My post on zombie roaches and brain surgeon wasps seems to have hit a nerve. There have been well over 100,000 hits on that post alone, and 175 comments have been posted. I imagine that most people haven’t read through all 175 (many of which have more to do with God than wasps). But I would urge any interested readers to check out
this one from Gal Haspel, who spent seven years in grad school contemplating the sinister glory of Ampulex compressa.

Continue reading “Answers to your parasite questions”

Last night I drove into New Haven, Connecticut, to catch an advanced screening of Flock of Dodos, a movie about evolution and intelligent design. Afterwards I took part in a panel discussion. It was an interesting evening, not only because the movie was quite good, but because it provoked a noisy discussion.

I don’t want to give away too much of Flock of Dodos, because I would prefer that a lot of people get a chance to see it for themselves. Randy Olson, the creator of the film, spoke after the film and explained that the version we saw was still a bit rough around the edges, and he’s getting ready to enter it into various film festivals and hopes to get distribution after that. I wish him well.

Continue reading “Movie Night”

Over at DailyKos, DarkSyde has been interviewing science bloggers. Here’s our exchange. Greetings to visitors from DailyKos–make yourself at home. If you’re looking for a few samplers of the stuff I write, you may want to check out the “Starting Points and Old Favorites” list in the righthand column. I had hoped to respond to comments at DailyKos, but for some reason I can’t set up an account. (And yet I still have the audacity to claim to be a blogger….) In the meantime, I’m happy to field any questions through the comments here. 

Originally published February 11, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

Congratulations to Dan Vergano of USA Today, Michelle Nijhuis of High Country News for winning the 2006 journalism awards from the American Geophysical Union. The AGU is the country’s leading organization of Earth scientists. Both reporters won for articles on global warming.

You can read Vergano’s article here, and Nijhuis’s here, here, and here.

Continue reading “What to do after you lose your job at NASA”