Tomorrow I’ll be in New York to host a special screening of the movie Creation, a fictionalized account of Darwin’s life starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. It’s a collaboration between the Science and Arts program at CUNY and the Imagine Science Film Festival (for which I’m serving as judge) and the Science and Entertainment Exchange.

Before the movie, I’ll moderate a talk with the director, John Amiel; Randal Keynes, the author of the book on which the movie is based; and biologists Cliff Tabin and Sean Carroll (of deep homology fame). It should be an excellent evening.

Here are the details:

Wednesday, Oct 20, 7:00 PM
CUNY Graduate Center
Elebash Recital Hall
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY

(Map)

No reservations. First come, first seated.

Originally published October 19, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Thanks to two of my favorite brain bloggers for taking an interest in Brain Cuttings.

Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks offers up a classic book review for something that is not quite a book:

Whether you are an enthusiast, a professional psychologist or neuroscientist, or a combination, you will probably learn much from the book due to its breadth of vision. Regardless of who you are you are sure to enjoy the engaging immersions in some of the most interesting ideas in contemporary science.

And over at Neurotribes, science writer Steve Silberman publishes a conversation he and I had the other day on what ebooks mean for our ilk, and our readers. This was not an interview, with pat questions that could have been programmed into a computer. This was instead a long talk, because the subject is something that interests us both. In fact, Silberman wrote a Wired article back in the last century–1998–about the first glimpse of ebooks. Check it out.

Originally published October 18, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Next month, the National Association of Science Writers is descending on New Haven for their annual meeting. I didn’t want this talent pool to flow into and out of the Elm City without sharing some of it with the community. So I’ve organized a public reading with four authors–two coming to town for NASW, and two area residents. All four writers have excellent new science books, and–remarkably–they are not unique in that regard. This year has been a fantastic one for science books, and I could have easily scheduled half a dozen more events with quartets of equally gifted writers.

Continue reading “Announcements, Announcements cont.: I’m hosting four great science writers at Yale on 11/5” →

I’m a judge again this year for the Imagine Science Film Festival, a fascinating Petri dish of short movies that feed on science and produce all sorts of interesting artistic metabolites. The festival has just kicked off, and there will be movies (both short and long) all week. Here’s the schedule. Having seen all the short pieces, I can say there’s some excellent stuff in the mix (although I won’t tell you exactly which ones I liked best till after the award ceremony on Friday).

Originally published October 16, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Hearty congratulations to Ed Yong, fellow Discover blogger, for winning this year’s online National Academies Communication Award. I serve as a judge for the awards, so I told the NAS folks I would have to sit this particular vote out this year, seeing that a fellow member of the Discover hivemind was in the running. From the sidelines, I was very pleased to see him win. Ed’s torrent of well-researched blog posts on natural history give the lie (again) that blogging isn’t serious journalism.

Congratulations as well to Richard Holmes for his wonderful book, Age of Wonder, Charles Duhigg for his deep exploration of our water woes, and Carole and Richard Rifkind, co-producers and co-directors of the show, “Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist.”

Full details at NAS.

Originally published October 14, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.