Science Writing
sciencewoman | March 7, 2009The Open Laboratory third annual compendium of the best science blogging is now for sale at Lulu.com. In it you can find 52 wonderful entries, including one by me. I can't wait to read some of the great stuff that I missed when it first came out - and having a dead tree copy will enable me to take my favorite bloggers with me even when I'm away from the computer. Proceeds from sales of the book go to supporting next year's ScienceOnline conference. So even though you can read all of the entries for free on the internet, if you've got $7.50 (pdf) or $15.50 (paper) burning a hole in your pocket…
drorzel | March 5, 2009EurekAlert had a press release yesterday titled Quantum paradox directly observed -- a milestone in quantum mechanics, which sounds like it ought to be great. The actual release, though....
For one thing, the description of the actual experiment is so vague as to be completely useless. It's not easy to quote without copying the whole thing, but it's short, so go read it yourself. Do you have any idea what's going on?
Second, it doesn't provide a complete citation for the article-- it gives the title, authors, and journal, but not the relevant page and volume information, which you need in…
drorzel | March 3, 2009Having complained about the lack of recognition for good physical science writing recently, it would be bad form for me not to note Dennis Overbye's story about the Kepler spacecraft in today's New York Times:
Presently perched on a Delta 2 rocket at Cape Canaveral is a one-ton spacecraft called Kepler. If all goes well, the rocket will lift off about 10:50 Friday evening on a journey that will eventually propel Kepler into orbit around the Sun. There the spacecraft's mission will be to discover Earth-like planets in Earth-like places -- that is to say, in the not-too-cold, not-too-hot,…
rskloot | February 28, 2009
London (and much of the U.S.) is currently obsessed with Jade Goody, who is dying of stage 4 cervical cancer at the age of 27 in a very public way: On television. One thing I find amazing is that, in the mountain of media coverage on this (including articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, etc), I'm not seeing reporters mentioning one very important fact: According to one story (no longer online, but quoted in this interesting post at TBTAM), Goody had multiple abnormal pap smears in her teens. She went in for a few treatments to have the abnormal cells removed, then ignored…
rskloot | January 23, 2009
In this Sunday's Washington Post, I reviewed Hannah Holmes's book The Well-Dressed Ape. Overall it was a pretty positive review, but I criticized her for the way she linked testosterone (via left-handedness and ring-finger length) with various traits, including violence, autism, homosexuality, etc (see review for details). So I was very interested to see this great post on Neuroskeptic today about the problems with coverage of testosterone (pictured left) and autism. Check it out.
rskloot | January 17, 2009I'm giving a talk today with Tom Levenson at 4:30 today at ScienceOnline 09 titled "How to Become a (Paid) Science Journalist: Advice for Bloggers." Below the jump I've posted links to two handouts I've written offering tips for breaking into publication -- folks not able to make the talk might find them useful as well.
You can download my tips for writing query letters that sell and generally breaking into publication here (PDF).
And here are my Tips for Successful Book Reviewing ("Strategies for Breaking in and Staying in: Getting started as a critic,
building your reviewing portfolio,…
sb admin | January 16, 2009
As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings.
OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds!
From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008This morning, a reader alerted me to tonight's celebration of The Best American Science Writing 2008 (pictured), being held at 700pm at Borders Bookstore at Columbus Circle. Even though I am getting ready to leave for Seattle (very!) early tomorrow morning, I am planning to attend this discussion of excellent American science writing! I hope you'll join me! Also, the rumor is that my colleague and friend, Carl Zimmer, will also be speaking!
What: Discussion of the best American science writing in 2008, a discussion led by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind [DVD] and editor of this…
grrlscientist | January 2, 2008tags: books, Open Laboratory
I just wanted to let you know that the book, Open Laboratory 2007: The Best Science Blog Writing of 2007 is now in production, and one of my submissions will be included in the book.
So, to give you a synposis of the book, the two main editors, Reed and Coturnix chose the top 70 or so submissions (out of 486!), according to the judges' ratings. After that, they tried to cut the list down to 50 (+2; one poem and one cartoon) -- a task that they found to be much more difficult. After much discussion, they decided to include 51 essays, one poem and one cartoon. As…