Microcosm: The Book
loom | May 30, 2008I would love to introduce him to a certain resident of his gut. (Hat tip: Tree of Life)
loom | May 21, 2008Blogs are abuzz with the news that E. coli can solve classic math puzzles like the Burnt Pancake Puzzle. The paper itself is available for free here.
Judging from the Frankensteinian anxiety this news seems to be triggering, people must think that life is normally not capable of the logic that we're familiar with in computers. In fact, however, E. coli was carrying out a natural sort of computation long before some undergrads starting tinkering with it. In Microcosm, I show how the genes that build E. coli's flagella act like a noise filter circuit. (Here's a new paper on the digital control…
loom | May 18, 2008Had another author told me his publisher was sending me a copy of a book on Escherichia coli, I would have been perhaps quietly unenthusiastic. But best selling science writer Carl Zimmer is a master story teller and superb researcher. He's also renowned for effortlessly slipping a giant payload of scientific knowledge into the reader, sweetened with human drama, one so comprehensive a student struggling with a dry textbook would have had to hammer into their head over the course of an entire semester.
Carl didn't disappoint: within a few short pages he had me completely, delightfully hooked…
loom | May 17, 2008Blogging briefly from Chicago. Today's talk at the Field Museum went well--I managed to lure a fair number of people inside from a beautiful spring afternoon to hear me talk about a gut germ. I also had a chance to walk through the fabulous Shedd Aquarium. The Field Museum has an acquarium of its own--filled with 520 million year old creatures. They set up three gigantic screens on which they have a mind-blowing animation of Cambrian animals--slithering, flapping, wiggling, and looking quite alien. I found it mesmerizing. The animators have a movie you can watch online, but if you ever get a…
loom | May 14, 2008The New York Sun has a positive review of Microcosm today, and part of me just wants to point you in its direction, let you read about the book's "ecstatically reflective moments," and leave it at that. But there's one puzzling passage that makes me wonder if some printer bent on mischief swapped my page 31 for one that I didn't write. The reviewer observes, correctly, that much of the book is dedicated to drawing parallels between E. coli and us--and all living things as well. While he thinks this works for the most part, he thinks sometimes the comparison is "perhaps too glib."
Mr. Zimmer…
loom | May 12, 2008I'm heading to Boston on Friday to speak at the Harvard Book Store about Microcosm. It's at 7 pm, and it's free. Information is here. Then it's on to Chicago, where I'll be talking at the Field Museum on Saturday at 2. Here are the details. I hope some Loom readers can make it! (For those who don't live in either fine city, please check my talk page.)
loom | May 10, 2008As long as I can remember, I've been a fan of George Johnson's writing about science. He has always kept focus on the deep mysteries of existence, even while writing in a deliciously clear style. So it was a real pleasure to talk to him on bloggingheads.tv about my own book, Microcosm. Even though we spent lots of time wondering what E. coli tells us about the universal rules of life itself, we still found time to talk about what it's like to have sex in a Waring blender. Check it out. (And to all those insomniacs--don't forget, I'll be on the radio on Coast to Coast AM tonight at 1 am.)
loom | May 9, 2008From the new issue: "It is a powerful account of the dynamic, complicated and social world we share with this ordinary yet remarkable bug. Evolution and genetics glitter among the pages, as do the lives and experiments of the scientists who have studied them. Microcosm is exciting, original and wholly persuasive of the beauty and utility of looking at the largest of issues from the smallest perspectives."
loom | May 9, 2008I'll be talking on Coast to Coast at a slightly less wee-hours time: 1 am on Sunday.
loom | May 9, 2008Just a quick note to say that, if all goes according to plan, I will be appearing on the Internets on bloggingheads tomorrow, and on the radio show Coast-to-Coast in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning. In both cases I'll be talking about--you guessed it--Microcosm. I'll be swilling coffee Saturday night because I'll be talking from 2 am to 5 1 to 2 am EST Sunday. If you're not quite such a night owl, I believe they'll archive it on their site.
A couple other Microcosm-related notes: Discover Magazine gives a nod: "With Microcosm, this award-winning science writer has turned out an…
loom | May 9, 2008
At last we come to the fifth winning question about Microcosm, from Ceph. Once again, thanks to the ~240 people who entered the contest. I hope my answers to these five questions give you a sense of what my book's about and why I'm so excited by this little germ. If you want to learn more about it, and about life, pick up a copy.
