Author: Matt Kristoffersen
[Update 4:30 pm: I left off one of the covers (Tiktaalik3) from the original poll. You can re-vote now.]
Greetings, readers. I write to you from that frenzy towards the end of writing a book when everything has to be done at once and the sight of the incoming pincers makes me freeze like a deer in the…pincers. See, I can’t even come up with a good metaphor right now.
Continue reading “A Request For The Design Hive Mind: Vote For A Tangled Bank Book Cover”
This piece in Agence Science Presse appears to be about the future of science journalism. If Google Translate is right, my place in that future appears to be in some type of shrubbery.
Perhaps someone who hasn’t forgotten quite so much of his or her high school French will understand what’s going on here.
Originally published May 6, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
You have to hand it to those little flu viruses–with just a few genes apiece, they can infect us humans by the millions, and we can barely keep up with their evolution. In tomorrow’s New York Times, I’ve written a natural history of the flu, looking at how influenza viruses mutate, swap genes, undergo natural selection, cross species barriers, and adapt to new hosts. The new strain of swine flu (or perhaps more precisely, the new strain of human-and-bird-flu-viruses-swirled-up-inside-pigs-and-then-mixed-with-other-pig-viruses-that-descend-from-human-and-bird-flus-as-well) is just the latest chapter in this baroque evolutionary tale.
Originally published May 4, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
This Saturday I’ll be joining fellow Discover bloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Discover editor-in-chief Corey Powell, along with luminaires like E.O. Wilson and Lawrence Krauss for “The Two Cultures In the 21st Century,” a daylong meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences (7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St., 40th floor). Chris and Sheril say the meeting is close to sold out, so if you want to join us, please register now.
Nicole, a physics graduate student and blogger, writes: