Brian Switek
dblum | July 9, 2010I started Speakeasy Science in late January on my author website. I'd finished my book on the invention of modern forensic toxicology in 1920s New York City - The Poisoner's Handbook - but I'd developed an addiction to writing about chemistry and culture.
It was my first heady experience of working solely for myself. I've been a staff journalist at five newspapers, a freelance writer for a list of newspapers, magazines and websites, and a book author. I've worked with brilliant editors and indifferent ones, publishers who were generous, publishers who were penny counters.
My blog, right down…
laelaps | June 18, 2010
I can't help it - every time I pass a bookstore, I wonder whether they are going to carry my book when it comes out this autumn. November is still a long way away - summer does not even officially begin until next week - but I can't help but wonder where my book will pop up and how it will be received. It is both exciting and anxiety-inducing.
I try not to speculate too much about what will happen when Written in Stone comes out. It is not even entirely finished yet. Right now the original text and scribbled margin notes from the last copyedited version are being transformed into page proofs…
laelaps | April 9, 2010
Now that the details about Australopithecus sediba have been published, I am faced with an important question - how am I going to fit the new hominin into Written in Stone?
When I started composing Written in Stone I was determined to make it as up-to-date as possible. This was not only out of a concern for accuracy, but also stemmed from a desire to present the public with some discoveries that they may not have heard about before. Given that new paleontological papers are being published every week, however, I have often been faced with the question of how to incorporate interesting new…
bioephemera | April 29, 2009
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica:
It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master Petrus Christus there is, if you look carefully, a fossil shark tooth among the objects scattered on the shop's table. The fossil plays a nearly insignificant role in the painting, but it reflects the general interpretation of such natural curiosities at the time. From this modest starting point,…
laelaps | October 10, 2007It seems that I'm down with the memes again, for as I was searching for some Thoughts in a Haystack I managed to once again become infected. Indeed, John has asked me to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to throwing around words like "pseudoextinction" in reference to my blog, and hence here's a fitting meme about the "evolution" of Laelaps;
In order to understand from whence Laelaps sprang, we need to travel backwards through the mists of time to the tumultuous year 2006. On October 18th, 2006 I wrote my first "real" science-oriented blog post about the lack of understanding about…