General
loom | April 10, 2008
Yesterday is the birthday of the man who froze the gallop and thawed it out again.
From, of course, Wikipedia.
esiegel | April 10, 2008In a comment on my last post, What is Dark Energy, Kendall asks the following, which is such a good one I think it deserves its own post:
I thought the expansion was accelerating? Aren’t you saying that it is on its way down to 85% of its current rate? Sounds like expansion is slowing, but still leaves us with an open universe…
People do say the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. But that doesn't mean that the expansion rate is accelerating. It means that if you take a look at any one galaxy that isn't gravitationally bound to us in the Local Group (that is, any big galaxy that isn't…
loom | April 3, 2008In yet another sign of the growing respectability of the online world for communicating science, this year the National Academies have set up a new "online/Internet" category for their annual communication prize. Here's what they want:
Entries original to the Web which published in English online in 2007 will be considered. Entries should include up to six online articles, hypertextual documents, podcasts, commentaries, etc., or any combination thereof, that constitute a formal series or that may have appeared individually on a topic or common theme.
So if you haven't applied yet, now's your…
loom | February 22, 2008In the comment thread for my post about Microcosm's rave review in Publisher's Weekly, outeast writes,
There's been something I've been dying for, and here's as good a place as any to mention it: real coffee-table editions of your books, meaning lavishly illustrated throughout rather than with a couple of meagre (though nice in themselves) wedges of pictures in the middle. When I'm reading about the different stages parasites go through and so on I want to see it - I want to see the flukes pouring from the toad and all that. And I want books that visitors will ohh and ahh (and eww) over,…
loom | January 28, 2008I know you read every one of the Scienceblogs. But if you still have some extra free time to kill in an interesting way, check out my updated blogroll over to the left. It's a selection of some of the blogs I check out semi-regularly. Here are details on a few of the additions.
All in the Mind--Natasha Mitchell hosts a radio show about the brain in Australia
The End of the Pier Show--Henry Gee, Nature editor, Tolkien guru, dinosaur maven, garage band monster...the list goes on
ERV--A grad student tries to explain biology to the intelligent design crowd. Frustration and hilarity ensue.
Florida…
loom | December 18, 2007Is it wrong to find pictures of destruction beautiful? This is a frame from a supercomputer simulation of the Tunguska meteorite. It exploded over Siberia in 1908 and flattened miles of trees. The simulation suggests that the devastation could have been caused by a far smaller explosion than previously thought--3 to 5 megatons, instead of 10 to 20. And since there are many more asteroids in that smaller size range, the risks of a devastating impact may be greater than previously thought. Maybe not enough to cause mass extinctions, but to knock out a fair piece of real estate. Go here to read…
loom | December 8, 2007I've set up a web page for the workshop I'll be teaching at Yale next month. If I had to sum up my line of work in four hours, a few things to read, and one writing assignment, this would probably be it.
loom | December 3, 2007My latest conversation at bloggingheads is up--a discussion of stem cell biology and politics with Lee Silver, Princeton biologist and author of Challenging Nature. Check it out.
loom | November 20, 2007I'm back from California and the award ceremony I mentioned last week. The trip was fun but a little absurd--I flew across the country and back within 36 hours. It's time for some serious carbon offsetting. I got to hang out with ABC's Robert Krulwich without having to go into a forest, and was finally able to put a face to RadioLab's Jad Abumrad's incantory voice. I find I can never, ever predict what someone looks like from how they sound on the radio. Eric Kandel came to pick up a prize for his book, In Search of MemoryStockholm?"
On my return I had to cope with a system meltdown on the…
loom | November 8, 2007A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I'll be teaching a workshop in January at Yale about science writing. The response has been fantastic, with 90 people signed up at my last count. What makes the response particularly interesting is that a couple subjects of my own articles (like this) will be coming. So I may get them to talk a little about what it's like to be on the receiving end of the media machine.
