Our very, very latest winter storm has warmed up into a rainy afternoon. Assuming that the roads don’t proceed to freeze into ribbons of ice this evening, you will find me at 7 pm tonight in the Mermaid Room at the Anchor Bar, 272 College St., New Haven, for a free reading with author Annie Murphy Paul, as part of the Ordinary Evening Reading Series. Check back at the series site at 5:45 for our confirmation.

[Image: New Haven Advocate]

Originally published January 18, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

The comment thread for my post about good writing has turned into a fascinatingly well-focused discussion on writing about math. A mathematician arrived, rending his garments in despair, and now others–both writers and readers–are responding. I’ve always considered math the toughest subject a science writer can tackle, so I find the conversation especially interesting. Check it out.

Originally published January 18, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

At ScienceOnline today, I moderated a spirited session on the future of books. I kicked things off by talking about where we stand at the moment. Ebooks may still constitute a small fraction of book sales, but that fraction is swelling fast. While many ebooks are simply digitized text-dumps of the books you can find in physical bookstores, new kinds of ebooks are emerging. With new services like Smashwords and Createspace at Amazon, the real possibility has emerged of blogifying books–that is, writers publishing books for themselves without a spot of ink touching a single piece of paper. I described my own experiences with Brain Cuttings, which made clear to me that even in this new world, it still helps to work with people who know how to make books.

Continue reading “ScienceOnline: The Future Book” →

At his website, Edge, John Brockman asks a big question each year and fields responses from scientists and writers (and scientist-writers).

This year’s question is “What scientific concept would improve everyone’s toolkit?”

My answer is, “Life as a side effect.”

As of this writing, Brockman has 155 other answers, too, so peruse and muse to your heart’s delight.

Originally published January 15, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.