On the second Tuesday of October, a small subset of humanity celebrates Ada Lovelace Day in honour of the 19th Century computing pioneer. There are film screenings and museum visits, and bloggers are encouraged to write about women’s achievements in STEM. Most distinctive of the events is a Wikipedia Editathon to set the record straight […]
Author: Penny Wednesday
This post originally appeared six years ago, before AI further challenged the societal value assigned to personal erudition. But Leonardo remains a guiding light for me, as for so many others. The daily to-do lists and life of Leonardo Da Vinci have much to teach a science communicator like me.
“I put my pants on just like the rest of you—one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.” Christopher Walken as The Bruce Dickinson, SNL “More Cowbell” sketch Margaret Atwood (Peggy in her personal life) resisted writing her memoirs because she thought her life was not interesting. She […]
“Being a CEO is tough because you’re in a meeting from 9 to 10—internal meeting—this design is wrong. 10:00, there’s a customer. 11:00, there’s an interview. 12:00, there’s an employee quitting that you don’t want to quit that was not on your schedule, and you’re eating while you’re dealing with that, so you better not […]
My violin teacher had a special style. When I had finished fussing with my shoulder rest and rosined up my bow, I would step up to the music stand where she was waiting for me, her own resonant, professional instrument in hand. Together, we would play the assigned music. I don’t remember ever feeling alone […]
When civilizations fall into barbarism, the arising culture fetishizes strength. So it has always been. It can feel as if the weak and sensitive have no place and no voice in a time when throwing one’s weight around is the done thing. This was the world in which Cai Yan, a Chinese noblewoman at the […]
It was a warm July evening, and we left the living room window open so the cats could lounge in the screened in porch. As usual, my teenage son went to bed around midnight, hours after I had turned in. At 1:30am I heard a frantic chittering noise from behind his closed door. He was […]
In 1925, teacher Wilfred Eitzman found a cobble—a rock slightly bigger than a pebble, the weight of a small rat—in a cave in Northern Province, South Africa. It was reddish brown with an unmistakable, prominent face etched into it. Two deep and perfectly round eyes, a shallow divet for a nose, and grimacing, toothy mouth. […]
