Everything.

How do we begin?

Well, hello. My name is Claire L. Evans, and I'm new here.

I began writing this blog, Universe in 2005, over at the Portland, Oregon-based web community Urban Honking. At first, it was a vanity project, a noodle, an excuse to keep my grey matter engaged beyond my college years (which were, to say the least, unscientific). In the years since, Universe has taken on various incarnations: briefly as a print column in the now-defunct LA Alternative, which earned me the closest I've ever come to "accolades" (these breezed quickly past), then as a micro-blog for GOOD Magazine. Throughout the years, I've moonlighted as a science-writer-at-large for magazines, including our very own SEED. I've chugged along, long-tailing myself into a very tidy niche ("unread science blogs"), and parlayed my nominal status as science writer into conversations with people like Dr. Oliver Sacks, the complexity theorist James Gardner, and science fiction writers Thomas A. Day and Mark von Schlegell, as well as into lecture gigs, sci-fi conventions, art performances, writing jobs, and more intertextual projects than I have space to discuss here. I've written about the reptilian agenda, the psychic Sasquatch, space-jumping, NASA, gravity waves, cryogenics, and complexity. I've made ambient videos, written art criticism about Star Trek, done very serious Power Point presentations about Bigfoot, built a geodesic dome out of twigs, and taught myself the philosophy of string theory.

The point I'm trying to get at is this: that "everything" up in the header is no joke. I love science, but I also love all its unloved, peripheral margins. I love the places where it intersects with art, with culture, with the way we understand the world around us. Hopefully my rampant posting about pseudoscience, the psychedelic temperament of computer screens, and UFO cults won't raise too much ire around here; I'm as interested in how misunderstanding defines us as I am in how understanding refines us. Feel free to correct me, argue, and point out your own connections. I hope that you wonderful people in the ScienceBlogs community can be my sounding board, my scientific jury, and, hopefully, my allies.

Obviously, I'm beyond thrilled to join the ScienceBlogs world, which has been a heavily-clicked area of my bookmarks menu for years. Five years of Universe entries have been ported over to this new home, for your perusal. Over the next week, I'll post some Universe highlights, favorite entries, and video projects.This is a new era, one with a sheer gauze of professionalism wrapped around it, and I intend to do my duty with vim and vigor.

Onward!