington's The Axis of Evo.

Real Wonder Vs. Make-Believe In Ithaca, NY

Tomorrow morning I'm hopping a plane and spending the afternoon at Cornell. On Saturday, I'll be giving a talk about The Origin of Species just down the road in downtown Ithaca. Caren Cooper, an ornithologist at Cornell, has used my upcoming talk as the hook for a lovely essay in the Ithaca Times about the real wonder of science versus the make-believe of pseudoscience. You can find details about the talk here.

Reminder–Darwin Gets Swine Flu Tomorrow in New Haven

Just a reminder to my fellow Nutmeggers: I will be speaking tomorrow at 5:30 pm at the Peabody Museum at Yale in New Haven. The title of the talk is "Darwin Gets Swine Flu." Pigs, ducks, sneezes, and more.

Details here.

Attention Vancouver: Infection to commence in six days!

[image error] This post is really just an excuse for me to put up this cool poster. If you want the details on my talk in Vancouver on November 18, you can find them here. Tickets are free, but registration is required.

Feathers That Sing: What A Little Sexual Selection Can Do

If you ever find yourself in the forests of Ecuador, you may have the good fortune of spotting a club-winged manakin. The closest the rest of us will probably ever get will be to watch this video. But don't just watch it. Listen.

If you said to yourself, "Hold on, is that bird singing with its wings?" the answer is yes.

As I wrote in this 2005 article in the New York Times, ornithologists have long known that a few species of manakins can make sounds with their wings. The sounds are produced...