Jimmy writes, “This is a picture of my recent ink in commemoration of getting my Ph.D in Molecular Pharmacology. Occam’s Razor in its original Latin text —Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate–roughly translated, plurality should never be posited without necessity. I’ve always subscribed to this fundamental tenet behind the scientific method not only in my passion for science, but also in my beliefs in philosophy and religion.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

Originally published December 19, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

In the words of my kids: Wahoo!

I grabbed this image from Seed Magazine’s site, showing Microcosm with a few of the other picks, because I love how E. coli is sandwiched between life in the universe and humans. Seems like the right place for it to be.

PS: Amazon can still get you a copy for Xmas! 

Originally published December 18, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Birds are like nothing else on Earth–in the sense that they have lots of traits in common that are not found in quite the same package in other animals. All birds have feathers, for example, and they can either fly or have evolved from birds that once flew. You don’t see some feathered reptile running around on all fours. But that distinctness is merely an artifact of extinctions. The closest living relatives of birds today are alligators and crocs, and they share a common ancestor that lived some 250 million years ago.

Continue reading “Jurassic Dad” →

Patrick Bahis writes: “I’m a math professor at a public liberal arts college, and have had a few tattoos on my back for a few years, but none of these are related to my discipline. Just yesterday I obtained my first math-themed tat, straightforward and simple: the Greek pi is surrounded by a few turns of a spiral made up of the first 95 digits of the value for the irrational number pi (3.14159265…). There’s room at the end to add to it, should the need arise. (Maybe 25 new digits for each new paper published? I dunno…)”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium. 

Originally published December 18, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Madagascar has long been famous for its peculiar biodiversity, from its lemurs to its baobob trees. In the mid-1700s, the French naturalist Philibert Commerson wrote,

May I announce to you that Madagascar is the naturalist’s promised land? Nature seems to have retreated there into a private sanctuary, where she could work on different models from any she has used elsewhere. There you meet bizarre and marvelous forms at every step…

Continue reading “The Island of Fossil Viruses” →