Guest Post: How to Navigate a Rising Sea

By: | December 30, 2015

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

When Alson Kelen was young, he used to lie at night against his father’s arm, on an island where there were no lights and no cars. He listened to waves slapping against wet sand, the breeze shaking the palm fronds, the delicate crackling of a coconut shell fire. As the purple-blue evening gave way to night, Alson’s father would tell his son to close his eyes. And then he would tell stories—stories about sailing, about flying on the wind, about the triumph of surviving long and difficult journeys.

The Marshallese are quite possibly the best voyagers in the world. The Pacific island nation they call home is more than 4,000 kilometers from the nearest continent; a smattering of land scattered over nearly 2 million square kilometers of ocean. Yet even though the Marshall Islands’ elevation averages just two meters above sea level, making it impossible to spot islands from a distance, Marshallese navigators routinely sailed hundreds of kilometers in dugout outrigger canoes, without a speck of land in sight. To navigate, they relied less on stars and more on the ocean itself.

For centuries, scientists ignored this indigenous knowledge, and it was nearly lost. But today, the Marshall Islands’ unique brand of navigation is gaining a foothold in Western science—and helping to launch a cultural revival at the time it’s needed most.

Continue reading →

How Music and Literature Taught Me About Geology and Disease

By: | December 29, 2015

Gypsum figurines of the three kings. This time between Christmas and Twelfth Night, when the three kings arrived at the stable, is a good time to think about my love of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. In the story, the three kings stop for the night at the house of a poor single mother and her child, Amahl, who walks with a crutch. The local people are poor, but they come to the house to sing and dance and bring presents for the kings to take to the baby. Amahl has nothing, except his crutch; he offers it; “but you can’t, you can’t!” “I walk, mother. I walk, mother.” The kings celebrate the miracle, then take Amahl on the road with them.

The operetta was commissioned by NBC and had its first performance live on TV in 1951. I grew up on a recording from 1963. The role of the mother is one of those parts that I’ve felt like I was always preparing for, in the alternate universe in which I become a professional singer. (Others include the main character in the Rossini opera La Cenerentola, also known as Cinderella, and Sergeant Sarah in Guys and Dolls.) (A lot of things are different in this alternate universe–like that I’m willing to practice and I know how to act.)

Continue reading →

Conversation with Michael Balter: On Not Teaching

By: | December 28, 2015

511910343_323121f371_bMichael:  Hi Ann! After six years of teaching in NYU’s science journalism program (SHERP), and a year before that teaching at Boston University, I have decided to take a break and hand over my beginning writing, research and reporting class to someone else. What a tough decision. I love my students–so many of whom have gone on to be successful science journalists–I love teaching, I love my colleagues, I love New York, I love–wait, why I am doing this? Oh, right, because I hate doing the same thing over and over, because I feel it’s time to hand things over to someone younger and more multi-media and Web savvy than I am, because I want to explore some other things in my life, because I’m tired of long absences from my beautiful wife who is back in Paris (where I am now headed as soon as the semester is over). But hey, didn’t you stop teaching at Johns Hopkins a while back? Was it really hard? Did you feel the intense pain I am feeling now? I’m all ears (or eyes.)

Ann:  Yes indeedy, I certainly did stop teaching, and after 25 years mind you.  The thing I liked most, and miss most, was knowing those grad students who in a few months were going to be my professional colleagues, for whom school wasn’t a graded academic exercise but a prelude to real life, and who in the meantime, needed to figure out what they wanted to write about and how they wanted to write.  Watching them was like — I can think only of cliches — watching buds go fast forward into full bloom, like watching lambs get born and totter around like broken toys and a day later race full-tilt around the barn.  So yes, not having those shiny new guys to watch is hard, and yes, it hurts.

Michael: You really took the words out of my mouth (or out of my MacAir) when you mentioned that the students would soon be your professional colleagues. I am writing this during my last class, while my students are peer editing their last assignment (a profile), and in a half hour I am going to dismiss class early.  As I always tell them at the beginning of the semester, you are journalists now, the minute you walk into this program and my classroom, and they always prove that I am right in very short order. I like all the buds opening and lambs a’ borning imagery, it really is that way.

Ann:  But you know, I also agree with what you said when we started this conversation, about hating to do the same thing over and over.  In the last few years of teaching, I did have the feeling of knowing how to do what I was doing, and after a while that stops feeling masterful and starts feeling a little easy — like maybe if you’re going to be alive, you should keep doing things that are hard.

Michael:  Yes, and I also worry about the students, about how hard it will be for each succeeding group to get jobs or freelance opportunities and compete in this constantly changing marketplace (and pausing here to lament, as so many have, that it is a marketplace when it should be something else, anything else.)  And that brings me to another thing I want to do in my new, non-teaching life:  I want to think about all the issues I raised in this piece I wrote a few years ago about science journalism programs. By the way, I hope SHERP’s fearless leader, Dan Fagin, doesn’t realize this time around that I gave the wrong title for what SHERP stands for (at least he can’t fire me for it now!)

Ann:  That’s a thoughtful, Balter-like essay you wrote about the science journalism programs.  

Michael:  Thanks! When I wrote it, I concluded that we were still good to go in producing new cycles of budding (your term!) journalists. I would like to think that is still true, but now I’m going to take some time to think about it–as well as exploring some new directions of my own. I may be going into some sort of semi-retirement, but I am still a budding journalist/writer myself!   

