Michael Ruse , a leading philosopher of science, writes, “Well, now I am starting to feel a little bit inadequate !!!”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published April 22, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
Category: Blog
With two weeks to go till Microcosm‘s publication date, I’m happy to direct your attention to an adapted excerpt that’s running in tomorrow’s New York Times. In this passage, I discuss what I like to call E. coli’s fingerprints.
We like to think that genes equal identity. If that were true, then a colony of genetically identical E. coli should be nothing but a robot army of clones. But diversity rules E. coli’s world, because there’s more to life than DNA, even when you’re just a microbe. Check it out.
I’ve also set up some pages over at carlzimmer.com with news, reviews, and other information about the book. And, of course, you’re encouraged to make your way over to Amazon…
Click here to watch it on blip.tv (you can even watch in full screen, if you dare…)
Originally published April 19, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
Lauren writes:
“I’m not a scientist by trade, but I am, in fact, a huge nerd. I study 18th-century British literature, including scientific literature. It was a wild time to be in science. It was also the heyday of the orrery, which provided the initial impetus for my tattoo. (Orreries, as it turned out, involve too many circles to make them feasible for inking on a large scale.) Then I discovered & fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de’Dondi’s 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii–the plans for the first famous astrarium. My backpiece is of the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn’t track Mercury with it–de’Dondi followed Ptolemy–but I find his Astrarium a lovely & impressive testament to human ingenuity & curiosity.”
NOTE: I’VE SET UP A FLASH VERSION OF THIS TALK HERE. DON’T BOTHER TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME VERSION I DESCRIBED IN THIS POST.
Recently I gave the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, in which I talked about new developments in evolutionary biology. They sent me a DVD of the talk, and I got a lunatic notion in my head that I would figure out how to get all Web Two-Point-O-Ee and post the lecture online. They told me to go ahead as long as I put a watermark on.