loom

Okay--after some technical difficulties I won't bore you by recounting, I have an announcement. For the third time in this blog's life, I'm packing it up and moving it to a new home. I would like offer my deepest thanks to Scienceblogs for hosting the Loom for two years. I got to know a great…

Really, it's not like I've discovered a new element or anything. See you tomorrow.

...to spill beans. Any minute now, honest.

...at 5 today. [That's 5 pm EST--sorry for the confusion.] [Hint...I've turned off the comments till then.]

I'm sure you'd like to pretend that you have nothing in common with a tapeworm. A tapeworm starts off as an egg which then develops into a cyst. Inside the cyst is a ball-shaped creature with hooks that it can use to crawl around its host before growing into an adult. Many species are made up of…

Science writer Peter Dizikes reviews my book Microcosm for the New York Times. It's great to see that he gets it--i.e., he understands what I'm trying to do with E. coli in the book. I actually appreciate that more than a positive review. Fortunately, he liked the book, too, calling it engrossing,…

I'm back on bloggingheads.tv, talking this week with Paul Ehrlich about everything from climate change to Polynesian canoe oars to the origins of human culture to why cars are best for teenagers to make out in. Check it out.

It feels like a homecoming: I'm among hundreds of people who live for parasites. I arrived in Arlington Texas this afternoon to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists. I'm going to give a talk tomorrow about the public awareness of parasitology, talking about my long-…

In 1980, Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues proposed that the dinosaurs had been exterminated by an asteroid that smashed into the Earth. I was fourteen at the time, and that mix of dinosaurs, asteroids, and apocalyptic explosions was…

I'm bound for LA today to talk about Microcosm. My talk is part of the Zocalo lecture series. I'll be talking tonight at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the details.

The strange thing about E. coli, as I explain in my book Microcosm, is that it has played a central part not just in the modern science of life, but in the political conflicts over life. It may come as a surprise that a humble gut germ could get involved in culture wars. But you need only consider…

At noon EST, I'll be talking on "Word of Mouth," a radio show coming from New Hampshire Public Radio. The topic will be my recent article on global warming and mass extinctions in Yale Environment 360. You can listen live (look for the mp3 stream here, or look for a podcast on the show page.)

The British edition of Microcosm is coming out on July 3 (Brits can pre-order here, and here's a link for Americans). In conjunction with its publication, the Telegraph asked me to explain why I love E. coli so. Here's why.

It's nice to get book reviews in both the popular press and academic journals. I hope everyone will read my books, but I also hope that scientists will consider them good science. And, speaking of Science, the journal of said name just published a lovely review of Microcosm by the evolutionary…

I've been pretty quiet on the blog while I've been off visiting grandparents in other states this past week. But in the meantime, Slate has published a piece I wrote for them on the beguiling mystery of octopus brains. I wonder if this guy would find it enlightening. Update: A couple readers…

Hey Angelenos! I hope you can come out to catch my next talk about Microcosm. It's part of the Zocalo lecture series. I'll be talking next Wednesday, June 25, at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the details.

This is a crazy day--an eight hour drive to visit relatives, followed promptly by a last-minute appearance live on the radio show Science Fantastic, hosted by physicist Michio Kaku. I'm about to go on (6 pm EST) to talk about E. coli, Darwin, and much more. Listen live!

We've all heard about the dire straits polar bears are facing if they lose their icy habitat to global warming. But just how many species may global warming drive extinct? One way to find out is to look over the mass extinctions of the past--and the picture there's not pretty, as I explain in my…

My recent post about a striking new experiment in evolution (E. coli evolving the ability to eat a new kind of food) is still drawing lots of commenters and links. Very cool! Not so cool are the claims that this experiment is evidence of creationism, made by people who have not actually read the…

It is a little weird to think of engineered bacteria living in your mouth or your gut, fighting cavities or Crohn's disease. I'll admit I feel a twinge just thinking about it. But is that because I have some intuition of the risks of ingesting such creatures? I doubt it. I think it's just focusing…

The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what's called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Science writer Carl Zimmer took that…

In a couple weeks I head to Texas to the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists to talk about parasites in pop culture. The symposium is called, "Parasitology: Public awareness through literature, art, and film." Our panel has lots of creepy movie clips in store, plus other sorts…

Thursday I'll be heading up the road to talk about Microcosm at one of my favorite bookstores: RJ Julia in Madison CT. The talk is at 7, and it's free. And for once I don't have to fly to a talk. Here are the details. Hope to see some Connecticut Loom-readers there.

Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular…

Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular…

A reader of Microcosm blogs: I am literally only 12 pages in, yet Zimmer has already managed to make me catch my breath, clutch the book to my chest, and feel my eyes get a little moist from the emotional impact of it all. I wonder what a couple hundred more pages will do...

A couple weeks ago I spoke at Downstate Medical Center in New York about some of my articles in the New York Times that revolve around how the mind evolved. We can learn from bacteria, fruit flies, hyenas, and our own kids. You can now see the whole lecture with surprisingly clear slides on blip.tv…

I spoke Tuesday on Seattle, and there's proof now! Alan Boyle, MSNBC's science guru, wrote a great piece on both the talk and the subject, my book Microcosm. Meanwhile, folks from Real Science were taping, and now you can listen to the talk at their web site. If I had lots of free time, I'd combine…

Don't forget to check in for the latest posts going up over at the Scienceblog Book Club. My book Microcosm has gotten us into a debate about the nature of life.

I'm back at last from the west coast leg of the Microcosm tour. Portland had a cloudy, melancholy charm, and at Powell's I gave a reading in front of a collection of hand-made black velvet paintings from the nearby Velveteria. When the audience's eyes drifted off of me, I couldn't tell if they were…