Ann:  That question of the supply of science writers meeting or not meeting the demand is so complicated — it’s all wound up with whether the demand is actually rising and if so, whether the rise will, you know, pay actual money or allow enough time for good reporting.  So I don’t have much of an opinion on it.  I do have an opinion about what happens when you retire from teaching.  Yes, it does hurt a bit, and yes, you’ll miss those springy new students.  But hoo boy, the minute I considered not pushing that rock up that academic-politics hill, I had three story ideas — really, in that minute, in a flash.  It was a Sign unto me: I might be a dandy teacher and a dedicated academic battler, but what I really want to do is write.  Like you, I feel I’m still budding.  So what new directions are you thinking of? Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | December 26, 2015

left, children of Goose Island / right, The Black Rock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This holiday week was filled with good cheer! Oh, wait, this is LWON. But don’t worry, it wasn’t all fit for a Scrooge.

First, we gave you a terrific list of things to watch with our traditional TV/Movie binge list. Don’t blame us if you’re still on Season 1 of anything good.

Then came Ann Finkbeiner’s excellent redux about two brothers, anxiety, and the balance of science and God.

Craig Childs then put on a fabulous show (one of many) pitting two friends/scientists against each other on climate change—with an audience..

Then came my own holiday rant in which I whine unoriginally about holiday commercialism but offer a rather unusual antidote.

And finally, Rose Eveleth shares the tragic history of Canada’s Goose Island and the monument to its dead immigrants that’s being sucked up by a growing city.

 

The Monument that Montreal Swallowed

By: | December 25, 2015

left, children of Goose Island / right, The Black Rock

When I travel outside the US, I use an app called OffMaps. It loads up a map of whatever city you chose onto your phone, so even without service I can at least have some sense of where I’m going. There are lots of apps that do this, and probably ones that do it better than OffMaps, but it’s what I’m used to. And there’s a feature that OffMaps offers that I really love. You can chose to download just the map, or you can chose to download the map and all the Wikipedia pages related to that map.

This means that I can walk around in a place and read about all the stuff I’m seeing, at least as far as Wikipedia has entries on things. It also means that I can browse through all these Wikipedia entries looking for interesting monuments or tidbits.

This summer I went to Montreal to see some Women’s World Cup games. And while browsing OffMaps I saw an entry for something called Goose Village. Already in my mind were images of a whole delightful village full of geese, waddling along tiny cobblestone streets. But when I clicked through to read the entry, I learned that the reality was much darker.

Continue reading →

The Undead: A Holiday Rant

By: | December 24, 2015

shutterstock_221051722
It’s the holiday season so, of course, I’ve been binge-watching The Walking Dead. Something about this time of year makes the still-unbitten characters’ lives appealing. Minus the blood-oozing zombies, life is uncluttered. There are no commercials screaming that Santa’s sale on Christmas socks ends Friday, no light displays at the mall flashing to the beat of Grandma Got Run Over by a Raindeer, no fist fights in Walmart (next to the inflatable manger scene, for Pete’s sake!) over the last 60-inch TV. That in-your-face commercialism that loads up our senses with garbage simply doesn’t exist.

Think about it: During a zombie apocalypse, each surviving person has no choice but to set aside childish things and put his or her best skills to work. Someone plants a garden, someone else builds walls. She patches up the wounded, he goes in search of supplies. Everyone, because it’s necessary, learns to shoot, stab, or wield a machete. That same necessity forces creativity, which comes in handy when rebuilding society. No one cares about stuffing a cart with plastic amusements or getting the best parking spot at Sports Authority.

I apologize for getting a late start on my holiday rant—no doubt Santa is already tying back his beard in prep for his windy travels. But is it ever too late to rant, really? Because for some of us, the Christmas season, with all its sparkling energy, crashes in uninvited and wrestles us to the floor. And it bites.

Continue reading →

Give a Science Writer a Stage

By: | December 23, 2015

Moon ManThe Devil had two tattooed women in tight skirts holding a rope taut on stage. One he told to stand on her toes while the other crouched slightly. The rope between them showed a slight angle downward, which the Devil said expressed global mean temperature decreasing slightly from 1998 till now.

The Devil’s data was cherry picked from satellite records from NOAA.

His two stubs of horns caught the light as he laughed about using scientists’ own data against them. He explained that global warming is a hoax and climate change is the best bet if you’re a scientist.

“Of course climate change is going to happen,” the Devil preached. “It’s called job security.”

Michael Soulé, one of the founding scientists of conservation biology, stood from the audience and objected. All heads in the theater turned toward the 79-year-old man, his noble, bald dome shining as a spotlight fell on him.

Soulé then eviscerated the Devil’s argument.

I’d planted Soulé in the audience for this purpose. Soulé is a friend of mine. The Devil is a friend, too, a bold climate change denier I’ve known for years. Pitting the two against each other in front of an audience of 175 people might have been unfair. The Devil didn’t stand a chance. Continue reading →

Redux: Science Plus/Versus Religion

By: | December 22, 2015

6244584202_15591757f7_bI don’t think much about the climate debates; the problem seems so multivariate, and each part of it so difficult, I don’t see a solution.  Accordingly, I really appreciate the people who do think about and cover it because goddam, it really needs covering.

Anyway, when I read about the Paris agreement, I was most struck by all those countries with all their agendas still agreeing that the scientists knew what they were talking about, while this country — this science-rich country — is full of blowfish with no scientific credentials all over the media, still arguing about whether warming is real.  I don’t mean that the science is a slam-dunk because it never is, but this argument didn’t seem to be about science.

And that reminded me of a post I wrote that I liked, about arguments in which the arguers are talking past each other from points of view that are nonoverlapping but still confused, about what happens when this confusion happens between two brothers.  I hope you like it too.