Bonobos, along with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. Unfortunately the entire species has dwindled down to a few thousand survivors, all in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This morning I got a worrying email from Vanessa Woods, a bonobo expert who’s at a bonobo research facility in DRC:
Category: Blog
In connection with my recent lecture on life, I had a good interview with the local NPR station in Oklahoma. We talked about making life from scratch, Microcosm, and the microbes that are eavesdropping on you from the inside. You can listen to it on this embedded player below, or download it from the KWGS web site.
Originally published April 2, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
There’s a lot of dismally wrong coverage of global warming these days (see some recent examples chronicled by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection, for example). But the way global warming gets treated on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post–particularly by George Will and his enabling editors–is particularly exquisite. For my little Ahab-like obsession with the editorial process there, check out this string of posts. Many other observers have made similar points, so you’d think that somebody over at the Post might have learned something from the experience.
Today, we see that they haven’t.
GrrlScientist is seeking submissions to Scientia, a new carnival for science, nature and medical blog writing. You can submit your entries here. The first edition is going to published Monday, April 6, so submit now!
Originally published April 1, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
I’ve posted my John Wesley Powell Memorial Lecture, “What is Life?” on blip.tv and have embedded it here. It’s a combination of my slides for the talk and a so-so audio recording. I stopped recording after my main talk, because the questions and answer period was pretty inaudible. That’s too bad, because we got into some interesting questions about whether viruses, prions, or even the Internet can be considered alive. Abbie Smith, who was at the talk, wrote about the discussion , and her own distaste for hard lines between life and non-life.