Science

Science and writing

Aug 16th, 2011

by Sarah.

5 comments

I know, two topics you’ve totally never seen here before!

First the writing.

How to write a book in three days. Michael Moorcock did it, and explained how.

If that wasn’t enough to think about, here’s Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula for pulps.

And then the science.

Those word count progress bars? Just might help you succeed!

But whatever you do, watching TV should be avoided. There are so many reasons, but a really big one is that it has a serious impact on life expectancy, possibly even worse than smoking.

More reasons that drinking coffee is good for you: skin cancer prevention.

And if, like me, you combine the two, the deadline for the Science in My Fiction anthology is fast approaching. Got your story done?

Drive me away!

Aug 5th, 2011

by Sarah.

Comments are off for this post

I have an enormous backlog of half-finished articles, links and videos and cool things, brilliant ideas, flash fictions that fade in the middle… I haven’t had time or internet access sufficient to get them all out to you.

It actually isn’t due to spending all my time on Google+, honest. See above, lack of internet access (thanks, Verizon).

But here are a couple, at least:

I have a new Science in My Fiction article, on self-driving cars. Want!

I’m a reader, most or all of my friends are readers, many of my acquaintances are readers. But is that something we should expect of everyone?

The truth about Van Halen’s brown M&Ms. This is fascinating, and clever.

The absolutely wonderful and highly influential Hermione Granger series.

And some Friday music.

This Cold Mailmen video really is stop motion. They did it in a set of Norwegian office buildings that were vacant and set to be demolished.

Full of fascination

Jul 20th, 2011

by Sarah.

Comments are off for this post

The internet, that is, luring me away from whatever it was that I was supposed to be doing. And really, it’s too hot to be doing anything, so why not? (Don’t answer that, please.)

Some highlights:

How sci-fi let women be in charge – I’m bothered by the title. “Let women be in charge” is rather condescending. The whole article feels a little off to me, as if it were written by someone (a woman) who doesn’t respect or understand genre fiction, but researched a few things for the story. But maybe I was just thrown by the title, something the writer probably didn’t get to choose. And as always, don’t read the comments.

Switching gears entirely, a dense and thought-provoking essay on the roots of fantasy from Cat Valente, her Guest of Honor lecture at Mythcon. It’s worth the time to read, and then reread, and then ponder.

The photo of the day.

I’m going to be at Confluence in Pittsburgh this weekend. Anyone else going to be there?

Priorities

Jun 22nd, 2011

by Sarah.

4 comments

It’s not that I don’t love you all, I’ve just been wrapped up in science.

Right now it doesn’t matter what it is to anyone but me.

But it’s complicated, and fun, and vastly overdue, and I’ve finally gotten a handle on it.

For the curious, I use R for everything, including these figures.

Isn’t it pretty?

Send it with Science

Jun 18th, 2011

by Sarah.

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The USPS has released four new Forever stamps featuring US scientists.

A female physicist, a male botanist, a Spanish-born male biochemist, and a male chemist: not a horrid attempt at diversity in people and disciplines. Only three Nobel-prizewinners, though, since there’s no Nobel for botanists, even if Asa Gray hadn’t died before the first prizes were awarded.

Writerly bits

Jun 1st, 2011

by Sarah.

Comments are off for this post

The short bits first: the monthly writer’s social project this time was six word stories. There’s an assignment every month, something suitable for discussing over beer and burgers.

My contributions:
My balloon rises, valve stuck open.
My garden’s overrun. Maybe it’s Triffids.

And the long bit: I have a new article at Clarkesworld this month: “Building Forests, Remaking Planets,” about the science and ethics of terraforming. Have a read, leave a comment. Science is fun!

Science doing what science does

by Sarah.

1 comment

Last December there was a big fuss about the arsenic bacteria reported in a NASA press conference. I followed along, read all kinds of wild speculation online, and tried to refute some of the more obvious errors people were making, as well as explain why arsenic-using bacteria could be very exciting.

After the excitement died down a bit, I and other scientists started to think more closely about the methods and results, and the claims the research team had made. I’m not a microbiology, but I read both the Science article and much of the online discussion, and came away disappointed.

Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her collaborators said they would only respond to formal critiques. Eight such, as well as a response, were published online in Science today, and will appear in print in the next issue. There are no new research findings, but further discussion and clarification of what was already reported.

I haven’t read the new papers yet, but will do so and summarize the claims and counterclaims this weekend. You can also read Dr. Rosie Redfield’s first impressions here. She is a microbiologist, one of the original and most vocal critics of the arsenic bacteria claims, and the author of one of the Science papers.

The most interesting thing I’ve noticed so far is that the authors are making their bacterial culture available to other scientists. That will go a long way to resolve the lingering questions, eventually.

One more shot

May 26th, 2011

by Sarah.

1 comment

And a cheap one it is. The Camping rapture people, they’re just too easy. Now Harold Camping says that the Rapture did happen, we just didn’t notice. And the world will be ending on October 21, thank you very much.

But one of the associated websites still says May 21, with a cute little count-down of the months and days: now sitting idly at 0 Months, 0 Days. Awwww. This screenshot was taken today.

And look, the book has been pened! That is the past tense of the plural of “penis,” obviously, so the sign that you’ve been Raptured is that your dick falls off. You wouldn’t be using it in Heaven anyway, right? Making the discarded body parts into books seems a bit much though.

I wonder if they still have free bumper stickers.

On to more interesting material.

The secret of procrastination revealed by Fake Science. Now if only they post the solution.

NASA has officially given up on Spirit, the Mars rover that made it seven years instead of 90 days. A triumph of science and engineering; now let’s do it again.

For all the stupid things that people do, we can do some awesome ones too.

As always, XKCD puts it best.

Or maybe not

May 22nd, 2011

by Sarah.

1 comment

So yeah, I’ve spent some time the past week making fun of Camping and his rapture predictions, and linking to people who did likewise. And I’ll even continue that by linking some possible explanations for the lack of mystical occurrences.

I’d especially like to make you all aware that Eric won one internet yesterday, with his explanation of how a Richter scale works. I must have missed class the day we talked about flagariaoptomicopons.

But all humor aside, there were serious consequences to Camping’s campaign. I don’t know whether he believed his own predictions or not, but he was convincing enough that plenty of other people believed it. Many of those folks sent him their life savings, confident that the world was ending and they would no longer need money, or they quit their jobs to spread the word. But now it’s May 22, what are they going to do? Camping isn’t going to give their money back.

Worse than that: there have been reports of people killing their children and/or themselves so they wouldn’t be left behind. And I don’t think there’s any way to hold Camping liable, for the deaths or the money. Those people were presumably mentally ill, and may have been set off by something else eventually, but Camping was what actually did set them off.

And it’s just going to happen again, next year and the year after and the year after.

Scientific potato chips

May 20th, 2011

by Sarah.

7 comments

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

New Zealanders will be the first to know, Camping said. At 6 p.m. their time – 11 p.m. Friday in the Bay Area – a great earthquake will shake the island asunder, triggering an apocalypse that rolls relentlessly our way.

“It will continue across the Earth at such a rate,” Camping said, “every Richter scale in the world and every news organization in the world will have no doubt – Judgment Day is here.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/18/MN1N1JFUB4.DTL#ixzz1Mv94YmH9

Apparently my scientific education has been deficient. What exactly does a Richter scale look like? And who knew there were lots of them?

I know, making fun of Camping’s science is like… well, too easy to even have a good analogy. But I can’t stop doing it! Like eating potato chips!