March 13-17
Ann started the week with a Q and A with Sharon Weinberger author of The Imagineers of War, unraveling the history of DARPA, making a secretive weapon-creation agency not so secret, including the rise of the jet pack. Bring your fire retardant pants!
Jessa welcomed the new robot overlords, introducing us to experimental socially-assistive androids whose job it is to make sure people with dementia eat everything on their plates.
With a Skype and beer interview, Emma brought in David Grinspoon, author of the new book, Earth In Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future, for a run down of sci-fi literature, what you should be reading and why dystopia is all over the place.
Guest poster Jenny Cutraro is back, adding her second-grade daughter’s observations of climate change and spring budding cycles of trees outside her window to the work of ecologist Richard Primack. A child and a scientist both validate each other, a perfect collaboration.
Finally, my post yesterday was an attempt to not put my foot in my mouth about gender inequality among scientists and river guides.
Photo: declassified picture of a jet pack in action.
Last night I ran through quotes in my new book manuscript, making sure they were all amply annotated, meaning I spelled the names right. There were a lot of women in this run. For a book on the Ice Age and paleo sciences, mostly archaeology and paleontology, I’d had no trouble finding female researchers to write about and interview.
I spent part of our recent snow day in New England on the phone talking to Richard Primack, an ecologist who studies how climate change affects seasonal events such as budburst and bird migration. I was interviewing him for another story, but as we talked, a new one came to light.
