Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 121
June 4, 2009
Sex!
“We do not even in the least know the final cause of sexuality; why new beings should be produced by the union of the two sexual elements…The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness.”
So wrote Charles Darwin in 1862. In this week’s issue of Science, I write an essay on what we know now about this mystery. The essay is here (subscription required), and you can listen to me talking about why sex is weirder than you know on this week’s Science Podcast.
To continue this celebration of sex in all it
June 2, 2009
A Darwinius Carnival (Plus Some History of “Missing Links”)
It’s now been a bit over a week since Darwinius Day, and the sky, for the moment at least, still remains blue. It’s a good moment to look back and take stock of that hallucinatory ride through the media-science funhouse, and Brian Switek–a remarkable undergraduate who took to the Times of London to help people think straight about this fossil–has assembled a blog carnival just on this topic. In particular, check out the post that looks at a brief but questionable statement in the Darwinius paper
June 1, 2009
Vote For Your Favorite Science Blog Post
3 Quarks Daily has finished gathering nominations for its science blog prize, and you can now vote for your favorite. From the top 20 vote-getters, the editors of 3QD will then select six finalists, from which the winners will be chosen by Steven Pinker. The public voting closes at midnight, June 8 EST.
My Tendrils Extend Deeper Into Next Week’s World Science Festival
[image error]Next week the second annual World Science Festival hits New York. I’m now going to be involved in three events that I hope Loom readers can attend.
1. Thursay, June 11, 6:30-8:00 PM “Wall-E’s World: Designs for an Invisible Footprint.” I’ll be talking to designers and an astrobiologist about cities, trash, space travel, and the search for a sustainable future.
2. Friday, June 12, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM “Picturing Earth: The Story of Life in Images.” Frans Lanting takes majestic pictures of our living
May 31, 2009
The Jokes Physicists Tell About Chemists [Science Tattoo]
Stevens Johnson, a physics professor, writes:
After years of needling from my musician wife (who has a pair of music tattoos on her shoulders), I finally took up the challenge and wasted a large amount of time designing my own science tattoos. I greatly enjoyed the time and effort to get them just right, to reflect who I am and what I do (Prof. of Physics and Engineering).
The right shoulder tattoo [CZ: above] is a 3D perspective abstract view of a gaussian photon, a “particle of light,” the red v
May 28, 2009
Speak, Mouse
More and more, scientists are figuring out the molecular changes that have taken place over the course of our evolution. It’s one thing, however, to have a good idea of the ways in which our DNA was altered, but it’s quite another to figure out how those changes affected our ancestors, and how those changes may have spread from an individual to the entire species through a process such as natural selection.
Knowing how genes work makes it possible to come up with hypotheses about how changes to t
May 27, 2009
Big Ratings For Darwinius Day. So How Was It, Cable-Viewers?
Monday night, Darwinius masilae (a k a Ida) had her television debut on The Link, which aired on the History Channel. A lot of people saw it, says Broadcasting & Cable in a surprisingly accurate article, which managed to do a better job on the scientific side of the story than a lot of regular media outlets:
Controversy Helps ‘The Link’ Boost History–Draws 2 million viewers Monday night
By Alex Weprin — Broadcasting & Cable, 5/26/2009 1:39:59 PM MT
The Link, a History special about the recently
May 26, 2009
Introducing The Quark, A Prize For Science Blogs
If you don’t already know about 3 Quarks Daily, check it out. It’s an elegant group blog that links to all sorts of interesting stuff on science, art, literature, politics, and philosophy. They also put “gossip” in the list of topics in their banner, but I don’t recall anything on Angelina Jolie or Mel Gibson. This morning, for example, they’ve posted stuff on the evolution of house cats and the leader of the defeated Tamil rebels on Sri Lanka.
Yesterday, the folks at 3QD made an announcement:
We
May 23, 2009
Sigmas From Shoulder to Shoulder [Science Tattoos]
Joe writes, “My tattoo is 3 lines of equations, the top is the Born Oppenheimer Approximation, the second line is the equation in the form of a 3-Dimensional Schroedinger Equation, and the solution in the form of a Schroedinger Equation. As a biochemist and molecular biophysicist I studied a lot of this stuff and I must say, Schroedinger was my favorite and well, I had to do it. The ink was done at Red Sky Studios in Tucson, AZ by artist Lisa.”
May 22, 2009
Microcosm On the Longlist for Royal Society Science Book Prize (Along With A Dozen Great Books)
Okay–for real, this is the last post before the weekend. The Royal Society has posted its longlist for their science book prize, and Microcosm is on it. Here’s the full line-up, with comments from the judges. Excellent company to be in.
What the nose knows: The science of scent in everyday life by Avery Gilbert (Crown Publishers)
“It’s a really original subject matter - how many smells can you actually distinguish and how smells evoke emotions. What’s so good about it is that the book’s not just a
