Berg writes, “I’m a big fan of quantum mechanics (regardless of how little I truly understand it), so getting a tattoo of Schrodinger’s cat seemed like a no-brainer. It’s on my right forearm, which means it ends up being a good conversation starter after a quick handshake. Either people get what it is right away, or I have the pleasure of explaining ‘No, it’s not two cats fornicating, it’s one superpositioned cat,’ which is fun in its own right. Huzzah!”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

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

…about the recent goings-on at Bloggingheads. If you don’t want to listen to an hour and 15 minutes of discussion about how a couple of creationists ended up on Wright’s site, he has also distilled his comments in writing, here in a discussion forum.

I deeply appreciate all the comments and emails people sent to ask me to reconsider my decision to part ways with Bloggingheads. But it’s not as if I’ll be vanishing from sight. In fact, I plan to explore new ways to write and talk about science (details to come).

We writers don’t disappear so easily.

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

If you don’t already subscribe to Science and the City, a podcast from the New York Academy of Science, do so. They pick a great mix of intriguing topics, from the origin of the solar system to the physics of kite-flying. I was delighted that they gave me a call for their latest podcast to talk about The Tangled Bank. Our conversation ranged from the evolution of eyes to the power of good science illustrations. Listen here.

Originally published September 4, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Charles Darwin was interested not just in how new things evolve, but also in how old things disappear. Often, they don’t disappear completely without a trace. We don’t have a visible tail like our primate ancestors did, but we still have a series of little bones tucked away at the bottom of the spine. While it may not function like a full-blown tail, it still anchors muscles around the pelvis. Blind cavefish may not have eyes of the sort found on their cousins in the outside world, but they still start to develop eyes as larva, before the cells start to die away.

Sometimes, though, the only place to look for vestiges of a lost trait is in a genome. Continue reading “Losing Teeth, But Keeping Genes” →

Having written a book about E. coli has made me a keen aficionado of E. coli ties and E. coli plush toys. But a glass sculpture of E. coli? Now that’s classy.

This beautiful piece of sculpture is the work of the artist Luke Jerram. Check out his web site for his entire Glass Microbiology project. Swine flu never looked so good.

(Hat tip to Stan Carey)

Originally published September 3, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.