Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 65
May 8, 2011
Bleg: Any good material on evolution and the media 1880-1980?
I've got a request for the Loom's hive mind. I've been asked to contribute a book chapter to a guide to evolutionary biology. The subject of my assignment is evolution and the media. I've already covered some of this territory in a 2010 review I wrote for the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach (pdf), but I'd like to flesh it out a bit. I'm familiar with the past thirty years of the subject from my own experience, and I'm familiar with Darwin's reception in his own lifetime, thanks to all the scholarship that's been produced about that period. But the century or so in between is a lot sketchier for me. The Scopes Monkey trial comes to mind, of course, but not a lot else. My search of the history-of-science literature has yielded little, probably because I'm not using the right search terms. If anybody has any pointers, I'd be most grateful (and will, of course, thank you in the acknowledgments). Thanks!
May 6, 2011
Do we need to welcome our virus overlords? My first guest blog post at University of Chicago Press
To mark the publication of A Planet of Viruses, the University of Chicago Press asked me to participate in a weekly series of conversations with experts on some of the themes I explore in the book. They'll be coming out each Friday in May. First up is an exchange between me and Ian Lipkin, a virus hunter at Columbia University and the subject of this 2010 profile I wrote for the New York Times. As if waving a piece of red meat before me, Lipkin wonders if viruses can alter our behavior. I then take the bait. Check it out.
May 4, 2011
Last night's Cambridge Science Festival science writing video is up
Here's the video of last night's science-writing event at the MIT Museum. Thanks to everyone who made it possible!
May 3, 2011
Tonight: Live feed from the Cambridge Science Festival
Today I'm in Cambridge, Mass., to take part in the Cambridge Science Festival. I'll be speaking with Ed Yong and Hillary Rosner about how blogs, Twitter, and social media are changing science writing. I'll play the part of the old fogey who remembers the days when modems screeched. The event will be live-streamed here, starting around 7:30 pm. Hope you can join us, virtually!
A Planet of Viruses: Science Friday and more good news
This Friday I'll be on public radio, talking to Ira Flatow on Science Friday, starting around 3:40 pm EST about A Planet of Viruses.
Also in the good viral news department, the book has been getting good buzz in places like BoingBoing, Bytesizebio, and ERV. Thanks to all!
May 2, 2011
Radio alert: Listen (or call in) tonight about Brain Cuttings
Tonight at 6 pm EST I'll be talking about my ebook, Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through The Mind. (Amazon / BN/ Mobipocket ). You can listen live to Your Health Connection on KSKA Public Radio, and even ask questions via phone or email.
April 29, 2011
Darwin meets the citizen scientists
Charles Darwin was the original crowd-sourced scientist. He may have reputation as a recluse who hid away on his country estate, but he actually turned Down House into the headquarters for a massive letter-writing campaign that lasted for decades. In her magisterial biography of Darwin, Janet Browne observes that he sometimes wrote over 1500 letters in a single year. Darwin was gathering biological intelligence, amassing the data he would eventually marshall in his arguments for evolution. In the letters he wrote to naturalists around the world, Darwin asked for details about all manner of natural history, from the color of horses in Jamaica to the blush that shame brought to people's cheeks.
Given the skill with which Darwin used the nineteenth-century postal system, I always wonder what he would have done with the Internet. A new paper offers a clue: he might have enlisted thousands of citizen scientists to observe evolutionary change happening across an entire continent.
Darwin used his Victorian crowd-sourcing to collect evidence that was consistent with his evolutionary theory; he didn't expect that he could actually document evolutionary change happening in his own ...
The Kindle edition of A Planet of Viruses is here
A number of Loominaries have asked if there is a Kindle version of A Planet of Viruses. As of this morning, the answer's yes. Please infect your reading device!
April 28, 2011
Frontiers in dark matter, and comics
Via fellow Discover blogger Sean Carroll, I came across Jorge Cham's podcast/comic/video about cosmology. I'm embedding it here, not just because it's a very good summary of where we stand in understanding the stuff of the cosmos, but because Cham–he of PhD comics–has done something fascinating here. He has combined three different media into something new. I think, on the whole, it works very well. It moves a bit too fast for my eye sometimes, and can get a little herky jerky. But a living comic illustration of a scientist talking? Me likes.
Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.
Today at the Browser: I talk about five books on the strangeness of life
The Browser, one of my favorite sites for gathering interesting reads I can wield in my perpetual battle on behalf of procrastination, has a great feature called FiveBooks. From time to time, they ask a writer to select five of their favorite books on some particular topic, and then interview them about their choices. I was honored to be interviewed for today's FiveBooks (just after Ian McEwan–yikes!). I chose the theme of "the strangeness of life" and then scanned my bookshelves for some favorite books that deal with it in one way or another. If you have any interest in good writing on natural history (including human natural history), I'll wager you'll like them all. Check it out.