Several readers have expressed dismay that they couldn't come. I'm happy to report that at least part of the workshop will be recorded and turned into a podcast that will be available for…
loom | October 30, 2007I'm sometimes asked who my favorite science writers are. I don't like science writers per se; I like science writing, or rather some science writing--the passages and chapters and books that remind me just how good science writing can get, just how high above the wasteland of hackery, dishonest simplification, and cliches it can rise. This morning by chance I stumbled across a recording from 1996 of John McPhee reading one of those passages (he reads from one of his geology books at about 6:20). It has the added bonus of an explanation far more clear than I could offer as to why an English…
loom | October 29, 2007Matthew Chapman, writer and producer, writes an op-ed calling for presidential candidates to have a debate on scientific issues. It's an entirely reasonable piece, but if you stop to think about it, its publication raises two disturbing questions--
1. Why should anyone have to plead for science to be a topic of discussion among presidential candidates?
2. Why did I find this piece on the Washington Post web site filed under a tab called "On Faith"--a section dedicated to religion?
On Faith: Guest Voices: Call for a Presidential Debate on Science
loom | October 19, 2007Thanks for all the questions for my talk with Craig Venter for bloggingheads.tv. I didn't end up reading questions verbatim a la Emily Litella ("a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee New Jersey asks...") But the questions definitely shaped the conversation.
Some readers have been asking when our talk will be posted. Answer: Saturday morning. I'll post a link when it's live, and you can also check bloggingheads.tv directly.
Update: It's up. Comments are welcome over there or over here.
Photo: Evan Hurd
loom | October 16, 2007Permit me a wee bit of nepotism. My brother Ben is on ABC News: World News tonight to celebrate National Dictionary Day. He talks about how language evolves in weird ways. It's already on their web cast here
loom | October 10, 2007Chris Sloan, a senior editor at National Geographic Magazine, points me to a cluster of new blogs he and others at NG have just launched. Sloan's own blog includes a refreshingly frank discussion of the forged-fossil controversy NG was involved in a few years ago.
Science Blogs meanwhile continued to absorb blogs in Borg-like fashion. Among the new additions is one I've followed for a while, Laelaps, which covers stuff like fossil horses, human evolution, and such. Long live the organisms.
loom | October 8, 2007Last week I appeared on bloggingheads.tv, talking about life in all its weirdness with science writer John Horgan. The folks at bloggingheads.tv wondered if I'd come back, perhaps bringing along a scientist to talk to. I said, Of course. The scientist I've invited along is Craig Venter.
In the 1990s Venter pioneered methods for sequencing the human genome, racing government scientists to finish the first complete draft. Last month he and his colleagues published a highly accurate read of his own genome, including both sets of chromosomes he got from his parents. He and his colleagues have…
loom | October 5, 2007In January I'll be running a workshop for science graduate students at Yale about how to write about science for non-scientists. It's going to be the second time around for me; last year's trial run was a wonderful experience, which confirmed to me that scientists-in-training these days want very much to be engaged in the public discussion of the stuff they do. Information about the workshop and how to register has just been posted on the Yale Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology web site (poster pdf) I'm told the slots are filling up fast, so if any readers at Yale are interested…
loom | October 3, 2007I just installed a new banner from Carl Buell up top. Sort of 2001 meets parasitoid wasps. It's making the rest of the blog act funny for reasons I cannot divine, so the tech gods have been appealed to.
loom | September 19, 2007The Scientist recently asked me to name the three best life-science blogs. I just sent them three ones I enjoy and read a lot--I find this sort of ranking to be interesting but fundamentally artificial. (I'd recommend all of the blogs on my blogroll on the left of your screen.)
I didn't realize that the request was actually part of a bigger undertaking: the Scientist is asking all of its readers to pick the best life-science blogs. If you want to help make the selection, click here forthwith.
loom | September 17, 2007
My first book, At the Water's Edge, was graced by illustrations by the marvelous Carl Buell. He's got a lot of irons in the fire these days, including Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, which publishes this month. Paleontologist Donald Prothero is the author, and it's packed with illustrations such as this one, which shows mammal-like reptiles that were increasingly more closely related to the first mammals. While you wait for the book to arrive, you can peruse his Flickr pages.
[Illustration couresy of Carl Buell]