Three weeks from today 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). After the movie, I’ll moderate a talk with the director, John Amiel, 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

Elebash Recital Hall, at the CUNY Graduate Center on 5th Avenue at 35th St. (Map)

No reservations. First come, first seated.

Originally published September 29, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

I’ve got several announcements to post over the next few days. Many eggs are beginning to hatch.

Continue reading “Announcements, Announcements! First up: Michael Specter coming to Yale” →

On my latest podcast, I talk to David Baker of the University of Washington about a remarkable new way of studying biology: turn a problem (protein-folding) into a game, and get 57,000 people to play. Check it out.

Originally published September 24, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

To know the Boston Globe’s Big Picture is to love it. And this week they’ve organized some excellent pictures of animals in the news. Falling bears, gargantuan salmon, and more. Get thee to a photoessay!

Originally published September 22, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

More brains!

Yesterday I blogged about my new article in the Times about a new theory of consciousness. Today my latest column about the brain is posted at Discover’s web site. I take a look this month at space. One of the most fascinating ways the brain can go awry is known as spatial neglect, in which people simply ignore part of the world around them. (These drawings were made by people suffering from one form of spatial neglect.)

In my column, I look at recent research that uses these kinds of failings to figure out how we build our perception of space in the first place. Check it out!

[Image: Nature]

Originally published September 22, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.