I’ve posted my John Wesley Powell Memorial Lecture, “What is Life?” on blip.tv and have embedded it here. It’s a combination of my slides for the talk and a so-so audio recording. I stopped recording after my main talk, because the questions and answer period was pretty inaudible. That’s too bad, because we got into some interesting questions about whether viruses, prions, or even the Internet can be considered alive. Abbie Smith, who was at the talk, wrote about the discussion , and her own distaste for hard lines between life and non-life.
After a mean blizzard and meaner times at O’Hare, I finally arrived in Tulsa. So we’re all set for my lecture Sunday evening. See you there.
Originally published March 29, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
ERV informs me there’s some snow between me and my delivery of this year’s John Wesley Powell Memorial Lecture on Sunday in Oklahoma ( details here ). But if Powell could paddle down the Grand Canyon one-handed, the least I can do is hang out in airports a few extra hours. I look forward to seeing any Loom readers around Tulsa.
Originally published March 27, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Last year I took part in a talk about biology, terrorism, and art during the World Science Festival. One of the best things about the experience was getting to talk with people before and after the actual event. The crowd was loaded with artists (for example, the wonderful photographer Justine Cooper) giving serious, interesting thought to how we think about science, and how science changes how we think about the natural world.
Fifteen years ago I got my first vision of the future: a pair of black holes, ringed by rainbows of fire, crashed into each other so violently they sent a tsunami through the fabric of space itself.
The vision did not come from angels or mushrooms. I was sitting at my desk, looking at the saucer-sized screen of a MacIIsi. I was not gazing at actual black holes, but a two-dimensional simulation. And it was not the simulation that astonished me. I was stunned instead by the fact that my Mac was communicating with another computer 800 miles away.