Posts under ‘Science’

Minus the YouTube, of course.

In a nice warm enclosed-atmosphere sleigh. One of the most fascinating things about this, beyond the obvious “It’s another PLANET!!!!” thrill, is how useless terrestrial ideas of pattern and scale are. I spend a lot of time looking at satellite and aerial imagery, and still couldn’t tell you how large or what some of these [...]

Things I never learned in grad school: Girl science is pink, and involves perfume, beauty products, soap, snowflakes, and “Beautiful Blob Slime.” (Please note: I did not make up that last.) Boy science is blue, spooky and perilous, has physics and chemistry, and “Weird Slime Lab.” There’s also cosmetic science, which is purple and involves [...]

My friend Tom left this link on a previous post about science and art: Bathsheba Grossman. I’d looked at her work before, but I don’t think I’d posted it. Science, math and 3D printing- what’s not to like? Another friend, Eric, left an interesting comment on my post about November writing lessons. Eric’s comment, reprinted [...]

November. National Novel Writing Month. As already alluded to here, I sat down to write on November 1, shiny new novel idea lined up, and promptly realized that this would quickly turn into National Nervous Breakdown Month, and that would be considerably less fun. I can write 50,000 words in a month, if I have [...]

I’ve been accumulating things. Time to pass them on. The Moscow dogs and the Chicago coyotes: fascinating examples of canine adaptability to urban environments. The Moscow dogs have so far done a better job of fitting into urban patterns, possibly because they come from stock selected for dealing well with people over the past few [...]

Plants, ecology, pretty pictures, science fiction: all come together in today’s Science in My Fiction essay on leaf shape (more interesting than you might think). I’ve taken over as the SiMF coordinator. If you’ve ever wanted to write about the science in science fiction, either as a regular correspondent or for one awesome guest essay, [...]

I was going to write something about National Novel Writing Month and how I’m tweaking the rules this year to get some of the mass enthusiasm without any of the nervous breakdown, but. I saw this instead, and am too angry about it to write about anything else. Nature, one of the premier scientific journals, [...]

I admit it, I wrote fiction last night instead of writing my Ada Lovelace Day post. Tsk. But I wanted to tell you about a woman of science anyway, even a day late. In 2009, I wrote about a woman who’d influenced me even though she was long dead. Last year I wrote about a [...]

Need something to read this weekend? SFSignal has a wonderful guide to the recent NPR Top 100 SFF books. Me? I’ll be reading this. Or maybe I’ll be reading the books I just got from Elizabeth Bear’s book sale. Or going to SCA events in the rain. Or, just maybe, all three.