My mother gave me this wonderful old slip of paper hand typed by my grandmother many decades ago. It is a set of guidelines for “Writing Stories that Sell.” The advice proffered is still valid, so I wanted to share. The charming exception is the section detailing how to prepare your manuscript for submission. What…
I started today with a plan. I would go into my internship and finish up an article about robots that never showed up. Then I would write a short piece about a local girl scout troop that won a robotics competition. But, an hour into my day, I got tasked to write about an instructor…
Ben Franklin had a thing for turkeys, and thought they — not the bald eagle — ought to be the national symbol: “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly,…
I had a chance to cover a demonstration last week involving the military and unmanned autonomous vehicles (a.k.a. robots) for my internship. The robots were designed to fly out, locate wounded soldiers on a battlefield, and relay the soldier’s vitals like heart rate and blood pressure back to doctors and medics at a base. Since…
As our first quarter as SciCom students nears its end, I realize I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at my computer screen. This weekend, a visit from my parents provided a much needed excuse to leave the digital world and go out exploring. Here are some photos from one of our stops, the…
Anyone flying on November 24th this year should probably plan to get to the airport extra early: A group of travelers’-rights advocates are organizing a nationwide boycott of the full-body scanners used in security checks in airports. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is usually the busiest travel day of the year, and an organized protests of…
Scientific American is all about the intersection of magic tricks and neuroscience this month. I’m sure some of you may know about it already, but I thinks it’s too interesting to not post about. I found it on Twitter (thank you, @sciam_live): SciAm video “Neuroscience Meets Magic” I think it’s more than worth the 11…
photo © 2008 Fang Guo | more info (via: WylioWhile at my Salinas Californian newspaper internship yesterday, we were visited by school kids taking a tour of the building. “This is where our reporters work,” said the tour guide, as she walked by me. It brought back flashbacks of my first visit to a newspaper,…
Tuesday, 3:30 p.m., PST N: Keith and I are at our hotel in Irvine, the Marriott-something-or-other-resort-and-spa. It’s next door to Bloomingdale’s. Orange County. We’re chilling here for a few days while we attend the Keck Futures conference on Imaging Science. The heart of the conference is something called ‘Interdisciplinary Research Teams’ — groups of scientists…
Here I sit, digging my lede out of the second paragraph — I hope it’s okay. It’s been down there since Monday with no food or water. My editor found it. He heard it whimpering under the crushing weight of a superfluous first paragraph. That’s where I usually find my ledes; poor things. I’m actually…
