Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 98
March 24, 2010
The X-Woman's Fingerbone
In a cave in Siberia, scientists have found a 40,000-year old pinky bone that could belong to an entirely new species of hominid. Or it may be yet another example of how hard it is to figure where one species stops and another begins–even when one of those species is our own. Big news, perhaps, or ambiguous news.
In Nature today, Svante Paabo and his colleagues published a paper describing how their work in a place known as the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. There are lots...
March 23, 2010
In Search of the Mind's Eye
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Writing about the brain can sometimes bring me amazingly close to my readers–so close that I feel like I'm inside their minds. Case in point: my new column for Discover, on the subject of the mind's eye.
Here's how it begins:
One day in 2005, a retired building surveyor in Edinburgh visited his doctor with a strange complaint: His mind's eye had suddenly gone blind.
The surveyor, referred to as MX by his doctors, was 65 at the time. He had always felt that he possessed an exceptional talent for...
March 22, 2010
Unseen Beasts, Then and Now
In tomorrow's New York Times I have an essay about the art of seeing Nature's unseen–from the bestiaries of the Middle Ages to today's images of feathered dinosaurs and upright apes. Check it out, and also check out the accompanying slide show about Conrad Gessner, a Renaissance naturalist who assembled the greatest zoological encyclopedia of his day–which included unicorns.
March 18, 2010
A Blast From the C-SPAN past
C-SPAN has opened up their archives, so that you can search and watch all 23 years of their footage. Their Booknotes crew came to a talk I gave at Stanford University Medical School about my book Soul Made Flesh. And now you can watch it here.
March 17, 2010
The Science Reader: A Crowd-Sourced Profile
How times have changed. Used to be, if I wanted to figure out what people were reading, I'd ask a few friends. This week, I got replies from 761 people.
On Monday I asked you to help me get a better sense of the science reader–how the science reader gets a science fix, what the science reader values, and what the science reader expects from the future. Thanks to everyone who responded–both directly to the survey questions and indirectly in the comments. Not surprisingly, commenters revealed...
Through the Sexual Looking Glass
There was a time when seahorses meant little to me. They were pleasant to look at in an aquarium. They seemed to show up a lot on the walls of restaurants near beaches. But as is so often the case in nature, there's bizarre biology lurking under the surface. Specifically, inside the male seahorses. When it's time to make new seahorses, the male seahorses get pregnant.
Their pregnancy seems bizarre because it is rare. In most species that keep their young inside a parent, the job goes to the...
March 16, 2010
Science Reader Survey: Closing on Wednesday, 3/17 1 pm EST
A quick note: I'll be closing the survey on science reading habits at 1 pm EST Wednesday. The turnout has been great, and people are still joining in tonight. But I don't want to let too much time go by before crunching the numbers and putting them back out for you again. So please have your say.
P.S. I know, I know–why are podcasts and public libraries not in the survey? I don't know why I blanked on them. Register complaints in the comment thread.
Today's Podcasts
The other Zimmer at the Times: On On Point.
This one, talking about the secret life of plants, carnivorous and otherwise on WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show.
Reminder: Science Reader Survey Needs You!
Please be sure to fill out my quick survey on how you get your science fix! Thanks.
Zimmer Radio: Words And Flesh-Eating Plants
Two-alarm Zimmer family radio alert!
My brother Ben will be on On Point today (Tuesday) at 11 am, talking about taking over as the language maven at the Times. Then, at 1 pm, I'll be talking on the Colin McEnroe show on WNPR about my article on carnivorous plants in National Geographic. You can listen live or get a podcast after the show on the show page.
