[Update: See my continually updated edition of this list here.]

Over the past week I held my first real class, teaching a roomful of students writing about science on Appledore Island (along with a few ornithological auditors, shown in this picture of my classroom). They put up with a relentless schedule of researching and writing and ended up with some excellent pieces about everything from robot sharks to the right way to hold a warbler in your hand. I’ll be posting the fruits of their labors in a couple days at Science on Shoals.

Continue reading “The Index of Banned Words” →

Patrick, a research specialist in a computational memory lab, writes,

Yesterday, I got my first science tattoo — and first tattoo period — taking inspiration from you and the lovely people in the Science Tattoo Emporium.

Mine is a hippocampal neuron: specifically, a pyramidal cell found in area CA1. It’s been implicated in spatial memory, which is something my lab works on. (In rodent EEG, hippocampal “place response” has been seen in this type of neuron.) But more than that, I find it to be one of those classically beautiful images in science.

Thanks for the inspiration and encouragement. Science nerd pride!

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

Originally published August 15, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Now these are good office hours. I’m sitting in front of a big tide pool on a hot day at Appledore Island. My children are playing some Byzantine game involving princesses on the raft in the middle of the pool. A student of mine has just walked passed me, snorkel and goggles in hand. “I’ve just sent you an outline for my project, and I’m going to take a break,” she says. As she floats off to gaze at the algae and the crabs, I use the awesome wireless on this island to check my email. The outline is in my inbox. So by the time she’s done snorkeling, we can discuss it.

I’m doing my best to counter this tranquility by editing these students nearly to the point of tears. But my impersonation of John Houseman in the Paper Chase just can’t measure up on a day like this.

Originally published August 15, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

We’re three days into the science writing class here at Shoals Marine Laboratory, and the exhaustion and enlightenment are neck and neck.

Monday we arrived on Appledore Island and settled in among the squawking herring gulls, which grudgingly walk out of our way as we walk by, as if to say, it’s our island. Tuesday morning we marched out to the northern edge of the island to learn about the intertidal zone, the place where the ocean meets land in necklace of pools and rocks battered by waves and coated in slimy algae.

Continue reading “Parasite Island and Hagfish Knots” →