Then there’s this, from the Omni New Haven in New Haven, Connecticut:

Just as busy, but a little more autumnal.

A few weeks ago I was at a conference in Vienna and was excited to discover: wood floors!

Well, actually, the carpets make better pictures. But still, I was excited. Europe: It’s different. I guess.

photos: me, of course

]]> http://heyhelen.com/2011/05/conference-room-carpets/feed/ 0 http://heyhelen.com/2011/01/world-science-podcast/ http://heyhelen.com/2011/01/world-science-podcast/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:54:54 +0000 Helen http://heyhelen.com/?p=2298 Happy 100th episode, Rhitu!

My friend Rhitu Chatterjee hosts the science podcast for The World, an international news show produced by the BBC and PRI, and she’s celebrating the 100th episode of the podcast. Listen to it here. In particular, keep your ear out for the listener who sings the Norwegian birthday song over the phone. Ok, yeah, it’s me. It’s right near the beginning of the podcast.

If you actually speak Norwegian, I apologize for my accent and for one possible wrong preposition. (I sing “fra hjertet” and I think it might actually be “av hjertet.”)

UPDATE, 1/10: To clarify – I’m not in the video clip posted on that page, I’m in the podcast. To listen to the podcast, click the play button or “Download MP3″ near the top of the post.

The first weekend of July, I was at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and saw a table for the Smithsonian Community Reef. Someone taught me how to crochet a pseudosphere – it’s like a sphere, kind of, but in hyperbolic space, which is this other kind of geometry that is not the Euclidean geometry of planes and squares and nice normal things that you learned about in ninth grade. Crocheting hyperbolic shapes turns out to be kind of hypnotic. Here’s me learning how:

The reef is being built by hook-wielding volunteers like me; the pieces all have to be turned in by sometime in September and will be on display at the Natural History Museum as part of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef starting October 16. Last week I went to a workshop at a local yarn store to learn more, and I’m now working on my third piece of coral. Here’s the collection so far:

You’ll see that it’s a great way to use up that hideous orange acrylic yarn.

I wrote a blog post about the reef for Smithsonian magazine.

Here’s the press release about the awards. UPDATE: Science re-posted the story, so you can read it here.

For Immediate Release
April 17, 2010

D.C. Science Writers Association Announces Inaugural Science Newsbrief Award Winners

Washington, D.C.—The D.C. Science Writers Association (DCSWA) is pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Science Newsbrief Award.

Most science writing awards go to complex, multipart stories, but those awards often fail to recognize one of the most challenging — and most common — tasks of the science writer: writing short. Done well, short, accessible, accurate pieces make an enormous contribution to the public understanding of science.

DCSWA founded the Newsbrief Award in 2009 to reward journalists who excel at short science writing. All DCSWA members were eligible to submit written entries of 500 words or less.

The winner of the inaugural award is ScienceNOW’s Sam Kean, for his piece “Mother’s Cancer Can Infect Her Fetus.” Judges said Kean used clear and straightforward reporting on a little-known topic with broad implications. One judge said the story was very readable and written in a tight, concise manner. Another said it “used compelling storytelling to convey an interesting medical story.”

Sam works as a correspondent for Science and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New Scientist, and Mental Floss, among other outlets. He was the 2009 national runner-up for the NASW’s Evert Clark/Seth Payne award.

Two honorable mentions were also chosen. Helen Fields was recognized for “Groovin’,” published in ScienceNOW. According to one of the judges, “I found myself smiling every time I read this.” Another called it charming and a gem of a story.

Sarah C.P. Williams got an honorable mention for “The Power of One” in the HHMI Bulletin. Judges said this original story had a nice use of metaphor, and the clear storyline meant that readers did not get lost in the science.

A panel of five judges, past presidents of DCSWA, selected the winner and honorable mentions. They are Aaron Levin of Psychiatric News, freelancer Lisa Orange, Joe Palca of National Public Radio, Gail Porter of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Mitch Waldrop of Nature.

An award ceremony will take place during DCSWA’s annual Professional Development Day on April 17 at the American Geophysical Union building in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. Science Writers Association is an organization of about 500 science reporters, editors, authors, and public information officers based in the national capital area. For more information or to join please visit www.dcswa.org. Details on how to enter the 2011 Newsbrief Award will appear on the Web site by the end of the year.

