Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 110
November 11, 2009
Feathers That Sing: What A Little Sexual Selection Will 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...
November 10, 2009
News of the Superfabulous Sort
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...
November 9, 2009
Microbial Art
Supermodel microbes? You bet. Check out this gallery of lovely, sometimes whimsical microbe colonies.
November 8, 2009
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...
November 7, 2009
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)
November 6, 2009
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...
November 5, 2009
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.
October 30, 2009
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.
