*NOW WITH UPDATE: See below The neighbors came over, maybe a year ago now, and one of them, a Hungarian physicist, brought along candied orange peel he’d made from his grandmother’s recipe. The physicist is the nicest human on earth, but his grandmother is the one I love; I’d love anyone who thought up those […]
Ann
A while ago I was on a panel for the local science writing association, and each panel member was assigned to talk about writing about science in a way that’s both literary and beautiful. I gave my talk and a few days later, it was posted on the association’s website. Much social media ensued, all […]
Garwin: the Movie opens with an old, steady, precise hand on a computer keyboard, scrolling through now-declassified* documents. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower make announcements, and newspapers flash headlines about our splendid new hydrogen bomb. Then the blossom of a mushroom cloud unfolds; and John F. Kennedy talks about Russian missiles in Cuba; and the […]
Ann: Will Storr is a phenomenon.* His specialty is writing good stories about people in bad places. He’s got a story in Matter about an extremely unpleasant disease called Morgellons. People with Morgellons have terrible itches, then tiny fibers creep out of their skin and make oozy sores. The disease sounds like a horror story out […]
The latest snowstorm was only somewhere around 5 inches, depending where in the yard I stuck my ruler, and as usual the Capital Weather Gang had nailed it. I’d written them asking if I could interview them for this post, but at the time they didn’t answer, so intent they were on predicting the upcoming […]
My God but the veneer of civilization is thin. Baltimore had one of its whomping good snowstorms last week – I stopped measuring at 14 inches – and the next day it had another 3 inches or so, plus sleet, and the day after it had only an inch, plus more of that sleet, and […]
Behind science news stories, which are facts or predictions of facts, is a reality which gives them their context and sometimes their meaning. Science magazine, January 23, 2014: “A new analysis . . . indicates that modern-day rumblings in the New Madrid Seismic Zone are not echoes of the 1811 to 1812 quakes, however. Instead, […]
January 6 – 10 This week, Ann told the story of the first hero. She’s a girl, a Sumerian goddress, and she predates all the archetypes of what either heroes or girls should be. The internet told Christie where home is. Are you glad you don’t have to hear Christmas music for another year? Helen […]