Monthly Archives: January 2010
languages are hard
The Economist had a story last month about which languages are the most difficult. It’s kind of a silly quest. For one thing, it depends what language you’re starting in. If you’re a native speaker of Korean, Japanese is probably … Continue reading
new quizzes!
The Science Channel has posted three more of my quizzes! Woohoo! Tell all your friends! You may do better on the Science of Alcohol quiz if you know your Elizabethan poets. I got certified for Scuba in 1995. I haven’t … Continue reading
museum tourist: KU natural history
This weekend I was in Lawrence, Kansas, where my dad grew up, and stopped by the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. It’s in a great old building atop a hill on the KU campus. In olden times (the Cretaceous, … Continue reading
dangers in dictionaries
For my Dictionary of the Week entries, I always check to see if a dictionary has obscenities. It seems useful to know whether a dictionary is reflecting the full range of a language or just, you know, the nice words. … Continue reading
meteorite!
A doctor in Lorton heard an explosion in his office on Monday. But it wasn’t an explosion, it was a meteorite. (Read the story in the Washington Post.) It’s crazy, this business of living on a planet. We go around … Continue reading
plants are awesome
Yesterday for ScienceNOW I wrote about tobacco plants that open their flowers at a different time of day if they’re getting eaten by caterpillars. (My story.) It’s kind of ingenious, if these scientists are right about it. Hawkmoths are good … Continue reading
museum tourist: harvard natural history (cont.)
About a month ago, I wrote about a visit to Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. Friend, fellow science writer, and Bostonian Lila Guterman asked me why I hadn’t written about the glass flowers. Because they’re so awesome they deserve their … Continue reading
can auschwitz be saved?
My buddy and former colleague Andrew Curry wrote a great story for the February issue of Smithsonian about whether Auschwitz should be saved. Now it’s a museum with more than a million visitors last year. Some people say we’d be … Continue reading
fossils are fun
Tonight I went on a tour of the fossil labs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, organized by the DC Science Writer’s Association. I learned many exciting things and took pictures with my cell phone camera, ’cause that’s … Continue reading
gratuitous cute animal picture
A few weeks ago a friend had to come to D.C. to take a test for a federal government fellowship. She couldn’t find good dog care at home, and my building is pet-friendly, so she brought the dog with her. … Continue reading