My love-hate relationship with e-books

By: | December 6, 2013

shutterstock_148921502 copyEver 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.) So I was thrilled when I finally figured out how to borrow e-books from the library. First I requested Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and it magically appeared on my iPad. Then in a frenzy of OMG-this-is-amazing, I put holds on about 15 more e-books. After finishing the first novel, I immediately downloaded the next one in my queue.

I love how easy it is to get the books, and I think I read more quickly and spend more time reading when they’re in electronic format. But my experience of processing the text does seem different. Sometimes, after I’ve finished an e-book, I don’t feel like I’ve really “read” it; it’s as if the 1s and 0s have washed through my brain without lodging anywhere. I remember reading a long, beautifully-written novel about World War II on my tablet awhile back, but I don’t recall a single thing about the plot except that it involved three brothers. Continue reading →

Of Worms and Fish and Men

By: | December 5, 2013

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In August 2012, 10 Israelis took a quick dip in a mountain lake in western Uganda. The lake, called Nyinambuga, sits in an ancient volcanic crater. The blue-green water of Lake Nyinambuga no doubt looked enticing, but it was rife with blood flukes, parasitic flatworms that burrow through the skin, invade the blood vessels, and feed on red blood cells.

Three months later one of the boys in the group ended up in the office of Dr. Eli Schwartz, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases and travel medicine at Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Hashomer, Israel. Since his return from Africa, he had been coughing. He had suffered headaches and intermittent fevers. The boy’s lab work and recent African adventure led Schwartz to suspect schistosomiasis, a blood fluke infection. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it. Continue reading →

The Botanist Nobody Knew

By: | December 4, 2013

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Before dawn on October 3, 1932, in the small Columbia River town of Bingen, Washington, an 82-year-old man walked to the depot to catch the morning train to Portland. Under circumstances that remain unclear, the arriving train struck him down, killing him almost instantly.

The man had lived in town for more than half a century, and he was known as a shy, somewhat eccentric bachelor who loved flowers. Not until the Portland Oregonian published his obituary—under the headline “Famed Botanist Killed“—did his neighbors realize that he had an international reputation.

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The Wonderful World of Oz…and Science

By: | December 3, 2013

Dorothy_and_the_Scarecrow_1900Lately I’ve been reading my way through the series of Oz books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is only the first in a series of 14 books, and it’s not remotely the best.

It’s fascinating to reread books I loved as a child. Some are still great. Others have inexplicably morphed into poorly-written, preachy duds. Fortunately, the Oz books are the former type. They were published between 1900 to 1920 and vary in quality, but the made-up world is fun and Baum’s sense of humor holds up well.

In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the seventh book in the series, I was surprised—and pleased—to encounter a bit of science. Even better, it’s totally outdated science. Continue reading →

The Rime of the Ancient Astronomers

By: | December 2, 2013

hedI received an email the other day from Nicholas Suntzeff, the director of the Astronomy Program at Texas A&M as well as a friend. (Readers might remember that he has published two guest posts with LWON.) His email was in fact a series of emails that he thought I might enjoy. It started with a link to an article that Nick sent to a colleague at Texas A&M, and then one thing led to another, and before long they were trading stories about odd, weird, you-couldn’t-make-this-stuff-up historical details from their adventures in astronomy over the past three decades. At one point in their reminiscences, Suntzeff sighed (if only virtually), “Becoming interested in history is a disease many astronomers get as they age.”

That statement in particular got me thinking. From interviewing Suntzeff for a book, I knew that he enjoyed the living history of astronomy. He had spoken fondly of cloudy nights he’d spent as a young astronomer at an observatory in Chile; the telescope out of commission, he would retire to the library and explore the archives or, better yet, sit and listen to stories from Allan Sandage, who had long ago been Edwin Hubble’s assistant, and who was a formidable astronomer in his own right, as well as a raconteur par excellence. I myself once spent a couple of days with Sandage for a magazine profile, after he had retired from astronomy but while he still regularly went into his office at the Carnegie Observatories headquarters in Pasadena. He’d come down with the history disease, too. He talked about salvaging old books that young colleagues would leave in the office’s discard pile; he walked me through cabinets full of fifty- or sixty-year-old photographic plates and daily observing logs. “The library is my telescope now,” he said.

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The Last Word

By: | November 30, 2013
Like for real25- 29 November
This week, we gave thanks.

Ann pointed out that sexual harrassment may be a subset of a deeper inability to keep other people from suffering the consequences of your own inner demons. Kant is involved.

Jessa identifies a central mechanism keeping us from flying off into virtual existences — that pesky inner ear that insists we keep both feet on the solid ground of reality.

Richard tells a charming story of science’s version of ad-libbing.

Two years ago Cassie told us about her aunt Cee’s road to recovery after a stroke. Here’s the update.

As Ends in Themselves

By: | November 29, 2013

satyrAbout a month ago, the science writing community found out that one of its leaders was sexually harassing his younger female colleagues.  The young women, especially those looking for networks and jobs, took to the internet and named him in front of his own community.  The internet got its shorts in an uproar which eventually focused on the ubiquity of sexual suggestions and behaviors coming from male professionals, especially senior ones, to women professionals, especially junior ones. Some of the male professionals were surprised, none of the women were – as I said, ubiquitous.

I didn’t have anything to contribute because any such shenanigans aimed in my direction have come not from people in power over me – editors, say, or agents — but from sources, from scientists I’m interviewing. So they’re inconsequential to smack down and fundamentally ridiculous besides.  The one exception, an editor, makes me think this problem is less hormonal, less social, and mostly moral. Continue reading →

Thanksgiving at LWON: Recalibration, Standard Candles, and Teammates For Life

By: | November 28, 2013

An estimated 73 percent of the People of LWON will be in a country that celebrates Thanksgiving today, and the remaining 27 percent are good-natured sorts, so we decided to dedicate today’s post to giving thanks. We’re writing about what we’re thankful for—and what gratitude says about us, about life on earth, about what we expect or about what we hope will be.

We’d love to hear if there’s someone or something you’re thinking about today, or your take on gratitude and its place in a complicated world.  But first, we wanted to give a shout-out to someone we’re all grateful to—thank you, dear reader, to you. Continue reading →