Writing
ddobbs | February 13, 2009
In a wonderful post at Mind Hacks, Vaughn, writing on "The myth of the concentration oasis" makes an argument that rather challenges my resistance to it:
The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted.
The trouble is, it's plainly rubbish, and you just have to spend time with some low tech communities to see this is the case.
He's been doing just that -- spending time in…
ddobbs | February 12, 2009Despite the rain on my window, it's a fine day indeed, with many wonderful celebrations of Darwin's 200th ringing throughout the blogoshere.
Most of these, naturally, focus on Darwin's theory of evolution and its many implications and reverberations. I much admire that theory. But what I find most fascinating about Darwin is not his theory of evolution but his method of empiricism. For as vital as was Darwin's theory of evolution was, his impact on how we view ourselves is rivaled by his impact on how we view and do science.
This and many other perverse oddities struck me when I was…
ddobbs | February 1, 2009In an interesting essay at Slate's The Big Money, Jill Priluck argues that book authors must "transcend their words and become brands" if they're to sell books. Andrew Sullivan agrees :
My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the…
ddobbs | January 28, 2009
John Updike, 1955
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images, via NYMag
The 'net is fairly bursting with Updike appreciations, but I especially like this one from Sam Anderson at New York, which notes that amid what can seem an intimidating body of work, Updike's essays offer an easy and richly satisfying introduction or revisit.
I always go back, first, to his essays, which strike me as the purest expression of his personality: easy, sociable, curious, smart, funny, generous, and almost pathologically cheerful. He was, for my money, one of the greatest belletrists of all time -- a master of the…
ddobbs | January 19, 2009I stirred some ire last week when I asserted that the Times (for -- disclosure dept -- whom I sometimes write) and similar mainstream papers offer a public good through their unique combination of a) access to information and 2) clout with the public and government. Several readers took me to task (see the comments section of the post linked above), arguing that these papers have failed their public mission by dropping the ball several times lately, most notably during the run-up to the Iraq War. "Let the dinosaur die," is the argument. In a similar vein, some science bloggers (see this post…
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,…
ddobbs | January 5, 2009
With this post, and with pleasure, I bring the blog formerly known as Smooth Pebbles -- now Neuron Culture (mark your RSS readers!) -- back to Scienceblogs.
Seventeen months ago I said farewell to this Scienceblogs home, at least for a time, because I had not found blogging a comfortable fit. Since then, however, as I blogged off in the hinterland, I've come to better see how this slippery but flexible form can hold a valuable place in both my own writing and in the changing world of journalism.
I've been particularly swayed by the work of bloggers innovatively exploiting the immediacy,…
drorzel | January 4, 2009The posts selected for the 2009 edition of The Open Laboratory, collecting the best writing on science blogs for the year, have been announced. My We Are Science post made the list, which is nice.
Amusingly, this showed up in my inbox at the same time that the ScienceBlogs front page is featuring this Bloggingheads episode featuring George Johnson and John Horgan. Johnson, you might recall, riled everybody up a couple of weeks ago with a bit of a dyspeptic rant about science bloggers compared to science journalists. They spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes on the topic again this week, and…
ddobbs | December 19, 2008Micheal Nielsen gets swiftly to a problem many scientists (and not a few writers) have with Gladwell's books -- and highlights their redeeming factors as well:
All three of Malcolm Gladwell's books pose a conundrum for the would-be reviewer. The conundrum is this: while the books have many virtues, none of the books make a watertight argument for their central claims. Many scientists, trained to respect standards of proof above all else, don't like this style. A colleague I greatly respect told me he thought Gladwell's previous book, Blink , was "terrible"; it didn't meet his standards of…
ddobbs | December 13, 2008For, well, about 6 months now I've been meaning to riff on this riff about internet writing from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything. As I can't seem to get in tune, or plugged in, or somehting, I'll just let Steamboats take it away:
If I were to interpret those tugs, I would say that writing on the internet tends to be more popular when it satisfies the reader's wish to be connected—the wish not to miss out. The writer, too, may have such a wish. I admit that I love it when another blog links to mine; there is great consolation in the feeling of having a posse. And of course many readers…
grrlscientist | October 28, 2008I have an announcement and a request for your assistance. First, I have been offered my own column in the Avicultural Society of America Avicultural Bulletin and because I am a perpetual blabbermouth when it comes to birds and science, I accepted. Yay, me! However, I have a dilemma that perhaps you can help with: I need a name for this column.
I was given a deadline to name the column, so I sent them a few suggestions, but I just learned today that they are still seeking a name! Obviously, the names I suggested were not inspirational enough to capture their imaginations since, as they write…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2008I thought I'd mention the upcoming Science Blog writing discussion that is scheduled for Tuesday, 1 October, at Manhattan's Apple Store in Soho. This isa panel that will discuss the value of a blog to communicating with the public about one's research. The panel will be moderated by Katherine Sharpe and, along with me, includes several of my SciBlings, Jake Young, Jessica Palmer, Steinn Sigurdsson, and Brian Switek.
What: Apple Pro Session panel with ScienceBloggers
Date: Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Time: 7 - 8pm ET
Location: 103 Prince Street [map].
You might also wish to refer to several…
grrlscientist | February 28, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Writers from Across the Blogosphere
The February issue of Writers Across the Blogosphere is now available for you to read. This is probably the largest blog carnival that I contribute to, and it's likely the largest blog carnival out there, too -- and it celebrates good writing! And since having a high quality blog is all about writing well, how can you miss this one?
grrlscientist | January 29, 2008tags: Writers from across the blogosphere, blog carnivals
The latest edition of the Writers From Across The Blogosphere Carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. They included a few things that I've written, along with a mountain of other contributions that you are sure to enjoy.
grrlscientist | January 7, 2008tags: books, writing, writers from across the blogosphere, blog carnivals
The most recent edition of Writers from Across the Blogosphere Carnival is now available for you to read and enjoy.
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…
grrlscientist | January 2, 2008tags: Carnival of Storytelling, blog carnivals
The 8th edition of the Carnival of Storytelling is now available for you to read and enjoy. Best of all, they included one of my submissions!
grrlscientist | December 21, 2007tags: Just Write, blog carnivals
The fourth edition of the blog carnival, Just Write is now available for you to enjoy. This carnival focuses on all aspects of the writing game.
grrlscientist | November 5, 2007tags: writing, Writers from across the blogosphere, blog carnival
The latest edition of the Writer's Block blog carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. This blog carnival focuses on writers and their writing, so be sure to go there to read good prose on a variety of topics.
laelaps | November 3, 2007After many false starts I've actually started to write my "treatise" on evolution, some of the pages I've been turning out being in note form (I want to get the ideas down and then fill in the exact details later when I can pick up the proper reference books from the shelf) while others resemble actual passages and are in a near-finished form. My work isn't going to be a chronological overview of the history of life like many other books, but will instead take a more personal approach reflecting how I've come to understand evolution and how it proceeds. Differing rates of change, convergence…