Dreun

It's that time already!

2010-03-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

So soon! So sad! It appears it's already time for this blogger page to hang up it's hat. I'll be moving over to a new location, with a not-so-random URL, and little more opportunity for customization.

I appreciate all 120 of you who somehow managed to find your way here. All the helpful comments, and the hit tracker slowly moving along, is a really encouraging force for someone just starting out. As of.... now, you can find me over at http://colinschultz.wordpress.com/. All the old posts have moved, and there's even a NEW one there right now!

Three links to the same site in one post is probably enough.

Thanks for reading!

Interview with Carl Zimmer

2010-03-05T14:05:00.005-05:00

Earlier today award-winning science journalist Carl Zimmer was kind enough to take some time out to talk to me. We hit on a number of different ideas including: the role of the science journalist, how to make science people-friendly, and his take on the issues facing the craft.

You can listen to the audio recording of the interview, or the full transcript is posted after the jump.

Colin: I was wondering what you see your role being as a science journalist?

Zimmer: What I see my role as? I guess I see my role as telling stories that have to do with science. As new research comes out, I try to explain, essentially tell the story, in a way that non-scientists can understand. When I can I try to expand those stories so it's not just about a paper that was published last week, but is a story that might reach over the course of decades or centuries even.

C: So you try to bring in other things, more than just the science, that would maybe make it more pertinent to a general audience?

Z: When I'm talking about expanding the scale of it - all the scientific research that goes on now has a very long history, and a very interesting history. But it's not always possible to write about the history in a newspaper article or a magazine article. So in books, for example, I very much enjoy trying to go back to find the roots of current advances in science. And those roots often go back surprisingly far. So that's what I meant by that.

C: What about bringing in current affairs, or the political angles of it. Just other things that people will be able to take to.

Z: I don't focus mainly on that. If it is relevant to the implications of some scientific research then I'll certainly write about it.

I recently wrote a piece about ocean acidification, and there I was really getting into the details of the research that people had done in order to compare current ocean acidification to periods in the past - like 55 million years ago - when there was sudden ocean acidification. So for the most part it's pretty basic science, but I definitely will explain how this has real relevance for us right now because when the oceans acidify, fisheries may collapse and corral reefs may disappear and so on, and that's going to affect people in a very immediate way.

But I think a lot of science writers actually try to search a little too hard for that "news you can use" when it comes to science. A lot of science is just interesting in and of itself. And it just sort of gives you a richer understanding of the world, and there really isn't any need to make wild claims about a cure for cancer right around the corner. So very often I make a conscious effort not to look at immediate relevance if it's not really there.

C: When you were talking about the science being interesting in and of itself, I was wondering what you think of the public's ability to interpret science facts. Let's say you lay them all out on the table, how will the public look at them, do you think?

Z: I do think that if people take the time to read good science writing they can get a pretty good understanding of things. But, I just think that a lot of people don't take that time, unfortunately. So I can write a 5000 word piece on the evidence for global warming, and then somebody may base their entire judgement on global warming from a few seconds of something they heard on cable news; where somebody said that climate scientists weren't very nice people, and that's it. And then they've kind of made up their mind and they don't even bother to read the books or the articles that might show them that really is sort of beside the point.

C: I was wondering, based on that, do you ever wonder.... Because it seems like the cable news quick hits are maybe just a little more accessible than the bigger features. The bigger feature has more science and it's far better journalism, but do you ever worry about your work not being accessible enough to a general audience.

Z: Well it's always a trade off, that's always the big struggle. Figuring out what you can do in the different kind of genres that are at your disposal. A general reader is never going to sit down and read an actual scientific paper from start to finish, that's just not going to happen. So you have to find other ways of writing or talking about the science in there.

Certainly, TV in general is just very easy for people to watch. People sort of plunk down and turn on the TV and see what's on. Even the very best TV, you know it can get some things across, but there is not that much you can get across even in a whole hour of TV. I've worked a bit with TV people, and I certainly appreciate the constraints they're under.

People are going to choose to get their science how they choose to get it. And there's not all that much you can do about it.

C: Do you ever try to think of steps you could take to make your work more accessible?

Z: I'm always doing that.

C: Could you give me an example of something you might do?

