As I mentioned previously, I’ll be moderating a panel at the World Science Festival in New York on Thursday. It will be about art, science, and homeland security.

In 2004 artist Steven Kurtz was accused of terrorism when police came across bacteria and biological equipment in his house. After the terrorism charges were dropped, Kurtz still faced charges of mail and wire fraud until last month.

Kurtz will be speaking for the first time in public about the case since the charges were dropped, and he’ll also be joined by critic Eugene Thacker and bioethicist George Annas. Here are the specifics on the time and place…

Continue reading “Bioart in the Age of Terrorism: Details At Last” →

Mike writes, “I know that I’m supposed to provide some sort of explanation, but I feel like everyone can probably tell that this is DNA. Every once in awhile someone will ask what’s on my arm, in which case I respond that it’s a futuristic staircase. Then they stare quizzically and I laugh.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

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

Milad writes:

“I am a Mechanical Engineering undergrad at UC Berkeley and I got this tattoo about a month ago. It’s the golden ratio in the shape of a rectangle, with the ratio of the sides of the rectangle actually being the golden ratio! I have been obsessed with this number since I heard about it in high school, and it is the reason why I became so fascinated with mathematics. The golden ratio is known to be the closest mathematical explanation of beauty. It has been used a lot in architecture, art, and music around the world, and has some amazing mathematical and geometrical properties.”

Continue reading “Does The Golden Ratio Look Less Beautiful As Numbers?” →

Blogs are abuzz with the news that E. coli can solve classic math puzzles like the Burnt Pancake Puzzle. The paper itself is available for free here.

Judging from the Frankensteinian anxiety this news seems to be triggering, people must think that life is normally not capable of the logic that we’re familiar with in computers. In fact, however, E. coli was carrying out a natural sort of computation long before some undergrads starting tinkering with it. In Microcosm, I show how the genes that build E. coli’s flagella act like a noise filter circuit. (Here’s a new paper on the digital control in E. coli.) What’s interesting about the Burnt-Pancake E. coli is that it’s solving our problems, not its own.

Continue reading “Is There Nothing E. coli Cannot Do? Part Three of a Continuing Series” →

Russ writes:

“Podarcis sicula (Italian wall lizard) is native to Italy, and the nearby Mediterranean coast. It thrives in cities, and has probably been a human urban commensal for 2000 years. They and their congeners (P. muralis) have been introduced into many places in Europe, including France, southern England, and Germany. they may be the most widely introduced temperate reptile species.

Continue reading “The Invader” →