I don’t know the other winners – I look forward to meeting them Saturday.

Summary of epic Verizon problems: Every time they send a technician to my building to do anything in the telecom closet, they disconnect my phone (and, by extension, my internet). Monday morning my phone went out. Tuesday evening a technician came out and fixed my phone. Wednesday afternoon a technician came to fix some other problems. (Possibly caused by the guy who came Tuesday.) And guess what: my phone got disconnected.

Yeah, I’m pretty frustrated.

Here’s how this works. Every week I get a bunch of press releases from science journals, like Nature and Biology Letters. My editor at ScienceNOW gets them, too, and so do tons of other science writers. This is how we know what’s coming out in the journals the next week; there’s a list of articles, with a summary and contact information for each one. When my editor assigns me a story, the first thing I do is e-mail one of the authors. I do that before I read the article or anything. I know I’m going to have to talk to them, I have limited time, and I want to get moving on scheduling that interview.

So last week he assigned me this story and I e-mailed one of the authors, who had a charming British last name and works in Wales, asking him if he could talk to me about his tropical bird research, blah blah blah. Half an hour later I was looking at the article, and looking through the references, and thought, wait, who wrote this article? These people are Canadian. And none of them has a charming last name…uh-oh.

Yeah, I’d grabbed the wrong contact information off the press release and sent a message about tropical birds to a computer scientist. The best part is, he studies errors. If I ever write a story about errors, I’ve already got a personal anecdote and a source ready to go. (Fortunately, he was amused.)

photo: Alice Boyle

And then I went to Germany and finally started to develop a taste for beer, which seems like an important step on the road to adulthood:

And I did lots of other cool stuff, too, like knitting and going to U2 concerts and discovering an obsession with dictionaries.

So, what excitement will 2010 bring? I know I plan to write more stories about science, spend a lot of time near home, sing a bunch, knit a sweater for my mom, and generally enjoy myself. I also reserve the right to add adventures as the opportunities present themselves. Read along with me, ok?

Photos: top, Chris Linder; bottom, me.

For example: I went to the grocery store the other day and was surprised to remember they actually give you bags here. In Germany (and in Norway, and heck, maybe in most of Europe), if you want a bag, you have to pay for it. So of course I always carried reusable bags, and so far I’m doing that here, too. I have a giant collection. Might as well put them to use. Although I don’t know what I’m going to put my recycling in when I run out of paper bags from Trader Joe’s.

On Sunday I was reading up on parking near an event I was going to when I realized, geez, it’s only two miles away, I wouldn’t have thought twice about walking that distance in Berlin. Ok, I actually would have thought twice, because two miles is far. Also, unlike this neighborhood, Berlin is flat. But I walked the two miles over hill and dale and arrived feeling virtuous. I mean, that’s three good acts in one, right? Prevented pollution, got exercise, saved money by not using my car. Oh, and saved parking for others. Four! Four good things! So my new criteria: if it’s less than two miles, why not walk? Tonight I walked to the library (two miles, then took the metro home) and yesterday I walked to Safeway (less than a mile, and now I’m embarrassed that I usually drive it).

Now if only I could convince the water in my apartment to run hot instantly like the water in my Berlin apartment, I’d be in business.

I wasn’t optimistic about my first day – I’d never managed to reach my official contact before starting, and when I reached a secretary on Friday, she appeared to be mad at me – but it went really well. I already have an assignment for tomorrow. And it’s for a story I proposed myself. At a meeting. IN GERMAN.

I showed up in the morning and spoke German and somehow they took this to mean that I actually speak German, rather than just being able to fake it in brief, uncomplicated encounters, and they keep speaking it to me. (And repeating themselves more slowly and with simpler vocabulary when I’m confused, bless their hearts.)

I’m afraid the editor thinks I am also writing my story in German. My written German is like that of a five-year-old who has only learned one or two sentence structures and has a severely limited vocabulary and was probably also raised by wolves (see example of corrections here). Of course, everyone here reads English perfectly well and I’m sure I’ll be able to get translation help if I need it. But it’s for Wednesday’s paper. So they’d better help fast.

Wish me luck.

This morning my friend Sarah was biking through my neighborhood in her early-morning haze when she saw ahead of her a pair of Fluevogs walking down the street. Wow! Fluevogs! in Berlin! She looked up, and it was me, wearing my new heels to work for the first time. Ha.