Archive for the ‘Recommended’ Category
Wherein Science Comedian Interviews Science Writer Carl Zimmer
March 31st, 2011
I am guest hosting Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour today while Dr. Kiki is on maternity leave. My guest this week is science writer Carl Zimmer, whom I met at the ScienceOnline2011 conference in January. Hm. In fact, that’s where I met last week’s guest, Greg Gbur, as well. Good thing I went to that.
Carl is an amazing writer. I’m currently reading his book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. It’s about life and evolution, as seen through the lens of the most well-researched microorganism.
His latest book is Planet of Viruses which will be out in hardcover from University of Chicago Press on May 1.
Carl also has a book about science tattoos coming out later this year. Here is a recent post about Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.
His growing collection of science tattoos resides at his Science Tattoo Emporium.
Visit his blog The Loom on Discover Magazine’s website.
He’s also written on evolution (Evolution: Triumph of an Idea and the textbook The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution). And I just received the brand new edition of his ten-year-old book about parasites: Parasite Rex.
I also have his first book (which he says is his favorite): At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea
Here is a recent (Sept. 2010) article on consciousness at the NYTimes.com.
A list of great science books for high school students.
Carl’s Slate article about the controversy surrounding the NASA study of arsenic-based life – “This Paper Should Not Have Been Published”
Follow me and Carl on Twitter: @sciencecomedian and @carlzimmer.
My “Virus Walks Into A Bar” series of jokes on YouTube.
Dr. Richard Lenski’s Experimental Evolution Lab at Michigan State University has an evolution odometer on the front page, tracking how many generations of E.coli the lab has bred – over 50,000 generations, so far!
Oh – and listen for me on NPR’s Science Friday tomorrow. The show streams live (and airs on your local public radio station, too, probably) from 11am-1pm Pacific/2-4pm Eastern. Listen here.
Space: The Private Frontier
February 2nd, 2010
My new video (produced by David Clair) is up at Time.com. It’s about Elon Musk and SpaceX – and we were almost finished with it when the topic exploded into the news a week or so ago – Obama, the budget, the future of NASA, Ares and contracting out space flights to private companies. We didn’t set out to address all that but we did include it. Check it out…
They Might Be Giants Video for Time
January 19th, 2010
Here Comes Science is supposedly a kids’ album but it’s my favorite They Might Be Giants album. I love it. And I had the opportunity to interview John and John at their Brooklyn rehearsal studio, and attend one of their family shows at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It’s our newest video for Time Magazine:
Is Time Travel Possible?
January 9th, 2010
With so many recent movies and TV shows about time travel – Star Trek, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Lost, FlashForward, Heroes – I thought it might be fun to explore the science behind this science fiction device. Our most recent video for Time.com asks, Is Time Travel Possible?…
Giant Insect Ambassadors for the Rainforest
October 21st, 2009
For our newest video for Time.com, I visited an old friend, Norm Gershenz of SaveNature.org, to discuss some of their programs for raising awareness and saving precious habitats that are home to strange and beautiful creatures like the giant thorny phasmid.
Find out more about the Insect Discovery Lab and how you can bring it to your Bay Area classroom.
The Scientific Mind Behind FlashForward
October 8th, 2009
Our most recent video for Time.com is about the new ABC series, “FlashForward.” The show is based on the 1999 novel by Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, whom we met this summer at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.
International Year of Astronomy Video on Time.com
June 16th, 2009
I have a new video essay on Time.com about Galileo and the International Year of Astronomy. It features exoplanet hunter extraordinaire Geoff Marcy and Ben Burress of the Chabot Space and Science Center.
Check it out. Let me know what you think. And get your own Galileoscope!…
My Bizarros
May 4th, 2009
My friend Dan Piraro is the mastermind (and master hand) behind the cartoon Bizarro.
And, even drawing a daily cartoon – 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year – and being a most active animal rights activist, he somehow finds time to make a daily blog post. And his blog is hilarious. He’s a very entertaining writer, he includes a lot of cartoons, and he delights in the playful use of hyperlinks. Click on every link – it’s always good for a bonus laugh.
Dan and I have collaborated on a handful of cartoons. Basically, I send him an idea every once in a while and, if he likes it, he plays with it, draws it, makes it a Bizarro cartoon.
Go check out his blog – and here are my favorite collaborations with genius Dan Piraro:
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Science Comedian Riffs on Hydrogen and Helium at Ignite
April 28th, 2009
Our Ignite presentation is up on YouTube and the O’Reilly Media Ignite Show page.
Tara and I created the presentation – with me doing most of the writing and her doing most of the graphics. Our friend Michael Capozzola hand-drew the final slide for us (primitive technique but effective!).
We attempt to tell a 14-billion year story in five minutes: “A Tale of Two Elements” takes us from the Big Bang to the Earth and touches on a problem that many people are not aware of – the helium shortage (a local problem). Enjoy!…
What is Ignite?
You got Jesus in my X-ray
March 10th, 2009
Where in the Bible does it say, when Jesus returns, he will appear as a silver Rorschach blot on a chest X-ray in a small town in Florida?
A few thoughts…
Reynaldo Farinas went to the hospital after experiencing chest pains.
Okay, no surprise there. You’d have chest pains, too, if Jesus were unexpectedly resurrected inside your chest cavity. The human chest cavity simply wasn’t designed for such a celestial homecoming.
Or was it?
If the Divine Plan is – and always was – to resurrect Jesus inside an evangelical’s chest… well, it seems like rather poor planning, doesn’t it? Not exactly Intelligent Design. In the very least, it might have been helpful – or polite – to have sent some advance notice, maybe an email – particularly to the person who was to receive such a glorious but awkward visitation.
I like when they show the man on camera and the lower-third graphic, the on-screen identifier, has his name and a short definition – the explanation for why we’re watching a video clip of him:
“Reynaldo Farinas: Sees Jesus in X-ray.”
How would you like that to be the 4-word summation of your life?
Farinas says, “This never happened to me.” I can accept that. In fact, it never happened to anyone.
But perhaps I’m being unfair, too much of a stickler for proper grammar, because what he likely meant was, “This never happened to me before,” in which case he is expressing surprise that Jesus never previously spontaneously generated inside his chest.
They show the X-ray around 25 seconds into the video clip…
But I don’t see Jesus. Do you? If anything, I just see a Grey, which is far more likely, if you think about it.
An extraterrestrial inside someone’s chest makes perfect biological sense. It requires no resurrection or Second Coming or magic of any kind – it’s simply a natural part of a metamorph’s life cycle – to incubate inside a host organism. It’s even part of (science fiction) canon – perhaps most famously in the movie Alien.
So, what we have here is nothing supernatural. This visitor is not from Heaven but merely from Zeta Reticuli. Just a friendly parasitic neighbor stopping by to gestate.
One family member says, “And I was surprised. I got goosebumps and I was like ‘Wow,’ you know? That’s unbelievable.”
Exactly.
But if you’re still curious, here are some stories of other sightings of Jesus and his mom – in flapjacks, lemons, and cheese sandwiches.
