It feels like a homecoming: I’m among hundreds of people who live for parasites.

I arrived in Arlington Texas this afternoon to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists. I’m going to give a talk tomorrow about the public awareness of parasitology, talking about my long-term relationship with the beasties in books, articles, blogs, and beyond. But till then, I get to hang out with parasitologists. I’ve met a lot of the people here over the years, like the leech-master Mark Siddall, and I’ve read the work of a lot of people I’m just meeting (work on things like how lice jumped from gorillas to human ancestors).

Continue reading “Nice and Weird: Dispatches from The Depths of Parasitology” →

In 1980, Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues proposed that the dinosaurs had been exterminated by an asteroid that smashed into the Earth. I was fourteen at the time, and that mix of dinosaurs, asteroids, and apocalyptic explosions was impossible to resist. I can still see the pictures that appeared in magazines and books–paintings of crooked rocks crashing into Earth, sometimes seen from the heavens, sometimes from the point of view of an about-to-become-extinct dinosaur. Suddenly the history of life was more cinematic than any science fiction movie.

Continue reading “The Ten-Mile-Wide Bullet” →

Angela writes:

“I got this tattoo about a year ago after finishing what turned out to be the magnum opus of my career (so far). Sadly, I am not a scientist, unless one considers sociology and economics to be true sciences, and then only marginally. I’m a grant writer and nonprofit director, and I work to interrupt the patterns of violent human behavior in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a tattoo of Salvador Dali’s “The Swallow’s Tail,” the last painting Senor Dali completed before his death. Salvador had a rough couple of years, and through his depression he stumbled upon Rene Thom’s catastrophe theory, which inspired him to paint again.

Continue reading “Catastrophe Math” →

I’m bound for LA today to talk about Microcosm. My talk is part of the Zocalo lecture series. I’ll be talking tonight at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the details. 

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

Michael writes: “This is a tattoo of how our galaxy could look from a distance, with our solar system’s position marked by the red star burst. A map, if you will, so that I do not get lost. I need only let my foot guide me home.”

Carl: For the latest version of the Milky Way, see here.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

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