Steven Barritz (left) and Travis Bautista pose with their brand new copies of the revised edition of Parasite Rex with a new epilogue. I’ll be sending them an autographed book plate. If you’d like one, here are the steps:

1. Buy a copy.

2. Email me a picture of yourself with the book (it’s marked “with a new epilogue”).

3. I’ll reply to your email and we’ll make arrangements to send you an autographed book plate. (You’ll need to cover the cost of the postage and plate, which should be about a buck.)

Originally published April 11, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

Greetings, Loominaries of Philadelphia! I will be heading your way to give a talk tomorrow (Thursday) at the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania.

My talk will be entitled, “Soul Made Flesh: The Origin of Our Brain-Centered World.” I’ll argue, as I did in the eponymous book, that as we grapple with the implications of twenty-first-century neuroscience, we’d do well to cast our minds back 350 years ago, when scientific revolutionaries first discovered that the brain was not a bowl of curds.

Continue reading “Tomorrow in Philadelphia: My Talk on the Birth of Our Brain-Centered Age” →

In tomorrow’s New York Times, I take a look into nature’s crystal ball. Scientists have long been warning that we may be headed into Earth’s sixth mass extinction. But most projections just carry forward the causes of recent extinctions and population plunges (overfishing, hunting, and the like). Global warming is already starting to have an effect on many species–but it’s a minor one compared with the full brunt that we may experience in the next century.

I’ve written in the past about studies scientists have carried out to project what that impact will be like. I decided to revisit the subject after reading a spate of provocative papers and books recently. While the scientists I talked to all agree that global warming could wreak serious havoc on biodiversity in coming decades, they’re debating the best way to measure that potential harm, and the best way to work against it. We all crave precision in our forecasts, but biology is so complex that in this case we may well have to live without it. Check it out.

[Image: Photo by DJ-Dwayne/Flickr]

Originally published April 4, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.