Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 99

The Short History of Measles

Measles looks to be 1000 years old. It jumped from cattle. And you can read more about it here.

The Enduring Mystery of Thalidomide

In tomorrow's New York Times I write about the afterlife of the greatest medical disaster in history. Thalidomide, a drug women took for morning sickness in the late 1950s, caused thousands of devastating birth defects, such as the failure of limbs to develop. Even after the drug was banned, scientists had no idea how it interfered with growing arms and legs. In fact, fifty years later, they're only just starting to figure it out.

This was a particularly interesting story to write coming...

The Science Reader: Help Me Draw A Profile

We writers, in case you didn't know, are scratching our heads about what exactly to do next. It's hard to figure out, because there are so many things we could do, at least in theory. If we wanted, we could write a novel in tweets, record an epic poem as a podcast, or transform a history of inorganic chemistry into an Ipad app. In fact, I'm sure that someone, somewhere, is doing all these things and more–but not all at once. Each writer has to figure out how best to use the twenty-four hours ...

Medusa [Science Tattoo]

Dave writes, "Following my degree in Zoology, I worked in public aquariums for several years before becoming a lecturer in Animal Science, so I've always has a bit of a 'fishy' background! I'm also studying stress in marine fish for a research degree. I've always been fascinated by evolution, and to reflect this, I decided to get inked with a Haeckel – this is a medusa from 'Art Forms in Nature'. Haeckel was clearly a proponent of evolution, and although his ideas weren't 100% correct, the...

The Enlightenment Goes Dark

Today the Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson were disappeared from Texas.

Here's a live blog from this morning's hearings at the Texas State Board of Education. (Emphasis mine.)

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with "the writings of") and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and...

RadioLab Wants Your Extinct Tattoo

Here's a message from Radiolab to my tattoo'd readers (you know who you are):

Hi, all, I'm with the National Public Radio-syndicated science show 'Radiolab,' that has a large national and international following (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/). Mr. Zimmer appeared on our show last season, in the 'Parasites' episode.

I'm in search of people who have tattoos of extinct species of plant or animal, ideally people in the greater New York City area. We're trying to gauge the...

As Close As You'll Get To Holding a 35,000 Year Old Lion-Man Figurine

I've just been checking out one of the oldest pieces of sculpture made by humans. The Smithsonian Institution has set up a major web site on human evolution. There's lots of stuff worth exploring on the site, although there are still some bugs and some of the stuff is unnecessarily obscure for a site intended for us non-paleoanthropologists. I'm particularly fond at the moment of the 3-D scans of ancient artifacts that you can rotate around on your computer. Check out the lion-man, for...

Big Brother News…

Good news! My brother Ben has been appointed the new language columnist for the New York Times Magazine, taking over from the late William Safire. Expect a few more shamelessly fraternal links next week to various appearances associated with his new position.

I promise to lobby hard for science-related language columns, nefariously using my family back channels. It's all for a good cause! Here's an example of my subliminal big-brother mind-control–a conversation Ben and I had on

New Tangled Bank Review: "The Best"

The Tangled Bank just got a great review in CBE-Life Sciences Education, a journal from the American Society for Cell Biology about teaching science. Scientific journals roll out their reviews a lot more slowly than newspapers and magazines, but in this case, it was worth the wait. Randy Moore, a University of Minnesota biologist who has done great work in defense of the teaching of evolution, leaves me trying to decide which line I want to drop, blurb-like, onto my web site…

"The best...

What Is Man? [Science Tattoo]

Todd Disotell of New York University writes,

As an evolutionary primatologist, I had a tattoo of Charles Darwin's first drawing of an evolutionary tree put on my forearm to commemorate his birthday last year.  This year for my birthday, I had Carolus Linnaeus' original 1735 definition of the order Primates tattooed onto my other forearm.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.