The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

Abstruse Goose: Computer Programming 101

By: Ann Finkbeiner | February 11, 2013

In spite of AG’s title, this is really Science Writing 101. The first time science writers run across these infinitely receding questions is when they start researching a story and the story is all parts and no whole. The next time is when they start asking scientists questions and every answer just means another question. And the time after that is when they write the first draft and nothing is irrelevant. How far down the rabbit hole do you go? Once you’re down there, how do you get back up again? How much of what’s down there do you bring back with you? Oh Lord it’s awful, it’s just awful.

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Abstruse Goose has been on some kind of sabbatical and was posting from his archives. This one was labelled Jan. 2, 2009 and didn’t have a link. Because if it did, I’d link to it. Meanwhile, he seems to be back again, all fingers and toes accounted for — for which we are grateful and a little relieved. http://abstrusegoose.com

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | February 9, 2013

February 4 – 8

This week, Erika’s back! And she’s not happy about “informed consent“.

Cameron considers the endangerment of the world’s apex predator, some of which are only as big as a chocolate bar!

Cassie throws shade at the dodgy sleep aids of the 70s.

Jessa tells us how architects are like psychoactive drug designers.

Did you know your brain doesn’t natively know how to hear? Ann explains in the gorgeous story of how Rosemary learned to hear again.

Afraid of the Shark

By: Cameron Walker | February 8, 2013

The other day, just as I was about to go out on the water on a nine-foot piece of epoxy-covered foam, a man stopped me on the beach. “Aren’t you scared to go out there by yourself?” he said. “Because of the sharks?”

I had been trying to forget about them, even though the sun was setting, the water murkier by the minute. So I mumbled something that I’ve heard other people say, that I was going into the sharks’ territory, that I was the uninvited guest. I also held up my paddle, as if to say I could give a shark a good whack if I had to. Continue reading →

Sleep Aids

By: Cassandra Willyard | February 5, 2013

Ahh, the 1960s. A simpler time when women wore pant-skirts and insomnia could be cured by the soothing sounds of Liadov’s Musical Snuff Box. Well, not quite. Flip open this album and you’ll find a two-page ad for a sleeping pill called Placidyl. The tagline reads: “But when music fails, you can rest assured with Placidyl, Doctor.”

Here’s what I find striking. First, this isn’t an album with a drug ad slapped surreptitiously on the inside cover. The album is the drug ad. That title, “Music to Nudge You to Sleep” — that’s actually Placidyl’s campaign slogan. Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories promised Placidyl would “nudge” patients to sleep in the print ads too. Second, this isn’t some rinky-dink endeavor. The music — ten songs in all — is performed by the Boston Pops led by Arthur Fielder, a man the New York Times called “one of the world’s best-known musical figures.”

The album appears to be the love child of a strange (and brief) affair between the music industry and pharma. A blurb in the April 4, 1964 issue of Billboard Magazine notes that record label RCA Victor “is now leading the way into the ‘Land of Nod.'” (A later album, “Singing the Blues,” plugged a Merck antidepressant called Elavil.)

Continue reading →

Rosemary Learns Hearing. Again.

By: Ann Finkbeiner | February 4, 2013

girl — Girl dancing – Keller Cottage for Blind-Deaf Children, Talladega, Alabama

When Rosemary Pryde was four years old, 63 years ago, she lost her hearing. No one knows exactly why: maybe the high fever, maybe the medications, maybe genetic – her father and his mother lost their hearing as adults. She didn’t lose her hearing completely; she had some residual in both ears. When she was five, she got a hearing aid and rode her bicycle up and down the driveway, ringing the bell for the pleasure of hearing it. She learned to lip read. And it wasn’t all bad: her family’s TV often lost sound and even though the youngest, she was the only one who could lip read I Love Lucy. But she didn’t understand why everyone went outside at midnight on New Year’s Eve and seemed excited; and she couldn’t learn if her teacher talked while facing the blackboard; and she eventually lost hearing completely in her right ear. She grew up and made a career in the helping professions — employment counsellor, executive director of a charity, group facilitator – and was good at it: when you lip read, you focus hard on other people.

But her hearing slowly worsened and a hearing aid’s volume can go only so high. About 30 years ago, she was sitting by a lake with friends, watching the dusk and drinking gin-and-tonics, and somebody said, “Listen to the loons. What a beautiful sound they make,” and she heard nothing. With the years, the concentration necessary to follow a conversation had become so tiring, she was going out less. She stopped going to movies; five years ago, she gave up lunch with her large group of friends and saw them one or two at a time instead. She arranged for her workshops to be smaller, then noticed that she had trouble even in a group of two or three. Finally, in the winter of 2011, she was approved for a cochlear implant in her right ear, and in late August, 2012, she had the surgery. And after that, she had to learn to hear. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | February 2, 2013

January 28 – February 1

The most urgent question of the week falls to Richard: what’s going to become of all his books? Time for you to pitch in with some advice, dear readers.

Christie wonders how Facebook will irony-proof their new search feature.

Erik makes a fairly solid case for the idea that “tools for teaching fetuses are ridiculous“.

Cameron reveals the hidden connection between champagne powder and a “recreational mathmusician”.

Facebook or NSA? Quit your job, go back to school, and snoop on the deepest secrets inadvertently revealed by network theory. Guest poster Robin Mejia gives us the lowdown on the stats boom.

Love Story

By: Richard Panek | February 1, 2013

What can you say about a fifty-seven-year-old book that has outlived its usefulness? That it was beautiful. And brilliant. And taking up valuable space in my personal library.

Our household has six 84-inch bookshelves lining two living room walls, and four more in the bedroom. All of the living room bookshelves and two of the bedroom bookshelves hold the kinds of general reading that line the living room and bedroom walls of most households that still bother with bookshelves: novels, nonfiction, reference works. But two of the bedroom bookshelves hold volumes that are not the kind you typically find in a home, unless one of the people who live there happens to be someone who writes about science.

Continue reading →