Last week Kate pointed me to this post about heroic stories of science saying “This seems relevant to your interests.” And, in fact, a good deal of the post talks about Patricia Fara’s Science: A Four Thousand Year History, the Union library’s copy of which is sitting on my desk, where I had looked something… Continue reading The Problem of Science Stories
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 11: Feynman’s Plate
I’ve been trying to keep to a roughly chronological ordering of these stories, but this slow-motion snow storm that was waiting to greet us on our return from Florida made the schools open on a two-hour delay today, which eats the time I usually use for blogging and books stuff. So I’m going to jump… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 11: Feynman’s Plate
Eureka on the Radio
Yesterday, I drove through the slush to Albany to do an appearance on KERA radio’s “Think” from a studio there. The audio is at that link. It was a bit of a strange experience, because I drove to a place to do the interview in a radio studio, but I was the only one in… Continue reading Eureka on the Radio
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 10: Anagrams. Oy.
The final step of the scientific process is to share your results with others, and that’s the step where things are most prone to breaking down. Countless great discoveries have been delayed or temporarily lost because the people who made them were more concerned with protecting “their” secrets than with sharing new knowledge with the… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 10: Anagrams. Oy.
Eureka: The Soundtrack
So, you’ve picked up your copy of the just-released Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist— you have bought a copy, right?– and now you’re thinking “I’d love to curl up and read this, but what should I listen to while I do that?” Well, never fear, I’m here to help. Also, I’m really tired, and this… Continue reading Eureka: The Soundtrack
Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist: Release Day!
Today is the official release date for Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, so of course there are a bunch of exciting things happening: — There’s a short excerpt at the Science of Us blog from New York Magazine. This is a chunk of the Introduction, about how scientists are smart, but not that smart. —… Continue reading Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist: Release Day!
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 9: Newton’s Bodkin
I tooke a bodkine gh & put it betwixt my eye & [the] bone as neare to [the] backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye [with the] end of it (soe as to make [the] curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles r, s,… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 9: Newton’s Bodkin
Eight Things You Need to Know About Science
Copies of Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist have been turning up in the wild for a while now, but the officially official release date is today (available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound, Powell’s, and anywhere else books are sold). To mark that, here’s some stuff I wrote about the core message of the book,… Continue reading Eight Things You Need to Know About Science
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 8: The First GMO
This entry doesn’t have a fictionalized story both because I’m on vacation, and because I don’t think there’s a single dramatic turning point in this particular story. It’s probably one of the most impressive human accomplishments of the last umpteen thousand years, though, and definitely deserves a place in any rundown of wonders of science.… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 8: The First GMO
Advent Calendar of Science Stories 7: Apocryphal Empress
Following on yesterday’s story of transformative discoveries starting by accident, we’ll jump from the Middle East to the Far East for the probably apocryphal story of the Empress Leizu (also sometimes referred to as Xi Lingshi) who is credited with the discovery of silk around 2600 BCE. One of the many versions of the story… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 7: Apocryphal Empress