Family Planning Made Entertaining

Happy Halloween! I want to tell you a scary story. A decade ago, the planet had six billion people. Today, according to the United Nations, we have seven billion. The UN has chosen Halloween as the symbolic day when the seventh billion person will come screaming into existence. Not scared yet? Maybe these words from [...]

Triassic Park

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I love it when scientists occasionally throw all caution to the wind and clamber out on what seems a visibly shaky limb. Not of course, when they are offering up some new off-the-wall theory on autism or sudden infant death syndrome or flu vaccines—fields in which a little speculation [...]

Is That Guy Really, Really Smart?

A friend I run into regularly says, “Hey, Ann.  Do you know that guy from around here who won that Nobel whatever?”  He means Adam Riess, and yes, I know Riess.  I’ve interviewed him, I say hello, he says hello back.  “I have a question for you,” says my friend. “Is your Nobel guy really, [...]

You’ve got mail, you idiot!

Earlier this month, I gave an Ignite talk at the National Association of Science Writers meeting. (I also organized a panel on covering scientific controversies–click here to listen to/download mp3s of my interviews with panelists Gary Taubes, Jennifer Kahn, Jeanne Lenzer and Brian Vastag.) I’ve had numerous requests to share my Ignite talk, and so [...]

Steve Jobs and the Limits of Sequencing

The death of Steve Jobs is unfolding as a morality play between mainstream and alternative medicine, with doctors and bloggers blaming Jobs’ untimely demise on his decision to delay surgery while he tried acupuncture and herbal remedies. The reality is that Jobs’ story tells us as much about the limits of conventional science and medicine [...]

The Speciation of Science Journalists

  As a journalist, especially a science journalist, it’s my professional duty to ask stupid questions. I’m supposed to have, on your behalf, my share of what my fellow LWONer Cassie Willyard so aptly calls “Hubble moments.” I’m supposed to be a lifelong amateur, someone who can understand and explain science without losing sight of [...]

Floater

The second I close the hatch behind me, it occurs to me that I have watched far too many horror movies for this to end well. I’m in the basement of a building in South London where people shell out £45 to spend an hour in a sensory deprivation tank. The shiny white pod is [...]

Embracing My Hubble Moments

In 2006, when I was in graduate school for science writing, one of my professors brought in an astronomer to talk about his exoplanet discoveries (just in case you don’t know, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system). We were supposed to listen to Dr. Astronomer’s talk, ask a few questions, call some scientists for [...]

What Makes a Pun Funny?

Comedian Jessica Kirson, as captured by the inimitable Brian Friedman My name is Ginny and I’m an adult pun-lover. When I hear a good one — Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic! — I don’t roll my eyes or smirk. I double over laughing, like a 7-year-old. What is it exactly [...]

Dining: A Greener Shade of Crow

The opening scene paints a picture as bucolic as anything John Constable managed, albeit in broad, animated strokes. Green fields at morning, distant mountains, a small, loving farm family and the contented grunt of a well-cared-for pig set a tone of agrarian delight. But just 20 seconds into the short video and that porker is [...]