Last fall, our class visited the sea otter researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sandeep summarized many neat tidbits about otters from that trip on this blog. Two items that really piqued my interest involved otter mortality. In California, many otters die from disease or shark bite. What’s going on? I tracked down the answer during…
For this entire school year, I’ve been trying to find a story into which I could sneak some mention of my puppy. Every single time we got a project, I though, “Is this it? Is this finally THE ONE?” No. And no. And no again. Until one fine day at the end of April, we…
The SciCom slugs have been out and about recently, perhaps seeking an escape from the swirling pre-graduation chaos? Part 1: Paintings and Pumas Last week, we attended the opening of the Science Illustration Program‘s exhibit at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Word on the street is that one of the Slugs is putting…
I’m having a lot of fun in our multimedia class this quarter. I love mixing together a voice over, a touch of music and eye-catching images to tell a story. The hard part has been getting the courage to take pictures and video of people. Personally, I hate being on film, so I sometimes feel…
I’ve always admired time-lapse videos. You can watch the seasons turn or cloud banks roil against a mountain range in a matter of seconds. One guy shot a time-lapse of himself driving across the country, although this takes several minutes to watch. After learning how to make my own time-lapse sequence in class, I spent…
Our collective ears have swiveled downward, from the sounds of the sky, to the jingling of our coin purse. The SETI Institute halted operations of the radio telescopes in the Allen Telescope Array, the San Jose Mercury News reported Monday. Until a few days ago, these telescopes had been scanning the sky, radio-ears at the…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a freelance writer, embarking on her career, must be in want of health insurance. –Jane Austen Danielle Venton The first time someone tells you that marrying well is key to successful freelancing – by that read “marrying into health insurance” – it’s fairly easy to laugh. It lends…
Holding a camera gives you a lot of power over your subject. When you’re shooting someone’s portrait, you can make him or her look great if you know what you’re doing, or awful if you don’t. Or, really, really hideous if you know what you’re doing and are a jerk. I have always used a…
Over spring break, a few weeks back, I went to Mexico with a bunch of friends. More importantly, I spent several days without checking email or browsing the web. And I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really didn’t miss my lack of connectivity. At least for the few days…
Several of us trekked up to Google today to see the mothership a talk by Greg Asner, from the Carnegie Institution of Science, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. Asner studies tropical forests and uses a variety of spiffy techniques (Google Earth images, spectroscopy, CLIMBING TREES, derring-do) to image and analyze ecosystem health and…
