Over at Download the Universe, we’re continuing to explore the growing world of science ebooks. Here’s the latest batch of reviews:

Continue reading “A Hot Planet and a Twisted Gut: Catching Up With Download the Universe” →

Next month, my first co-authored book is coming out. Evolution: Making Sense of Life is a textbook for biology majors, and my co-author is Doug Emlen, a professor at the University of Montana. I’ve heard many tales of disastrous collaborations between scientists and science writers, and so I don’t enter into them lightly. But working with Emlen has been a delight. No matter how many times we’ve had to rewrite a chapter, he threw himself into the work as if he was cannonballing into a swimming pool. And yet somehow Emlen was advancing his own research in evolutionary biology at the same time, quietly chugging away on some remarkable experiments. And today–just a week after we shipped our book off to the printers–Emlen’s latest, most intriguing paper has just come out in the journal Science.

Continue reading “Why You Can’t Fake A Good Horn” →

[Note: This is the last of a four-part series:

Part One: The Mystery of the Missing Chromosome (With A Special Guest Appearance from Facebook Creationists)

Part Two: The Mystery of the Missing Chromosomes, Continued: An Update From Your Preening Blogger

Part Three: Four Days of Fusion Chromosome Freak-Out]

For the past five days, I’ve been trying to get an answer from creationists. Today, I finally got it. And it’s an instructive lesson in how creationism makes itself irrelevant to the progress of science. Plus, it’s a good opportunity to look at the delightfully sloppy way our chromosomes evolve.

Continue reading “And Finally the Hounding Duck Can Rest” →