Michael Ruse , a leading philosopher of science, writes, “Well, now I am starting to feel a little bit inadequate !!!”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published April 22, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
The New York Times, April 22, 2008
We humans differ from one another in too many ways to count. We are shy and bold, freckled and pale, truckers and hairdressers, Buddhists and Presbyterians. We get cancers in the third grade and live for a century. We have fingerprints.
Scientists have only a rough understanding of how this diversity arises. Some of it stems from the different experiences we have, from our time in the womb on through childhood and into our mature years. These molding influences include things like the books we read and the air we breathe. Our diversity also stems from our genes–the millions of typographical differences between one genome and another.
Continue reading “Expressing Our Individuality, the Way E. Coli Do”
With two weeks to go till Microcosm‘s publication date, I’m happy to direct your attention to an adapted excerpt that’s running in tomorrow’s New York Times. In this passage, I discuss what I like to call E. coli’s fingerprints.
We like to think that genes equal identity. If that were true, then a colony of genetically identical E. coli should be nothing but a robot army of clones. But diversity rules E. coli’s world, because there’s more to life than DNA, even when you’re just a microbe. Check it out.
I’ve also set up some pages over at carlzimmer.com with news, reviews, and other information about the book. And, of course, you’re encouraged to make your way over to Amazon…
Click here to watch it on blip.tv (you can even watch in full screen, if you dare…)
Originally published April 19, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.
Lauren writes:
“I’m not a scientist by trade, but I am, in fact, a huge nerd. I study 18th-century British literature, including scientific literature. It was a wild time to be in science. It was also the heyday of the orrery, which provided the initial impetus for my tattoo. (Orreries, as it turned out, involve too many circles to make them feasible for inking on a large scale.) Then I discovered & fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de’Dondi’s 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii–the plans for the first famous astrarium. My backpiece is of the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn’t track Mercury with it–de’Dondi followed Ptolemy–but I find his Astrarium a lovely & impressive testament to human ingenuity & curiosity.”