Z: One of the most important things to do is to draw people into a story. You can't just declare at the beginning of a story that you're going to be talking about autophagy. But if you find a way to start the story, to say, "It turns out that deep down we're all cannibals, who are constantly devouring ourselves and ripping our own bodies apart in order to rebuild them," that might get people's attention even if they don't know what autophagy is.

So it starts at the very beginning of a piece.

C: In the research I've been doing, one thing that has been popping up is that maybe putting in some emotional characters, or even using things like video, are good ways to get people in. Do you ever intentionally do things like that?

Z: I will certainly be aware of the kind of emotion that learning about science can trigger. I mean it can be a pretty emotional experience. If someone does a really good job of explaining the size and the structure of the universe, that can be quite an awesome thing. Learning how your brain works can be very unsettling, because you sort of have this image of yourself as an indivisible little homunculus in your head, and then it turns out that you emerge out of this network of interactions between neurons. That can be disorienting.

You know I enjoy sometimes writing about parasites, just because they're so bizarre. And people will tell me that they've had nightmares from reading stuff I've written about that. You know that's definitely one way of making things stick. That's one of the ways emotions work, they make information stick. So I definitely bear that in mind.

Video. I always wanted to somehow incorporate video into the things I wrote, but it was just kind of a fantasy when I was starting out. But now, it's kind of old hat.

So if I can get my hands on a useful video I will embed it in a blog post. I think of them as sort of moving illustrations. That can be effective, and it certainly does draw a lot of people's attention.

I've written a couple of pieces about an aspect of evolution called sexual conflict - where males and females in the same species have a conflict of interest over fertilization and so on. Females want to be able to choose which sperm they use from different males to fertilize their offspring to get the best offspring, and males just want to ensure that all their sperm get used. So that leads to all sorts of really strange, very bizzare, adaptations.

C: Is that the duck thing?

Z: Yeah. So I was writing a piece about the sexual conflict in water fowl, and I said to the scientist, did you guys happen to take video of that? And they had, and they were happy to share it. And it's had maybe 300, 000 or 400, 000 views in total. And some percentage of those people, I'm fairly sure, have gone and actually read the post.

Not only is the video arresting, but it is also viral, so people can just pick up the video and embed it and say, "If you want to read more about this, go read this post by Carl Zimmer."

In both those ways, I think it draws people's attention to something that if I was just writing about it the way it appeared in a scientific paper, people wouldn't pay so much attention.

C: What do you think is the biggest issue facing science journalism right now?

Z: I think mainly the question of basic economic survival. Are people going to be making a living doing it in say 10 years, because that's sort of an open question I think. If people aren't making a living doing it, does that mean they're not going to be able to do a really good job of it, or will we just end up with a lot of stuff that's either wildly inaccurate, or just that's just incredibly boring and no one wants to read. That's a possibility.

Another possibility is that there is a cultural and economic shift, but that the people who continue to write about science, even if they're not staff writers someplace, or full-time freelancers, they still do a good job. You know, compelling writing on important subjects.

Or the other alternative is that some economic model does emerge that does allow for some people to make a career out of this kind of stuff. But, who knows what form that will take. Maybe people will just be writing for iPads or something, I don't know. But that's the most important question I think.

C: Just the funding and survival of the craft?

Z: Yeah, you know the economic structure of it.

C: Do you have any ideas of how to fix it? Or is it just sort of left to be seen.

Z: I don't think it's something that you can fix. It's not like you've just got a watch that you just set in a new spring. I think that science writing, like all of journalism, is emergent in the sense that the science journalism you see is the result of there being a particular economic history that produced a number of large newspapers and large magazines, and a book publishing industry that has spent some of it's time on science. Now a lot of those places are not able to make ends meet.

It's not like I can say "Hey, here's the solution to your not having any classified ads anymore." The ads are gone, and someone will figure out, or people are figuring out, other ways to make money on information, classified ads and so on. It's just a matter of time to see if there is a place in that different system for more science journalism.

C: Perfect. Part of what I'm doing is going through examples of good, strong science journalism. I've got the Kavli awards that you won, and then some other articles as well. But I was wondering if you have an example of your work that sticks out in your mind as your best or your favourite.

Z: One that sticks out in my mind is a piece that I did about fireflies in the New York Times. It was one of the pieces that I submitted for the Kavli prize. One reason that I think it was successful is that it was hugely popular. And you can measure that with different kinds of measurements. It was the most emailed story in the New York Times for a number of days. The scientist in question was flooded with emails with people asking about her work and so on.

