A number of Loominaries have asked if there is a Kindle version of A Planet of Viruses. As of this morning, the answer’s yes. Please infect your reading device!
Originally published April 29, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Via fellow Discover blogger Sean Carroll, I came across Jorge Cham’s podcast/comic/video about cosmology. I’m embedding it here, not just because it’s a very good summary of where we stand in understanding the stuff of the cosmos, but because Cham–he of PhD comics–has done something fascinating here. He has combined three different media into something new. I think, on the whole, it works very well. It moves a bit too fast for my eye sometimes, and can get a little herky jerky. But a living comic illustration of a scientist talking? Me likes.
Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.
Originally published April 28, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
The Browser, one of my favorite sites for gathering interesting reads I can wield in my perpetual battle on behalf of procrastination, has a great feature calledFiveBooks. From time to time, they ask a writer to select five of their favorite books on some particular topic, and then interview them about their choices. I was honored to be interviewed for today’s FiveBooks (just after Ian McEwan–yikes!). I chose the theme of “the strangeness of life” and then scanned my bookshelves for some favorite books that deal with it in one way or another. If you have any interest in good writing on natural history (including human natural history), I’ll wager you’ll like them all. Check it out.
Originally published April 28, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
Over at the science-fiction/science web site io9, you can find an excerpt fromA Planet of Viruses. There’s a lot about viruses that seems tailor-made for science fiction fans, but I have to say the folks at io9 zeroed in on the sci-fi-est of them all: a virus that can make rabbits grow horns, turn people into trees, and make human cells outlive their owners. Check it out!
Originally published April 27, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.
My latest Brain column is now online. I look at the science of time travel. We may not be able to transport ourselves physically into the future or the past as H.G. Wells imagined, but we can travel mentally. And it turns out that we use a lot of the same equipment to go in both directions. In fact, our ability to remember our past may have evolved because it helped us project ourselves into the future. Check it out.
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Originally published April 26, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.