Tomorrow morning I’m hopping a plane and spending the afternoon at Cornell. On Saturday, I’ll be giving a talk about The Origin of Species just down the road in downtown Ithaca. Caren Cooper, an ornithologist at Cornell, has used my upcoming talk as the hook for a lovely essay in the Ithaca Times about the real wonder of science versus the make-believe of pseudoscience. You can find details about the talk here.

Originally published November 12, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Just a reminder to my fellow Nutmeggers: I will be speaking tomorrow at 5:30 pm at the Peabody Museum at Yale in New Haven. The title of the talk is “Darwin Gets Swine Flu.” Pigs, ducks, sneezes, and more.

Details here.

Originally published November 11, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

This post is really just an excuse for me to put up this cool poster. If you want the details on my talk in Vancouver on November 18, you can find them here. Tickets are free, but registration is required.

Originally published November 11, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

If you ever find yourself in the forests of Ecuador, you may have the good fortune of spotting a club-winged manakin. The closest the rest of us will probably ever get will be to watch this video. But don’t just watch it. Listen.

If you said to yourself, “Hold on, is that bird singing with its wings?” the answer is yes. Continue reading “Feathers That Sing: What A Little Sexual Selection Can Do” →

The winners of this year’s AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award have just been announced. I’m honored to be the winner for large newspapers. (I submitted some of my articles over the past year in The New York Times.)

The whole enterprise of handing out awards for science journalism is fraught with gloomy undertones these days, of course. Last year’s newspaper winners actually lost their jobs by the time the awards were announced. But even as we struggle on, it’s reassuring that there are chances to get some recognition for striving to do our best, to make as much sense of the world as we can manage in plain English. And I’m particularly grateful that the folks at the New York Times indulges me in my curiosity about basic questions about the nature of life–like why fireflies flash.

Originally published November 10, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.