I’ll be on three panels at ScienceOnline this weekend — one on ebooks, one on open science, and one on “Keeping the Bullshit Filter” (i.e., watchdogging science and science journalism). The ScienceOnline program describes all these (go there and search for the title). For those attending, considering following the streamed sessions, or curious about the […]
Continue reading →I resist best-of-year roundups when I see the heads — but then find I usually like reading them, and lo and behold, find it instructive to do my own. While most of my attention last year went into pitching and then beginning work on The Orchid and the Dandelion, I spent a lot of time […]
Continue reading →Are we squeezing everything we should out of the arsenic story? Some would say so. I’m not so sure. In a quick post-mortem yesterday on the Lake Mono bacterium, Brian Reid neatly ticks off how the “arsenic soap opera,” as he put it, “illustrates five trends in health and science communication that are likely to […]
Continue reading →You know that arsenic-loving bacteria briefly mistaken for an alien? The bug, which roiled the science press earlier this week when it rode an unusually high and steep hype parabola, endured a firey re-entry today when University of British Columbia bacteriologist Rosie Redfield ripped into both the research and the paper — and was quickly […]
Continue reading →Recent favorites, notables, and retweets: Down on the Body Farm: Inside the Dirty World of Forensic Science A good read from the Atlantic. History of Female Madness in the APA Monitor A bit unsettling, which is probably why it’s an important reminder. . The dark side of oxytocin, much more than just a “love hormone” […]
Continue reading →As I’m packing to move there for a year or two, I was pleased to find, at the splendid site ” Samuel Johnson Soundbites ,” that it bears even more fully on my own move when given in context: Boswell and Johnson were discussing whether or not Boswell’s affection for London would wear thin should he choose to live there, as opposed to the zest he felt on his occasional visits.
…In any case, my posts over the next few weeks may be light, or lean towards reposts, as I finish off some things here (stories, packing) and get my family and myself properly situated in London, where we’ve been lucky to find a nice spot to live up near Hampstead Heath, where if need be I can try Oliver Sacks’ cure for writers’ block: a swim in that splendid park’s pond.
Continue reading →If such comments communicate racism, they can spread it too. But not to Williamses. Politely assuming straightforward talk, they notice neither the cape nor its ugly history.
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