Ceph asks,
What is your favorite thing that has been done to E. coli (making it glow, smell like bananas, etc)?
My answer below...
E. coli has the odd honor of being the most-hacked organism on Earth. About forty years ago, scientists started figuring out how to…
loom | May 9, 2008Here's the fourth winning question about Microcosm, from Sigmund:
Creationists often point to the bacterial cell and say something to the effect of "the cell is so complicated it is highly improbable that it could have spontaneously formed - therefore God-did-it. Are there any particular features of E.coli that reveal simpler origins?
The answer below the fold...
In Microcosm, I tell the story of how E. coli was embraced by the creationists. In particular, they adore the flagellum, the fast-spinning tail that E. coli and many other bacteria use to zip around. As far back as 1981, people from…
loom | May 9, 2008Now we come to the third winning question about Microcosm. Kenatiod writes,
Long ago, in bacteriology class, the teacher (an ex-nun at an ex-Catholic college) was telling us about the type "F" pili that are used to pass DNA so coli can have sex. One of the students asked "Why do they call them type F?" The teacher started to answer, but stopped, and then she turned bright red. The class start laughing, and then she did as well, and then someone asked, "What other kinds of pili are there?" She pulled herself together, said "Thank you" and class continued.
I would like to know both the answer…
loom | May 9, 2008Here's the second winning question about Microcosm, from Kevin:
E. coli is a bacteria commonly found in the intestines of some animals. What distinguishes the common and harmless strains from those that can cause illness and death?
A lot of people asked this question in the contest. But my sense is that most people think that E. coli is just a nasty germ. When I would tell people I was going to write about E. coli, they thought I was going to pen an expose of the food industry. It came as a surprise to them when I told them that they were carrying billions of E. coli inside them. [More below…
loom | May 9, 2008If you're just tuning in, on Tuesday I offered five free signed copies of my new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life to readers if they sent in a question. I was quite stoked to see the huge reaction. I can tell from the quality of the questions that the sheer volume was not just the result of the lust for a free book. While I can only answer five questions today, I think most people who asked one will find that parts of the book touch on it.
So--without further ado, let's dive in. (This is the first of five posts I'll deliver today.)
1. Frank asks:
Why E. coli? From a…
loom | May 8, 2008Thanks to everyone who submitted the 240 or so questions about Microcosm, E. coli, and life in general. I'll pick five of them tonight and answer them tomorrow and start signing copies for the winners. And if you didn't enter, why not considering getting a copy anyway?
loom | May 8, 2008From the blog of Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Mind Wide Open
Go Buy Microcosm Right Now
Carl Zimmer may be my favorite science writer around today (others seem to agree), so I'm excited to report that his new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life hit the shelves yesterday. I had the opportunity to read it in manuscript form, and it's really an exceptional book -- what Carl calls an "(un)natural history of E. coli" -- the world's most famous microbe. Having just published a book that partially starred a bacterium myself, I know how hard it is to make a book about…
loom | May 8, 2008Just a quick reminder--I'll be keeping the contest for a free autographed copy of Microcosm till 5 pm this afternoon. Think of a question about E. coli (and what it can say about life itself), and get in the running for a signed book. I'll post answers to the winning responses tomorrow by noon.
(Thanks to PZ Myers for a link from Pharyngula).
loom | May 6, 2008I'm in a celebratory mood. Microcosm is published today. In my mind, I can see the books moving out of warehouses onto trucks, off to book stores and front door steps. This morning I read a great review from Mykola Bilokonsky at Newsvine. ("What are you waiting for?" he asks.) And tonight I'll be having a little get-together, with the weather cooperating in splendid fashion. To spread the cheer, let me invite you to participate in a contest to win a copy of Microcosm that I will personally sign.
To enter, you just need to ask a Microcosm-related question in the comment thread. My book is…
loom | May 5, 2008Tomorrow is the publication date of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. I'll be celebrating by sending out some signed copies (details tomorrow), but in the meantime, here's an interview that just came out this morning about the book over at Newsvine, on the nature of life, how to navigate without a brain, and nature's indifference to the "natural."
Newsvine - Interview: Carl Zimmer, Author of Microcosm
Update 1 pm: This is cool. MSNBC (which owns Newsvine) put the interview on their science page.