Archive for 2012
While you’re waiting for the bus
Why are so many women-in-science events actually about leaving science and having babies? Good science journalism can help scientists get their work done. The oldest pine cone ever found. The president of the World Bank editorializes about the need for climate change mitigation. The IEA tells us how to fix climate change, or at least […]
On the similarities of the English and Russians: both drunk racists
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The Left-handed Craftsman: Their contest started while they were still on the open sea and they went on drinking until they reached the estuary of the Dvina at Riga, and all this time both of them drank the same amount of liquor and neither of them was able to drink […]
The poetry of leaves
A leaf is filled with chambers illuminated by gathered light. In these glowing rooms photons bump around and the leaf captures their energy, turning it into the sugar from which plants, animals, and civilizations are built. Chloroplasts, fed by sun, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients, do the leaf’s work. They evolved about 1.6 billion years […]
On building something better than the English
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The Left-handed Craftsman: ” … for the English aren’t fools but a very clever people and their craftsmanship has a good deal of sound common sense behind it. One can do nothing against the English,” they said, “without careful consideration, but with the Lord’s blessing we may be able to […]
Working on the weekend
My office is a difficult place for me to get work done during the week. 9 of us share a space. Between the battle over whether to keep the glaring, buzzing fluorescent lights on or off, the very warm temperature, phone calls, random chit chat, TAs having their office hours, people coming by to ask […]
Music for slow coding on a rainy Saturday night
Understanding Russia through metaphor
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The White Eagle: … all my thoughts seemed to revolve around Ivan Petrovich, that gay living man who had popped out of the ground so suddenly, just like a mushroom in a field after a shower: it is very small, but you can see it from anywhere; everybody looks at […]