Just a quick note: I’m in the process of changing hosts for my web site, carlzimmer.com. Once the transfer is done, you should be able to get to the article archive, book pages, and all the rest once more. The down time shouldn’t last too long. The site will also be going through some long overdue overhauling. Believe it or not, the web site was built back in the twentieth century. Out with the vacuum tubes, I say.
Originally published March 1, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.
In January, Scientific American ran an article by me about the evolutionary roots of cancer, which you can read here (and about which I blogged here). Now, via Respectful Ignorance Respectful Insolence [d’oh!], I’ve discovered a new review on said subject in the March issue of the journal Nature Reviews Cancer. The review, “Darwinian medicine: a case for cancer,” is by Mel Greaves, of the Institute of Cancer Research in London. If you can get hold of the paper, it’s definitely worth a read.
This morning I noticed that on top of my blog there’s an ad for an upcoming show on the Discovery Channel that claims to reveal the tomb of Jesus and his family. I haven’t seen a preview of the show, and from an article in this morning’s NY Times, I have very little interest in doing so:
The filmmakers commissioned DNA testing on the residue in the boxes said to have held Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There are no bones left, because the religious custom in Israel is to bury archeological remains in a cemetery.
I suspect poking around Conservapedia will become one of my new tools for procrastination. You’re guaranteed a jaw drop within a couple minutes of searching on this Wikipedia for conservatives. It occurred to me that I had not yet bothered to look up “creationism.” The entry is a whiplash of a read, with critics and backers of creationism having it out, sometimes within a single paragraph. What really struck me was the section on “Attempts to Criticize Creationism.” The history page shows that it is authored by “Aschlafly”–presumably Andrew Schlafly, founder of the entire site. It is marked “Don’t delete these changes.”
Continue reading “Conservapedia: Don’t Mess With Noah’s Flood”
My ancestry forms a smear across northern and central Europe, a region of the world where many people have a peculiar gift: they can drink milk as adults. Almost all people can digest milk sugar (lactose) as babies, but in many parts of the world they lose this ability after they stop nursing. The change is due to an enzyme called lactase, which breaks down lactose into digestible fragments. Most people stop making lactase as they grow up. If they drink milk, the lactose builds up in their guts, where it can be devoured by microbes that produce gas and other discomforts. (It’s not so unpleasant for such people to eat cheese or yogurt that’s low in lactose or which contains bacteria that make their own lactase.)
Continue reading “In the footsteps of my lactose-intolerant ancestors”