I and six other scribbling slugs rolled back home again after attending ScienceWriters2010. We’ve been basking in the light of the field’s luminaries, gathering advice and business cards and doing what we could to introduce ourselves as up-and-coming colleagues. It was a meeting of many firsts for me: first visit to New Haven, first time…
I’d been warned. But I did not heed the warning: do not look at comments posted about your news stories. I’ve heard various incarnations of this statement, and yet…and yet, I do view online feedback. With trepidation. Sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes, it’s encouraging. And sometimes it makes me want to throw down my pen computer…
First of all, I need to talk about “awesome.” It’s a lofty word, brought low. Awe describes an overwhelming sense of wonder, mixed with dread and fear. It’s a word more suited to describing enchantment or mystical, non-ordinary states of consciousness, not graphic t-shirts. Eddie Izzard first brought this issue to my attention. Before you…
The biology department at Auburn University has a tradition called Bio-Lunch where graduate students invite a scientist to come and speak about their work over a brown bag lunch. My friend, Sara, came bursting into the lab one day to tell me that she had been chosen to invite the guest speaker for the next…
Last night the National Association of Science Writers held a ScienceWriters2010 welcome reception in the Peabody Museum of Natural History here at Yale. The entrance of the museum is graced with this terrific hanging squid. From airplanes to whale bones, museums display all sorts of heavy, hanging objects. While staring up at the squid from…
The ScienceWriters 2010 conference is jammed full of future colleagues. And there is a healthy contingent of Slug alums, in addition to us newbies. When people find out that I’m a slug, they have nothing but good things to say about the program (although I doubt they would start in on any negative thoughts they…
…or else these would have been the lyrics to “Strangers in the Night.” The opening party for the National Association of Science Writers annual meeting was Friday. A folk singer, a classical guitar/opera duo, and an astronomical a cappella group serenaded about 600 science writers with songs about science. Some people write about science, others…
There’s lots of great workshops here at ScienceWriters 2010, with topics ranging from being an effective Public Information Officer, to the social web and online commenting, and how to write great science books. My first workshop today was Profitable freelancing: Starting a business and keeping it productive. I found it very practical and informative, with…
“…and everything is going to the beat – it’s the beat generation, it be-at, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart…” Jack Kerouac At least twice in this past week, someone asked, “What is your beat?” And I answered: “It’s new each day.” I write what I write and I like it that way. I write…
Doggies and rodents and bears, oh my! They all have to dry off somehow. So they shake. I know this from personal and very drippy experience (not with bears). As Andrew Dickerson and fellow video authors put it in their abstract, animals: …rapidly oscillate their bodies to shed water droplets, nature’s analogy to the spin…
