My five-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl. The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.) […]
Education
Several weeks ago I was invited to sit in on a fascinating workshop on journalism. Hosted by the Mexican Society for Science and Technology Communication (SOMEDICYT), it was a collection of science writers from Mexico and abroad gathered together to discuss the definition of science journalism. It was the kind of philosophical dialogue that you don’t […]
Scientists, policymakers, FDA officials, industry spokespersons–talk to my science journalism students! Yes, they haven’t received their masters degrees yet from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP); and yes, most of them are newbies to the profession. But you shouldn’t ignore their emails or make them send reminder messages two or three […]
Ever since I read a New York Times article about the possibility of bedbugs spreading through library books, I’ve been too paranoid to check out a book from my local library. (Yes, I know people have argued that the article was way overblown. What can I say? I have an irrational fear of the bedbug.) […]
I used to practice my signature everywhere. I wrote on napkins and notebooks, in crayon on restaurant placemats, with a finger in the wet sand. I even remember a grade-school art project in which I wrote my name and its mirror image, and then used the pair to create a creature: the top loops of […]
My studies and work in science were limited to the physical until last year, staying far away from those messy life sciences. When I started studying science illustration, a field which has traditionally accompanied biology, it became clear that nausea was something I had better put aside fast. In fact one could consider my year […]
“You are a moss. Describe your experiences.” – British Columbia Grade 11 biology question Education is a notoriously faddish field, prone to continual quackery. One moment kindergarteners are being streamed by achievement level, and the next we’ve swung into play-based high school teaching methods. Science education is no exception. In September 2014, Saskatchewan high school […]
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of spending a few days at a place that nurtured my interest in science. The Mountain Research Station was where I conducted my first independent research project (funded by an REU grant from the NSF). As I’ve written previously, my experience studying the evolution of an alpine plant’s […]
