Have Lady Beard, Will Travel

By: | January 4, 2016

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When life throws a mean fast pitch at my fragile little hands, I typically catch it and laugh off the burn. But as a woman nearing a certain very plump and meaningful age, my sense of humor is struggling to hold on.

Here’s why. This is a list (from a randomly selected lady blog called Healthline) of the symptoms one might experience during peri-menopause‚ the sometimes years-long warm-up to proper menopause. If you’re a girl in your 40s, you might want to sit down. (Grab a snack first–I know you’re hungry.)

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The Last Word

By: | January 2, 2016

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It’s a new year and most of the LWONers aren’t the least bit repentant – plowing on with the same kinds of storytelling in 2016 that we did in 2015. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it and if it is broke – blame it on the dog.

On Monday, Ann and author/journalist Michael Balter talk about the challenges of teaching journalism and the challenges of stopping teaching.

Tuesday brought a meditation by Helen on an old tune from an opera that she knows well and the realization that it might refer to magical protections against malaria.

Guest writer Krista Langlois told us on Wednesday about ancient indigenous knowledge of navigation in the Marshall Island. How it was nearly lost and how a few passionate scientists are bringing it back.

On Thursday I brought back my favorite ant scientist, Brian Fisher, who every year finds fewer and fewer truly undiscovered places on Earth.

And on Friday, the first day of 2016, Cameron doubles down on her previous New Year’s resolution to understand how the tide work near her home and illustrated it for the rest of us.

Photo Credit: Brian Fisher

Redux: The Mystery of the Ill-Timed Tides

By: | January 1, 2016

RasalkTwo years ago this winter, I was trying to figure out why the high tide seems to usually fall on winter mornings where I live, and the low tide on winter evenings. I promised that if I solved this mystery, I’d post an animation about how it worked.

But while reader Stephan Zielinski provided plenty of help, I didn’t get very far on my promise–as has been the case with many New Year’s resolutions past, I came in with enthusiasm and sputtered out like so many firecrackers.

So this year I’ve come up with a new resolution, that nicely encompasses a wide variety of areas: try again. Keep trying. 

For some additional inspiration and expertise in mystery solving, tonight I’ll tune in to the premiere of a new Sherlock special. And that’s what I wish for in 2016: a few mysteries revealed, and new ones to send me down the winding path of wherever they decide to go. Continue reading →

The Last Explorer

By: | December 31, 2015

Brian2-XLA few weeks ago, I introduced the readers of LWON to my favorite ant scientist, Brian Fisher. We learned that, while he may not look like much at first glance, Fisher is more badass than you will ever be, even if you become a Krav Maga master and invent an actual light saber.

But amazing as it may seem, his job isn’t to just sit around the jungle, dodging bullets and sewing up his own arm every now and again. He does science as well. In fact, throughout his career Fisher has discovered over 1,000 new species and genera of ants. It’s hard to say exactly how many because he’s only taken the time to describe and name about a third of them.

Thanks to years of field work, Fisher has enough material to last the rest of his life if he wants – quietly inspecting mouthparts or abdomen bands and naming new species. And he could be happy in his lab, marveling at their novel ways of working together or their bizarre and beautiful body parts. Continue reading →

Guest Post: How to Navigate a Rising Sea

By: | December 30, 2015

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When Alson Kelen was young, he used to lie at night against his father’s arm, on an island where there were no lights and no cars. He listened to waves slapping against wet sand, the breeze shaking the palm fronds, the delicate crackling of a coconut shell fire. As the purple-blue evening gave way to night, Alson’s father would tell his son to close his eyes. And then he would tell stories—stories about sailing, about flying on the wind, about the triumph of surviving long and difficult journeys.

The Marshallese are quite possibly the best voyagers in the world. The Pacific island nation they call home is more than 4,000 kilometers from the nearest continent; a smattering of land scattered over nearly 2 million square kilometers of ocean. Yet even though the Marshall Islands’ elevation averages just two meters above sea level, making it impossible to spot islands from a distance, Marshallese navigators routinely sailed hundreds of kilometers in dugout outrigger canoes, without a speck of land in sight. To navigate, they relied less on stars and more on the ocean itself.

For centuries, scientists ignored this indigenous knowledge, and it was nearly lost. But today, the Marshall Islands’ unique brand of navigation is gaining a foothold in Western science—and helping to launch a cultural revival at the time it’s needed most.

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How Music and Literature Taught Me About Geology and Disease

By: | December 29, 2015

Gypsum figurines of the three kings. This time between Christmas and Twelfth Night, when the three kings arrived at the stable, is a good time to think about my love of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. In the story, the three kings stop for the night at the house of a poor single mother and her child, Amahl, who walks with a crutch. The local people are poor, but they come to the house to sing and dance and bring presents for the kings to take to the baby. Amahl has nothing, except his crutch; he offers it; “but you can’t, you can’t!” “I walk, mother. I walk, mother.” The kings celebrate the miracle, then take Amahl on the road with them.

