Loren, a biology graduate student, writes, “It’s a sketch of the horseshoe crab Limulus, such as a zoologist would make (and with the abdominal segments correctly identified). Perhaps the most magnificent living fossil of all, the horseshoe crab is the survivor of a lineage that extends back some 445 million years into the Ordovician. The four extant species are the only living representatives of the ancient arthropod class Merostomata and the only known chelicerate crabs.”

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Originally published December 15, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Here’s the list. (And here’s the book.)

[Update–fixed the paper’s title. Sorry, people of Cleveland.]  

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

Frank writes, “Hey there! I didn’t tattoo science, science tattooed me! I’m coming up on being five years free of testicular cancer thanks in part to this tiny tattoo that helped the technicians correctly align my Guidant radiation treatments.”

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

Barack Obama has picked Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Berkeley as his Secretary of Energy. This will be interesting–what happens when you put a Nobel-prize winning scientist in charge of a government department? Here’s one prediction: expect a lot of synthetic biology. Practically nobody has heard of synthetic biology today, but that will probably change. 

Originally published December 11, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

John, a graduate student in neurobiology at Cornell, writes, “Anyway, here’s my “science tattoo” and a bit of back story. It’s not directly science, but more like philosophy of science. It’s a piece by Francisco Goya, El Sueno de la Razon Produce Monstros. It means “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”, and it is part of his series of lithographs in the book Los Caprichos, which was highly critical of the Spanish Aristocracy of the time (1799). I first saw this image when I was in AP Art History in high school, about 9 years ago. Within seconds of seeing it, I thought to myself that this would be my first tattoo– and finally, it is!

Continue reading “The Sleep of Reason” →