Abstruse Goose: 30,001 BC

I really don’t know how much longer Thag will survive. www.abstrusegoose.com/232

Shrimp on Prozac

At least 40 million people worldwide have been prescribed Prozac, but how many of them know that they may be sharing their medication with a crowd of shrimp? The poor shrimp aren’t any happier, either: the antidepressant prompts them to swim upward toward the light, which makes them more likely to be eaten by predatory [...]

Survivor Woman

Yesterday, my colleague Ann Finkbeiner fessed up to one of the great travails of being a science writer. So today in the spirit of full disclosure I thought I’d fess up to another pitfall, one that I should have anticipated before I became an archaeological writer, but didn’t. So here’s what I’ve learned the hard way: [...]

Scientists’ Slippage

I grew up noticing what a writer notices — stories and how things are said — and educated myself accordingly.  So I never learned much science and now, after I’ve unexpectedly turned into a science writer, my questions to scientists are generally English-major questions.  Me:  “Why do a feather and bowling ball fall at the [...]

Big Bang Big Boom: out-and-out brilliant

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

A Summer Science Poem

It’s summer. The perfect time to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Or, if that proves too taxing, just flop onto the grass and watch all the little invertebrates toiling away: an ant carrying a crumb or a seed, a beetle scurrying over grains of sand, a grasshopper leaping. Beneath the surface is a vast [...]

Abstruse Goose: 30,000 BC

http://abstrusegoose.com/231

Getting It Wrong, Not Minding One Bit

As soon as I got over the fainting spell from looking at the Planck satellite’s map – and if you haven’t seen it, look now, faint, and then click – showing the Milky Way, I had a burning question. Okay, true, the Planck satellite wasn’t intended to map the Milky Way.  It was supposed to [...]