Leave it to the Boston Globe’s Big Picture to pick out a staggering portfolio of pictures of Mars.

Originally published November 6, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

The Tangled Bank is now officially out; I’m getting word back from readers that it’s actually showing up from Amazon. If you’re curious about it, here are a couple ways to find out more.

1. I’ve set up pages on my web site where you can download the introduction, look at some of Carl Buell’s artwork for the book, read reviews, and get contact information if you’re a teacher interested in a desk copy.

2. The New York Academy of Sciences has published an excerpt in the new issue of their magazine. It’s about the evolution of the eye, and you can read it online here.

3. Discover has another excerpt, about coevolution, in their November issue. The print issue is out now, and it should be posted online some time soon.

Originally published November 6, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Many blog and Twitter readers may be acquainted with Jonathan Eisen, a biologist at UC Davis. In my latest Meet the Scientist podcast, I spend an hour chatting with Eisen about what you can learn by looking at the genomes of particularly weird microbes–from radiation-resistant critters to bugs that live in the guts of insects or on the bellies of deep-sea worms. Check it out.

Originally published November 5, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Time to print up some new business cards.

Originally published October 30, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

I smell an anthology here: a collection of the all-time greatest take-downs, in which scientists expose lazy thinking. How about, The Best Pwnage of 2009?

My own latest nomination:

In the new book Superfreakonomics, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner make lots of provocative claims about global warming. For example, they say that solar panels would absorb so much heat they’d be useless for bringing the planet’s temperature down by cutting down carbon emissions.

Raymond Pierrehumbert, who, like Levitt, is a professor at the University of Chicago, shows why that’s wrong–not with calculus or some other fancy-schmancy mathematics, but with some embarrassingly simple arithmetic.

Be sure to check out the map at the end. Ouch.

Originally published October 30, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.