A couple weeks ago I blogged on a debate over the discovery of soft tissue in a dinosaur. Over at Nature, Rex Dalton has a spicy article about a fresh assault on the findings. I wrote about how the alleged blood vessels and cells in a T. rex fossil might be bacterial biofilms. The scientists had also isolated what they proposed was collagen from the same fossils. Now critics are calling that study “computationally illiterate.” Zing–! 

Originally published August 25, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

I just found that Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, the 1980 TV series on life and the universe, is now on iTunes. You can get it here, at $1.99 an episode.

I’ve downloaded the first two episodes, which I don’t think I’ve seen since they first aired 28 years ago. I remember watching every episode intently as a 14-year old at the end of the Carter administration. The passage of time has revealed some hokiness around the edges. The music, much of it by Vangelis, sometimes makes me think I’ve walked into a crystal shop. Sagan is fitted in corduroy blazers and what seems to be the precursor of the Members Only jacket.

Continue reading “Cosmos: From Grade School to Itunes” →

Today a comment arrived on the Loom that deserves a post of its own. It concerns a death of a reader of this blog.

But first, some background:

In April, a reader named Abigail sent in this tattoo, with the following description:

My first year of college, I wanted to be an English major, and I took Intro Chemistry to fill the science requirement. The brief unit on thermodynamics made me fall totally in love. Entropy made sense to me – scientifically, philosophically. I became a Chemistry major and love every second of it.

Continue reading “Requiem” →

Denise writes, “I just finished my Ph.D. on microbially-mediated uranium bioremediation and chose to get a new tattoo to commemorate this milestone. The tattoo is a uranium atom with each orbital and all 92 electrons represented. The center is blue with a swirl to represent the ocean where I grew up.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

Originally published August 20, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

[Update: You can listen to my talk here.]

I’ve just spent the past 30 hours at the Chautauqua Institution, the lovely village of ideas out in western New York State. Each week they bring in people to talk about a theme, and this week is a celebration of Darwin and Linnaeus.

Many interesting things have transpired over the past 30 hours. I spent some time listening to one speaker, Ken Miller, talking about the amicable intersection of religion and science with a couple skeptical listeners. I had to get up to call my wife while Ken was talking about how God was an explanation for the intelligibility of the universe, and meeting fierce opposition.

Continue reading “Darwin, Linnaeus, and One Sleepy Guy” →