There’s a particular kind of blog post I enjoy–the kind that sounds just like one of those enjoyable rants you hear from a friend in a bar. These rants are loud, funny, impassioned, and surprisingly coherent given the site of said rants. So it is with a remarkable feeling of deja vu (deja lu?) that I read a blog post from Chris Norris, who manages the vertebrate paleontology collection at the Peabody Museum at Yale. Yesterday I had a drink with Chris, and he began to inveigh against the evils of stolen fossils, explaining how any scientific contact with them whatsoever is like the fruit of the poison tree.
If you take a look at a whale or dolphin–any whale or dolphin anywhere on Earth–it will follow certain rules. It will have a blowhole. It will not have legs. It will have horizontal tail flukes it raises and lowers to swim (as opposed to fish that bend from side to side). And it will have been born tail first (as opposed to the head-first position of land mammals). These sorts of rules set whales and dolphins off from other living animals, but only if you look at life as it is today. If you move back in time–especially back between about 50 million and 40 million years ago–the rules collapse.
Drat. Robert Sapolsky is going to give a public lecture next month about his cool work on parasites and mind-control. (For details, see this article I wrote for the New York Times.) But there’s no way I’ll be anywhere near the venue. Details are below–and below that, a video of a talk Sapolsky gave in November that I’m going to have to settle for…apologies for the absurdly obtuse angle of the camera.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH DIRECTOR’S INNOVATION SPEAKER SERIES
Title: Do Parasites Know More Neurobiology Than We do?
Last week I blegged for examples of great science writing from over the years, and you did not disappoint. Rania Masri, who teaches writing to scientists in Lebanon, asked if I could share the list. It’s the least I can do in exchange for everyone’s generosity, and this morning I’ve got some time as I listen to some interviews for good quotes. (I also have to say it’s very cool to be helping somebody out in Lebanon from my laptop.)
I’ve selected the readings that I think would work best for a class on the art of writing about science and nature. This is obvious a far from definitive list.
Bob Howe writes, “In 1992, at age 34, I decided to get a tattoo. I’m a speculative fiction writer. I wanted something grounded in the natural world, that symbolized the connection between inner and outer space, and that was unequivocally male without being bellicose. I wanted something that wasn’t a momentary fad, that was timeless and eternal: I chose Jupiter. Two years later, Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into the face of the planet, altering it forever.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published January 30, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.