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Richard Wintle and Cindy Doran—two of the contributors to The Best Science Writing Online 2012, edited by Bora Zivkovic—got together to talk about fairy tales, scalp diseases, deadlines, and autism. Richard is a molecular biologist and geneticist who blogs at Occam's Typewriter. His anthologized essay, “Genome Sequencing and Assembly, Shakespeare Style” is about how reading the genome sequence can be like reading Romeo and Juliet. Cindy is a clincal pharmacist and blogs at The Febrile Muse. Her essay, “Tinea Speaks Up: A Fairy Tale” is a story of fungi told as a fairy tale.
Alex Reshanov and Brian Switek—two of the contributors to The Best Science Writing Online 2012, edited by Bora Zivkovic—got together to talk about inspiration, the misconceptions about dinosaurs, and the process of starting out as a writer. Alex is an Austin-based freelance writer and founder of Blogus scientificus. Her anthologized essay, “Shakes on a Plane: Can Turbulence Kill You?” is about some of the things we try not to think about when we fly. Brian is a science writer who blogs at Laelaps and Smithsonian.com’s Dinosaur Tracking, and whose book, My Beloved Brontosaurus, will be published by Scientific American/FSG in April. His essay “The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!” is about how people have gotten the dodo wrong for years.
Like many geeks of the post-Sputnik generation, I grew up hoping that space travel would be common by the time I reached middle age. Weaned on a youthful diet of speculative fiction by the likes of Ray Bradbury and Arthur Clarke, raised on Star Trek and The Outer Limits, and thrilled by real-life hero Neil Armstrong's "one small step" onto the gravelly surface of the Moon when I was in elementary school, it never occurred to me that humankind's manifest destiny in the stars would be undone by changing political winds, disasters like the Challenger explosion, and a mountain of debt to pay for misguided military adventures like the War in Iraq.
It's true that, in some ways, we're living in a new golden age for space nerds. Bard Canning's gorgeously enhanced footage of Curiosity's descent to Mars -- made instantly available by the global network we built instead of a Hilton on the Moon -- certainly beats grainy snippets beamed down from Tranquility Base. A newly discovered exoplanet that "may be capable of supporting life" seems to make headlines every few months. Cassini's ravishing close-ups of Saturn regularly put the fever dreams of ILM's animators to shame. But wasn't I supposed to be "strolling on the deck of a starship" by now, as Paul Kantner's acid-fueled hippie space epic Blows Against the Empire promised me when it was nominated for a Hugo award in 1971? —Steve Silberman
The Best Science Writing Online 2012 contributors Allie Wilkinson and Brian Switek got together to discuss what inspired them to become science writers and bloggers, as well as their fascination with dinosaurs, dodos, and marine biology. Allie's essay in the book, “How to Take the Real Measure of a Man,” discusses the evolutionary implications of the “anogenital distance,” and Brian's “The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!” turns our mental image of the extinct dodo on its head. Brian is a science writer based in Salt Lake City, who runs the blogs Laelaps and Dinosaur Tracking, and whose book, My Beloved Brontosaurus will be published by Scientific America/FSG in April. Allie is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Ars Technica, Scientific American, and Chemical & Engineering News.
Lee Billings and Steve Silberman are two contributors to The Best Science Writing Online 2012, edited by Bora Zivkovic. Lee’s essay “Incredible Journey” chronicles the potential for and obstacles to space travel, and Steve's “Woof! Living Boldly as a ‘Free-Range Aspergian’” tells of the author’s friendship with an autistic man. Here, the two authors got together to talk about neurodiversity, the misconceptions about autism, and what would have to happen to make having a beer with an alien possible. Steve is a longtime writer for Wired, a bloger for the Public Library of Science, and author of Neurotribes. He lives in San Francisco. Lee is a freelance science writer and lives in New York.
David Manly and Eva Amsen are two contributors to The Best Science Writing Online 2012, edited by Bora Zivkovic. Amsen’s essay, “Make History, Not Vitamin C” outlines the strange connection between South Africa’s foundation and scurvy prevention, and Manly’s “Mirror Images: Twins and Identity” talks about growing up as an identical twin. Here the science journalists and bloggers got together to talk about each other’s posts, about animals, and about National Novel Writing Month.
David Manly and Dana Hunter are two contributors to The Best Science Writing Online 2012, edited by Bora Zivkovic. Hunter’s essay, “Adorers of the Good Science of Rock-Breaking” is about, well, breaking rocks, and Manly’s “Mirror Images: Twins and Identity” talks about growing up as an identical twin. Here the science journalists and bloggers got together to talk about each other’s posts, about science fiction, and cats.
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