The operetta was commissioned by NBC and had its first performance live on TV in 1951. I grew up on a recording from 1963. The role of the mother is one of those parts that I’ve felt like I was always preparing for, in the alternate universe in which I become a professional singer. (Others include the main character in the Rossini opera La Cenerentola, also known as Cinderella, and Sergeant Sarah in Guys and Dolls.) (A lot of things are different in this alternate universe–like that I’m willing to practice and I know how to act.)

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Conversation with Michael Balter: On Not Teaching

By: | December 28, 2015

511910343_323121f371_bMichael:  Hi Ann! After six years of teaching in NYU’s science journalism program (SHERP), and a year before that teaching at Boston University, I have decided to take a break and hand over my beginning writing, research and reporting class to someone else. What a tough decision. I love my students–so many of whom have gone on to be successful science journalists–I love teaching, I love my colleagues, I love New York, I love–wait, why I am doing this? Oh, right, because I hate doing the same thing over and over, because I feel it’s time to hand things over to someone younger and more multi-media and Web savvy than I am, because I want to explore some other things in my life, because I’m tired of long absences from my beautiful wife who is back in Paris (where I am now headed as soon as the semester is over). But hey, didn’t you stop teaching at Johns Hopkins a while back? Was it really hard? Did you feel the intense pain I am feeling now? I’m all ears (or eyes.)

Ann:  Yes indeedy, I certainly did stop teaching, and after 25 years mind you.  The thing I liked most, and miss most, was knowing those grad students who in a few months were going to be my professional colleagues, for whom school wasn’t a graded academic exercise but a prelude to real life, and who in the meantime, needed to figure out what they wanted to write about and how they wanted to write.  Watching them was like — I can think only of cliches — watching buds go fast forward into full bloom, like watching lambs get born and totter around like broken toys and a day later race full-tilt around the barn.  So yes, not having those shiny new guys to watch is hard, and yes, it hurts.

Michael: You really took the words out of my mouth (or out of my MacAir) when you mentioned that the students would soon be your professional colleagues. I am writing this during my last class, while my students are peer editing their last assignment (a profile), and in a half hour I am going to dismiss class early.  As I always tell them at the beginning of the semester, you are journalists now, the minute you walk into this program and my classroom, and they always prove that I am right in very short order. I like all the buds opening and lambs a’ borning imagery, it really is that way.

Ann:  But you know, I also agree with what you said when we started this conversation, about hating to do the same thing over and over.  In the last few years of teaching, I did have the feeling of knowing how to do what I was doing, and after a while that stops feeling masterful and starts feeling a little easy — like maybe if you’re going to be alive, you should keep doing things that are hard.

Michael:  Yes, and I also worry about the students, about how hard it will be for each succeeding group to get jobs or freelance opportunities and compete in this constantly changing marketplace (and pausing here to lament, as so many have, that it is a marketplace when it should be something else, anything else.)  And that brings me to another thing I want to do in my new, non-teaching life:  I want to think about all the issues I raised in this piece I wrote a few years ago about science journalism programs. By the way, I hope SHERP’s fearless leader, Dan Fagin, doesn’t realize this time around that I gave the wrong title for what SHERP stands for (at least he can’t fire me for it now!)

Ann:  That’s a thoughtful, Balter-like essay you wrote about the science journalism programs.  

Michael:  Thanks! When I wrote it, I concluded that we were still good to go in producing new cycles of budding (your term!) journalists. I would like to think that is still true, but now I’m going to take some time to think about it–as well as exploring some new directions of my own. I may be going into some sort of semi-retirement, but I am still a budding journalist/writer myself!   

Ann:  That question of the supply of science writers meeting or not meeting the demand is so complicated — it’s all wound up with whether the demand is actually rising and if so, whether the rise will, you know, pay actual money or allow enough time for good reporting.  So I don’t have much of an opinion on it.  I do have an opinion about what happens when you retire from teaching.  Yes, it does hurt a bit, and yes, you’ll miss those springy new students.  But hoo boy, the minute I considered not pushing that rock up that academic-politics hill, I had three story ideas — really, in that minute, in a flash.  It was a Sign unto me: I might be a dandy teacher and a dedicated academic battler, but what I really want to do is write.  Like you, I feel I’m still budding.  So what new directions are you thinking of? Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | December 26, 2015

left, children of Goose Island / right, The Black Rock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This holiday week was filled with good cheer! Oh, wait, this is LWON. But don’t worry, it wasn’t all fit for a Scrooge.

First, we gave you a terrific list of things to watch with our traditional TV/Movie binge list. Don’t blame us if you’re still on Season 1 of anything good.

Then came Ann Finkbeiner’s excellent redux about two brothers, anxiety, and the balance of science and God.

Craig Childs then put on a fabulous show (one of many) pitting two friends/scientists against each other on climate change—with an audience..

Then came my own holiday rant in which I whine unoriginally about holiday commercialism but offer a rather unusual antidote.

And finally, Rose Eveleth shares the tragic history of Canada’s Goose Island and the monument to its dead immigrants that’s being sucked up by a growing city.