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 in the science illustration program as, amongst other things, a rather successful study in disgust management. When your school no longer has a specimen freezer due to an extremely unpleasant malfunction, you know you’re in for an interesting year. The changes in how I experienced disgust made me curious about this strange emotion and I wondered: if I can alter my reactions, are they really involuntary? Continue reading
Sept 2 to 6
We’ve been spoiled by gluts of gorgeous hi-res Hubble photos of spiral galaxies and nebulae, but it wasn’t always that easy to see off this planet. This week, guest poster Jeff Kanipe unearthed the compelling mystery behind the first public glimpse of Arcturus at the 1933 worlds fair.
Erik explained why some science writing metaphors are good, some are great, and some are so larded with truth that they define the climate change debate.
Cameron muses about the reopening if the Bay Bridge and feeling the future, equal parts hope and trepidation.
“Students nowadays are expected to discover haphazardly. Working alone for a few hours, they must somehow derive principles that took centuries for scientists to decode.” Jessa diagnoses the flaw in nontraditional science curricula.
“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 juniors will have three science options to choose from. None of them will be Physics, Chemistry or Biology; rather, they can opt for Health Science, Environmental Science or Physical Science. The emphasis is on “real-world” issues, which translate roughly into “human-centred problems”.
Drastic though it seems, the curriculum shift responds to a range of complaints, from the lack of interdisciplinary links in the high school curriculum to the demand for career-based instruction. It also reflects the province’s intention to bring indigenous knowledge systems into every subject at every grade level. Thus, health science will include various traditional medicines and environmental science includes ethics and activism. Continue reading
I love the back-to-school photos I’ve seen in the last few weeks. Whether kids have combed hair or messy bed head, new backpacks or hastily-thrown-together lunches, first-day ties or old t-shirts, their back-to-school smiles fill up more than just my Facebook feed. I’ve caught the hopeful feeling that I usually miss, being out of school—that I’ll have the chance to learn something new, or to go somewhere I’ve never been before, or become someone new entirely.
There’s also been another set of photos that have caught my eye. They started last week, with shots of tail-lights and license plates and steel trusses. “Last trip over the old bridge,” my Bay Area friends wrote, somewhat wistfully. After years of challenges—everything from funding to political wrangling to bolt failures–the old span was finally shutting down. The new one would open five days later. Continue reading
Yesterday I related the official version of how photons from the star Arcturus triggered an electrical signal that lit up the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. My research into that event, however, has sent me deep into the weeds.
Most historical accounts claim that four observatories — Yerkes, Harvard College, Allegheny, and the University of Illinois — participated in the lighting event. The proceedings of the ceremony itself testify to this. On the rostrum, a 60-foot-tall board of switches and relays depicting the four geographical locations dramatically lit up one by one as they transmitted their Arcturian signals to the Fair. But in an article that appeared a couple of days prior to the event in the University of Chicago Magazine, the incoming Yerkes director Otto Struve wrote: “In case of cloudy weather several other observatories have been invited to keep their telescopes in readiness [author italics], so that they may substitute for the Yerkes Observatory refractor.” That’s a slight contradiction to the way the ceremony played out that night. Was Struve simply mistaken, or astonishingly out of the loop?
Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes the Herdsman, is the fourth-brightest star in the sky. It’s visible high overhead in late spring twilight, but you can also find it low in the west after sunset in September. All you need to do is let your eye follow the stars of the handle of the Big Dipper, which “arc to Arcturus.” (If you can’t find the Big Dipper, I can’t help you.) The star’s other claim to fame is its role in the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, when organizers purportedly used light from Arcturus to activate electrical lights on the Fair’s opening night.
Or did they? There’s a maddening little mystery surrounding this event, one that has led me deep into the weeds during an ongoing book project.
As a science writer, I trade in metaphors. It’s not just how many dump trucks to fill the Grand Canyon or how close whale intestines would get to the moon if stretched out – that’s amateur hour. No, professional metaphors are the ones you barely notice, they are so woven into the text. Better yet, a real pro can make you think that you, the reader, came up with the metaphor all yourself.
The other day I went up to the attic and pulled out a box of old/unused metaphors and reminisced a bit (yes, any decent journalist has boxes of metaphors in storage). There was one that smelled a little sour comparing an olfactometer to a high school yearbook. Under that were a few polite ways to describe overweight people and one metaphor comparing hamster sex to security guards that seem to be broken.
August 26 – 30
What is a writer to do, wonders guest Laura Dattaro, when she realizes that all the members of JPL’s Curiosity team are, every single one of them, women? Point it out? Pretend she’s not surprised? Shrug, because why not?
A young immigrant woman gets sick of her work conditions, enlists the poetry of Percy Shelley, and changes labor history: Michelle likes a new graphic book.
Roberta goes to the opera, is astounded to find on the stage real forests and oceans, heads happily into the high grass and finds out how it’s done. Spoiler: magic.
Christie’s neighbor dies “a good death,” says everyone. But who’s to say what a good death is? The person who’s dying? The people who grieve her death? Christie asks hard and terrible questions.
Out on the ice for ages, guest Craig Childs says he nearly forgot we don’t live on a seasonless planet.