Understanding fireflies, there's no "news you can use" there. It's not like the next computer is going to be based on firefly flashes. It's not like some new cure is going to be coming tomorrow from fireflies, it's just basic biology. But it's this thing that people are very familiar with. For some people, these fireflies are around in their backyard every summer and they don't really think about them. I was just pleased with how I was able to convey just how complex firefly flashes can be. That I think is the big thing in biology, that there is all this staggering, fascinating complexity, and scientists can actually tease it apart and figure out how all of it evolved and all of that.

And the story is just 1500 words long, so there isn't much room to do it. So that's why I'm particularly fond of that one.

C: Is there anything you did differently in that story that you think made it so grabby to readers? Or is it just the topic?

Z: It's the kind of approach I try to to take to a lot of my writing. So it's not like there was something radically different from the other things I write. I think that the pieces just came together particularly well.

I picked the story in part because I knew that people are familiar with fireflies and I could surprise them by showing them that they are actually not familiar with them. That there was a lot they didn't know about. It was also helpful to find one scientist who does really good biology on them, who is fairly articulate, who I could go and visit in the field. So those things all helped.

C: Thanks so much.

Do what they say, not what you do

2010-02-28T16:25:00.018-05:00

Howdy. As part of my independent study into science journalism, I was hoping to put together a short for-journalists article with a few tips and thought-provoking tidbits. If you could give me any feedback/critiques, anything at all, I would truly appreciate it.

The first draft is after the jump...

Interviews have been conducted, editors have chipped in, reporters have shared their stories - all in the attempt to answer the question, how do we make people learn science from the news?

But there is, of course, a science to science journalism. It's up there with the mathematics of origami or the fundamentals of alligator hygiene as the least read science ever - because the people it concerns hardly have time for sleep, let alone academia. But if we want to learn to do it better, we need to stop sharing war stories and turn to those who know. Since we're all stressed by deadlines, I thought I'd do the legwork.

Trawled from the dark corners of the world of academic science communication, here are some things to do, some things to avoid, and some things just to be aware of.

Assuming makes an....

People go into science journalism for the same reason they go into sports journalism. They're interested, they think it's important, and they want to share it with the world. But the problem faced by science writers is the same as any other beat; you know more about your story than most of your audience, and once you put ink to paper (or e-ink to e-reader), it's hard not to let that show.

The difference is, the rules of hockey don't change much. You can take a year off and come back to the same game you left. Unlike the sports reporter, who can write freely about hat tricks and grand slams, science journalists face a big problem with assumed knowledge. People don't come from the same background, and they have different grasps of the basics. After years in the field it's easy to forget where you came from, but answering the stupid questions is the most important thing you can do.

Explaining how it all goes together is up there, too.

Enter the schema

When people are confronted with a new idea, they never just take it as a stand-alone fact. They ask questions like, how does this fit in with the other things I know? Have I experienced that before? And, how do I feel about it?

They use the answers to these questions to decide how to handle the new idea. It can either reinforce a previously held belief, start to break one down, or be put in a class all on it's own.

Psychologists think we have something called a schema, which is basically shorthand for this thought process. When confronted with a new fact, your audience will filter it through their schema. Some facts will get slotted in, and some will be ignored. If your idea is a big enough eye-opener, it might even start to change their mind.

Stop trying to change the world... all in one shot

The problem with trying to write for different schemas is that they don't like to change very much, or very fast.

What makes science so great is that ground-breaking discoveries happen all the time. For people who keep up on the news, it doesn't present any problems. Your schema is able to develop over time, slowly fitting in all the new ideas. The role of DNA. Transcription. Telomeres. Genetic engineering.

But for the audience who only drops in once in a while, your mega-feature about the world-changing role of a new tool for the bio-tech industry might leave the reader with little more than, "We can do this?!"

Not everyone will understand it the first time, and the odds of them re-reading it for full comprehension are pretty low. What this really means for science journalism is: expect to tell your story more than once, and in different ways. Pictures help, and video is even better. They both help to grab attention, and many people learn better if they have something to look at.

But above all...

Get out of the science section

Just like you follow your interests to research, write and share science stories, the same is true of your natural audience. Science magazines, science TV shows, science sections of the newspaper; they're all fighting for the same audience - people who already think science is worth paying attention to.

