A biochemist writes:

“Here is a picture of my science tattoo, which is a stylized structure of glycolipid A, the preformed glycolipid membrane anchor precursor I discovered as a graduate student some 20 years ago. At that time, membrane proteins that were anchored via glycolipids, rather than transmembrane protein domains, had just been found and this was the first precursor to be reported. The structure is simplified but basically correct, although considerable artistic license has been taken with bond lengths and angles.”

Continue reading “One Way to Remember Your Discovery” →

I’m heading to Colorado to give a talk at the University of Denver tomorrow. The subject of the talk is my book Soul Made Flesh, about the birth of neurology in the 1600s (see PZ Myer’s kind review here). I’ll also be talking about the experience of writing books about science. Of course, the first thing I’ll have to confess is that most of the experience of writing Soul Made Flesh–going to libraries, paging through physical books–is already fairly obsolete.

If you live around Denver and are free at 12:30 pm Tuesday, come by. Here are the details. 

Originally published April 14, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Radiolab is a show about science that briliantly uses radio’s greatest strength–sound–to bring stories to life in ways we print goons can only dream about. I wrote a story about how animals sleep. The Radiolab folks played the sound of brain waves from a sleeping cat. And so on.

I’m particularly fond of their latest podcast, which you can listen to below. It’s about chimeras, synthetic biology, and other threats to our conventional notions of life.

Continue reading “Frankenstein Freak-outs” →

Today on bloggingheads, I talk to Gary Marcus, NYU psychologist and author of the new book Kluge, about all the telling ways in which our minds let us down, and what those shortcomings tell us about how it evolved. 

Originally published April 12, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Sarah writes:

“My latest tattoo is a black-line representation of the Uffington White Horse in England. It’s a huge earthwork carved into the countryside about three thousand years ago. I’m not really sure what compelled me to get it, since I’m a grad student in English and not archaeology or anthropology. But it’s such a beautiful, simple design, and it represents a real feat of Bronze Age ingenuity.”

Continue reading “Older Than Dragons” →