Author: Lori Jia
Arwyn writes: “Even though psychology is a soft science. I present Sigmund Freud. The tattoo is part of a sleeve that I call ‘Freud’s Dream,’ hence the little thought bubbles.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published January 14, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Over at Science News, Janet Raloff has a report about Steven Chu’s appearance earlier today before the Senate for his nomination to be Secretary of Energy. It sounds like he really perked up when asked about biofuels from synthetic biology:
Chu explained that the two-year-old program is striving to develop fourth-generation biofuels. To date, researchers at the lab have “trained” bacteria and yeast to take simple sugars and produce “not ethanol, but gasoline-like substitutes, diesel-fuel substitutes and jet [fuel] substitutes.”
Bryan Grieg Fry writes: “Here is my contribution: one of our actual CT-scans of a Komodo Dragon.”
Carl: First came the research. Then came the New York Times article. And then came the tattoo. Behold the arc of science…
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published January 13, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
I…I just don’t know where to begin with the opening to this article in the latest issue of Esquire. “Pretty lady”? “The new poor part of town”? A noxious martini of mixed metaphors topped with an olive of ridiculous hype. (Forget it–I can’t compete with this stuff.)
If we science writers want to defend our old-fashioned craft against its critics, how do we defend stuff like this?
First thing that happens when you have a heart attack, an unlucky part of your heart turns white. The blood’s stopped pumping to that spot, so it becomes pink-speckled bloodlessness, coarse and cool like grapefruit gelatin.
Continue reading “Annals of Bad Science Writing: Lab-Worn Doctor-Lady [sic]”
The latest edition of Open Lab, the annual anthology of science blogging, is coming out soon. Here is the line-up. Thanks to the editors for including my post on love and betrayal among the blood flukes.
Originally published January 11, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.