You wouldn't be in this job if you didn't think it was interesting, and the tendency is to assume your audience feels the same way. But like anyone lamenting the decline in voter turn-out, don't expect them to come to you.

If you want to write the best science stories, don't write scientific stories.

If a new advancement is your piece's raison d'être, you'll quickly cap out your audience with the limited supply of science keeners. Find another way to tell the tale, and sneak the science through the back door. High-brow writers may look down on popularizing, but it doesn't matter how clever your phrase if no one is reading it.

By no means should you abandon scientific accuracy. But, if the only point to your story breaks down to "Science is cool! Look at this!", you'll never get beyond the enthusiasts. So find a policy initiative, a local hero, and break down the physics of the super bowl. These are all ways to get people involved and interested.

There's another handy tool you can unleash to engage your audience. Call them cognitive short cuts, call them the tools of the enemy, but either way...

Mind your frames

Framing is a tricky issue in science journalism. To frame a story, the writer plays into the audience's tendency to make logical jumps. Frames invoke values, emotions, and can trigger traditional responses.

The most common frame by far in journalism is conflict. Here's a good guy. Here's a bad guy. Some policy issue is under discussion, but man is it ever boring. Setting up some conflict gets the reader to associate with the people involved, bringing them into a debate they may otherwise pay no attention to.

There are way more frames to be employed than just conflict, but here's a few:

Social progress - This new advance is going to make people's lives better. It's a good thing.

Pandora's box - Sure the discovery is cool, but what about a chain reaction of evil science? We should be careful.

Governance - The science is cool, but who should be in charge of it; who should own it? Hey, whose interests are we serving here.

Pick any science issue, and I bet you can come up with different ways to tell the story to fit into each frame. And they're all going to get more eyes than a straight news piece - and more eyes means more learning.

Call it framing, call it spin. Choose to use it, or leave it to the ghouls over in PR. One way or another framing is going be used, either on you or by you. In any event, it's better to recognize it.

Be journalists, not cheerleaders

Along with framing, PR and other professional science communicators are getting savvy. The understanding of how people learn science has come a long way, and the tools of the trade are being turned on the public without having to worry about pesky issues - like balance, or truth.

Science, and the industries it spawns, are realising what's gone wrong for them in past controversies. Somewhere between nuclear power, genetically modified organisms, and nanotechnology, they've started to figure out that engaging people at earlier stages of development helps make the public more comfortable and accepting of the new field.

It's easier to make people see things your way if yours is the first opinion they hear. The science communicators are setting the building blocks for the public's schema.

This means that science journalists, just like journalists on every other beat, need to keep an eye on the science communicators - and the scientists. But with the dramatic public controversies over evolution and climate change, many journalists got swept from watchdog to cheer leader. In an attempt to stand up for the science they love, they let their guard down.

Journalists had to defend the science, because scientists weren't doing it themselves. At least not in a public forum. But luckily for us, they're starting to get suited up to enter the fray.

Scientific communicators

Scientists are timid creatures. They never give answers without caveats. There is always a "...but only if", or an "...under certain circumstances." But they've also come to understand that they need us. And we need them.

A journalist is nothing without their sources.

But to really understand why they're so shy, we need to look to the past.

Think of a standard predator-prey relationship curve. If you want to be a science journalist, you already know what this is.

Now, replace the prey curve with the scientists, and the predator line with the reporter. Look closely to see how the reporter and the scientist interact in their natural habitat.

We seem to think that any scientists plugging for extra media attention is up to something. Cold fusion. Stem cell cloning. Ardipithecus.

Scientists, however, know they need to get out there. There has been a call-to-arms for scientists to engage with the media and the public. You need to be wary of scientists who prefer press conferences to peer-review, but don't be surprised if one or two knock on your door looking to chat.

Let's not confuse their renewed efforts to talk with a quest for stardom, and risk running them back to their burrows.

And now for something completely different...

2010-02-19T20:21:00.005-05:00

I know the best blogs are thematic, regular, and organized. But today, I just can't help myself.

As an assignment for my MA Journalism program meant to sharpen our skills for integrated newsrooms, our class was divvied into beats. We were set free on the city to produce print, radio and video stories about our beat, with the stories (hopefully) finding their way into multiple forms of media.

Being stuck into the Arts & Culture beat, I didn't really have a damn clue what was going on in the city. I like music, I like concerts, and I like books, but other than that I'm hopelessly lost.

