Scientists tinker with my favorite bug so that it can solve mathematical puzzles.
Originally published July 24, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Author: Matt Kristoffersen
Sweet! Richard Dawkins paid a visit to the Explore Evolution museum exhibit I helped put together. Here’s the first of a series of videos he filmed while he was there, on the evolution of whales. You can watch the others here.
Originally published July 23, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
In my June brain column for Discover, I wrote about the bizarre idea that there are single neurons in your head that can respond to individual people. The so-called “grandmother cell” started out 40 years ago as a thought experiment riffing on Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint. By the 1970s, most neuroscientists considered it more of a joke than a valid concept, but in the years since it hasn’t quite gone away. Continue reading “The Legend of Grandmother Cells Continues”
There is no way to keep up with all the bad reporting on science these days, but I cannot resist certain egregious cases. As Loom readers know, George Will writing about global warming is one. This morning brings fresh evidence of his trouble with the facts–and, more importantly–the empty claims of the Washington Post‘s editorial page that they respect the time-honored art of fact-checking.
Continue reading “George Will’s Crack Fact-Checkers Continue Their Nap”
Chimpanzees get AIDS.
This is an important discovery, but what intrigues me most about it is how the discovery was made. It is a story of two kinds of science, both of which are essential to getting a deeper understanding of life, but which today are staggeringly out of balance.
Continue reading “AIDS And The Virtues of Slow-Cooked Science”