When I stepped back from full-time writing a few years ago, I knew that I would be giving up something I loved for something I felt was crucially important. But I had no idea what I would gain by making teaching, at Stanford University, a big part of my work life. In fact, I’m still […]
On Writing
As I’ve been thinking about the challenges facing science journalism, a little voice in my head has been murmuring, “Yes, but isn’t all this navel-gazing a bit biology-centric?” Number one on my list of lessons from the “limits of DNA” story is that datasets are getting bigger, and few of us reporters are well-equipped to […]
April 2 – 6 The springtime snails are upon Cameron and she feels guilty about what she does to them. Michelle asks for poems about women scientists, in honor of Adrienne Rich. The Great Firewall of China, Heather discovers, has risen up and struck LWON down. Tom takes the prettiest pictures of the ickiest snails; […]
As a science journalist, I sympathize with book reviewers who wrestle with the question of whether to write negative reviews. It seems a waste of time to write about a dog of a book when there are so many other worthy ones; but readers deserve to know if Oprah is touting a real stinker. On […]
If you were sitting in front of a computer in China right now, you wouldn’t be reading this. Nor would you have seen Cameron’s post about a snail invasion on Monday or Michelle’s piece yesterday on a poem inspired by Marie Curie. In fact, when you tried to open our website, your computer would have […]
There are poems about science. There are poems about scientists. But I know of only two poems about women scientists — about women doing science, that is — and both were written by the same person: the brilliant, defiant, influential poet Adrienne Rich, who died last week at the age of 82. From “Power“: Today […]
I was going to explain the connection between gravity, general relativity, and time. But I understand less than half of it and anyway, that’s not what our boy AG is really talking about here. He’s talking about coming to grand conclusions based on understanding less than half of something. And the guy he’s quoting, […]
I know Erika already covered the Mike Daisey/TAL/Apple story and so did a lot of other people as smart as she is. But I’m a slow thinker, so I’m coming in to this a little late and out of left field. The left field in this case is epistemology, which is “the study of knowledge and justified belief.” […]