The Last Word

By: | April 28, 2012

April 23 – April 27

This week, Ann does what put Ann on the map: she tells us about spy organisations and what they like to do in space. And then tells us about the citizen scientists who use binoculars, stopwatches and math to figure out what they’re up to up there.

With the help of a social ecologist marvellously named Peter Ditto, Christie explains why the truth doesn’t always win.

Ginny wonders whether there is a social limit on motherhood that won’t budge despite all the ways biology is being stretched by reproductive technologies.

After insisting that scientists eat, too, Cameron tells us the stories of cooking in the field, which are by turns fascinating (you can bake chocolate chip cookies in a gold pan!) and horrifying (two words: tuna balls).

And Tom introduces us to generation anthropocene, by way of explaining why his science writing students make him proud enough to “justify the outrageous necessity to leave one’s house — showered and presentable, no less — simply to earn a living.”

See you next week!

 

Eat Drink Mammalogist Woman

By: | April 27, 2012

My culinary horizons started their slow expansion when I was 21 and wearing Carhartts so dirty that they could stand up by themselves. After a day spent measuring trees at a forest research station, the grad student I was working with had offered to make dinner. When I asked what I can do to help, he handed me a handful of green stuff.

It smelled sort of familiar. “What do I do with this, exactly?” I asked. He furrowed his brows at me—not unlike the expression he’d worn for most of the day as I mixed up Douglas and white fir.

But this time, he sounded more incredulous. “You don’t know what cilantro is?” Continue reading →

Watching the Watchers

By: | April 26, 2012

At 4:12 p.m., Pacific time, on April 3, 2012, the National Reconnaissance Office – the 50-year old spy satellite agency whose existence the government didn’t admit until 1992 – launched a “payload,”  a classified radar satellite, NROL-25.  The launch was webcast live but the NRO didn’t want to reveal sensitive information about the satellite’s eventual orbit, so it cut off the webcast after three minutes.  Five hours later, a Canadian member of a loose group of amateur trackers watched the classified satellite pass overhead; then other trackers from Sweden, Russia, Scotland, and another Canadian watched it too.  They calculated its orbit. The tracker from the Netherlands was clouded out and didn’t see it until April 5, but he photographed, then filmed it. The whole thing is up on the internet. Continue reading →

Tick Tock

By: | April 24, 2012
Ginny and her niece

I’d like to be a mother—someday. Now is not a good time. I’m 28 years old, unmarried, and trying to build a freelance writing business from a small New York apartment.

I grew up in the wake of the feminist movement, and boy am I glad about that. Gender inequalities still exist, of course (ahem). But since grade school, my parents, teachers and favorite after-school-TV-show characters have encouraged me to invest in my education and career, just like any ambitious man. And I have.

Alas, biology still holds a trump card: my closing fertility window. By the time I’m 38, my bank account may be pregnant, but my eggs will be fossils. In last week’s issue of New Scientist, I wrote about a far-out experimental solution: freezing pieces of my ovary. The premise of the story was that if this technology ever gets off the ground, it could fulfill the original promise of the birth control pill, allowing women to make career decisions without the pressure of a ticking clock.

And it’s such a satisfying premise, isn’t it, especially for science-loving feminists like me. But after five months of airing it, triumphantly, to everyone I know, and thinking about their responses, my enthusiasm has waned. The cultural limits on the age of motherhood, I’m afraid, are far stronger than the biological ones.
Continue reading →

Generation Anthropocene: Podcasting at the dawn of a new era

By: | April 23, 2012

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 discovering that now.

I’ll mumble on about writing and teaching and the nature of joy in a moment, but the real reason for this post is to link here:

http://bit.ly/GenAnthro

Go ahead, check it out. I won’t even mind if you don’t come back. You see, I’ve learned that when teaching really works out, I’m just as happy to have you spend time with my students’ work as with my own. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | April 21, 2012

April 16 – 20

Michelle interviews a copy editor at a porn magazine — yes, porn magazines do have copy — and asks the immortal question, Is that an apostrophe in your pocket?

Sally considers dimwit webtalk, in particular tl;dr, and wonders whether “you’re” is going the way of “forsooth,” and suspects it might be and not a moment too soon.

Biology writer Erika talks to physics writers to find out how far to trust those physicists:  pretty far, unless they’re being political or human.

Jessa goes to the exhibit of photos from the Shackleton expedition and sees lies, damned lies, and the irresistibility of a story.

Heather sees the ingenuity of ancient humanity:  killing whales with little blue buttercups.

 

 

 

 

 

The Secret Weapon

By: | April 20, 2012

Each July, along the dappled stream banks of Kodiak Island, just off the Alaska coast, a weedy looking wildflower produces a few dark-blue hooded blossoms. There is nothing particularly memorable about the appearance of Aconitum delphinifolum. Its leaves are thin and rather spiky. Its scrawny-looking stem cannot hold the weight of its flowers: its neighbors keep it upright. But this eminently forgettable looking plant, a member of the buttercup family, possesses a dark secret. Aconitum delphinifolum contains a toxin capable of killing one of the world’s largest animals, a 40-ton humpback whale. Indeed, the local Alutiiq people have long understood this: their whalers once enlisted it as a lethal weapon.  Continue reading →