On August 11, 1999–ten years ago tomorrow–the State Board of Education in Kansas voted to take evolution out of the state’s science curriculum.
We arrived on Appledore Island this afternoon, which is drenched in sunshine and heat. The gulls are screaming and the students are busy reading up on tidal pools (or, as I was informed at dinner, the intertidal) in advance of our journey tomorrow. But despite the fact that New Hampshire is just a strip on the horizon, the email and the cell phones work here, and this evening I was asked to talk on the radio tomorrow about my recent article on global warming and evolution. I’ll be on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC in New York some time between 12:30 and 1 pm EST on Tuesday. You can listen live here, or wait for the archived podcast.
Listen right here!
Originally published August 10, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
After I saw this tattoo over on a sibling blog, Science Not Fiction, I knew it had to join the emporium. Its owner, Mark Yturralde, sent me this description of its origin:
After the Columbia accident, I felt compelled to do something. Space has always meant so much to me, and I felt I wanted to memorialize them somehow.
I donated to college funds and other charities in their name, but still felt like I needed to do more, and I found myself reliving and considering Challenger, and Apollo one too, Gus Grissom being a long time hero of mine.
One morning, I made a list of all of them. It just struck me. I’ll put their names on my forearm. People will see them. They’ll ask who they are. I can then tell them about my tattoo, and what it means to me. Everytime someone asks, and I explain it, they take a second. They reflect. They remember.
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published August 9, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Two of my stories came out this week–one on the near future, and one on the distant past.
1. Global warming is beginning to drive evolution of plants and animals. And soon it will be shifting to high gear. Read more at Yale Environment 360.
2. You, me, and the mushroom over there are all eukaryotes. So are slime molds and Giardia. We all share a number of features that set us apart from prokaryotes like E. coli. The split between eukaryotes and other living things is arguably the deepest in all life. In this week’s issue of Science, I have an essay that looks at how the basic eukaryote cell, complete with nucleus, mitochondria, and all its other bells and whistles came to be. Check it out (here or here). And you can also listen to me talk about the question on this week’s Science podcast here.
Originally published August 7, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Science, August 7, 2009
You may not feel as though you have much in common with a toadstool, but its cells and ours are strikingly similar. Animals and fungi both keep their DNA coiled up in a nucleus. Their genes are interspersed with chunks of DNA that cells have to edit out to make proteins. Those proteins are shuttled through a maze of membranes before they can float out into the cell. A cell in a toadstool, like your own cells, manufactures fuel in compartments called mitochondria. Both species’ cells contain the same molecular skeleton, which they can break down and reassemble in order to crawl.