I’ll be on “Think,” an hour-long talk show on Dallas’s public radio station KERA at 2 pm EST, to talk about A Planet of Viruses. Listen live here.
Originally published June 16, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
There comes a time in every science writer’s career when one must write about female sea monkeys having sex with male sea monkeys from the future, and the troubles that follow.
That time is now.
Continue reading “Sex with someone from the future can be hazardous to your health”
Here’s the final version of the cover of Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. It now includes Mary Roach, who kindly provided a lovely foreword for the book.
The other day I got the July issue of American Scientist and was tickled to no end to see this portrait of mimiviruses on the cover. As I write in A Planet of Viruses, mimiviruses were literally hiding in plain sight for years. Scientists considered them to be bacteria because they were too big to be viruses (see the minuscule HIV and rhinovirus, the cause of colds, for scale). It turns out they are indeed viruses, and perhaps the most interesting viruses on Earth. They may even represent an ancient branch of the tree of life, reaching back several billion years.
Check out James Van Etten’s excellent review of the science of giant viruses in the magazine.
Originally published June 14, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
During the World Science Festival, I met Baba Brinkman, who performs hip hop about, among other things, evolution. He let me know that his “Rap Guide to Evolution” will be opening this Friday at the SoHo Playhouse in New York. Here are details about the venue and getting tickets.
Here are a couple videos from Baba…
Here’s a one called, “Performance, Feedback, Revision”:
Here’s Baba at TEDxKids:
Originally published June 14, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.