Monthly Archives: May 2010
counting insects
Last week, I wrote for ScienceNOW about a way of estimating how many species of arthropods there are in the tropics. Arthropods are bugs, basically – insects, spiders, and other crunchy things. Entomologists throw around numbers for this – sometimes … Continue reading
museum tourist: amnh (subway edition)
And, finally, an extra-cool feature of the American Museum of Natural History: It connects right up to a subway station. So if you’re going on a rainy day, you don’t even have to go outside. Unless you’re me, you fail to locate the underground entrance to the museum, and you go out the wrong exit of the subway station into the rain. That’s ok – it feels a little more impressive to go in through the big doors on Central Park West. Continue reading
park tourist: patuxent river park
Today I went on an outing of the D.C. Science Writers Association to Patuxent River Park – a local park along the Patuxent River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. We got a little archaeology tour and a boat trip. … Continue reading
it takes a physicist
According to this wire story, an Australian physicist was the first person to notice a mistake in many dictionary definitions of a siphon. In case you’re wondering: when you’re using a siphon, it’s gravity that moves liquid from one place … Continue reading
museum tourist: amnh (butterfly edition)
The American Museum of Natural History in New York: Way too much museum to fit in one blog post. Here’s my first post about the visit. Next topic: Butterflies. This is a trend at natural history museums these days, apparently, … Continue reading
museum tourist: national aquarium (cont.)
A few weeks ago when I went to the National Aquarium in Washington, I got quite a surprise: this guy, staring me down from inside his tank. He’s a northern snakehead, a kind of invasive fish who made quite a … Continue reading
older and better
It’s the thing I didn’t realize about getting older: life gets better. Nobody really knows why, but a lead theory is that the older you get, the better you are at letting stuff go. You know who you are, you … Continue reading
museum tourist: american museum of natural history
I went to nerd heaven on Wednesday. I was in New York for a meeting, so I decided this was my big chance to see the American Museum of Natural History. This is the museum that scientists from New York … Continue reading
find an expert!
Someone bought a facebook ad to sell experts to people like me: You know what? Thanks, random advertiser, but I can find my own experts. I wonder if there are reporters who use services like this? I find google gets … Continue reading
stress and death
For this week’s issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, I wrote a story about a molecular link between stress and death. The story is here. Ok, there’s a catch: You have to be a subscriber to read it, and … Continue reading