I took it upon myself to be the camera/editor guy for my group's video. We wanted to have a lot more fun than your standard news report, and this was the result ....

The rest of the work can be found on our lovely squarespace page.

Getting the point to the public

2010-02-15T20:22:00.012-05:00

an argument for framing in science journalism

I am aware that I'm about to step into a full on forum war *dons his flame-retardant lab coat*, and that as a student I may be passing far beyond my area of expertise. However, I need to take issue to a post by DrugMonkey today.

His post was mostly concerned with anonymity on the internet, but what bothered me was this:

Poor Matt Nisbet takes his lumps around these parts because his academic field is spin, sorry framing. This is the process within professional communication whereby the strictest and most precise depiction of the current state of knowledge about objective reality is...undervalued. Undervalued relative to driving home whatever broader themes and ideas the communicator happens to favor. Undervalued relative to rounding up votes on "your side", regardless of why such voters may favor your position.

I just launched into an independent study project to figure out how to do science journalism properly. One of the concepts that resonated most strongly, as someone concerned with effectively explaining science to the public, is framing. DrugMonkey's idea of equating framing to spin, and of communicators only pushing for 'votes', seems to belittle the role of science journalists.

The problem science journalists run into is that, while objective reality is what really matters, most people don't care. Clearly and cleanly telling people about some new advancement just isn't enough to get the interest of people who aren't already interested.

I'm going to go a little taboo here, and pull a (liberal sprinkling of) quotes from a paper by Nisbet.(1) Using the perceived enemy as my back-up maybe isn't the smartest plan, but whatever, I really like these quotes.

Historically, a prevailing assumption has been that ignorance is at the root of social conflict over science. As a solution, after formal education ends, science media should be used to educate the public about the technical details of the matter in dispute. Once citizens are brought up to speed on the science, they will be more likely to judge scientific issues as scientists do and controversy will go away. In this decades-old "deficit" model, communication is defined as a process of transmission. The facts are assumed to speak for themselves and to be interpreted by all citizens in similar ways. If the public does not accept or recognize these facts, then the failure in transmission is blamed on journalists, "irrational" public beliefs, or both.

There's the objective reality we all want, and as scientific types (I wonder how many non-science types are readers of ScienceBlogs?) we like to let the data speak for itself. Let's rephrase journalists there to whoever happens to be the talking head trying to convey the facts. But the problem remains the same, people don't all interpret information the same way.

People like to use another construct called a schema to help make sense of the news.

(A schema is) a psychological structure that individuals use to receive, filter, and process information and to integrate new information and experiences into coherent clusters. A schema is a collection of knowledge, previous experience, and attitudes toward a subject (or attitude object) that an individual invokes when confronted with new information or a new event.(2)

Even worse, if they aren't already interested in the topic, they probably won't even read the story. This is where the skill of the communicator comes in. They have to make people care about something they normally wouldn't care about.

Effective communication will necessitate connecting a scientific topic to something the public already values or prioritizes, conveying personal relevance. And in people’s minds, these links are critical for making sense of scientific information.

This is where framing comes in. Frames in a science story help convey the new research results in a way that people will understand.

You can't just go around making people's brains explode with super-cool new discoveries. You've gotta ease them into it. The frames Nisbet outlines (pic) can be used to organize a story to make sure the information gets across, because a dry reporting of the facts probably won't keep the reader past the second paragraph.

This is, of course, all from the perspective of someone who wants to inform and educate. Not spin and misconstrue. But I think it's important to keep the tools and the possible results separated.

1) Nisbet, Matthew C. and Scheufele, Dietram A. “What’s next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions”. American Journal of Botany. 96. 10 (2009): 1767-1778.

2) Augenbraun, Eliene et al. “Adult Science Learning from Local Television Newscasts”. Science Communication. 28. 2 (2006). 216-242.

America Round-Up!

2010-02-10T19:36:00.002-05:00

Want to know what happened today, all nicely tied together with an extremely loose joining thread? Here are three stories of things that happened to.... Americans!

It's been a busy day for our closest neighbours. Some are getting trapped, and others are being freed. Here's what's happening to our American friends today!

Mr. Endeavour goes to the ISS

2010-02-10T19:15:00.005-05:00

I've been following the whole shuttle/constellation/ISS affair quasi-closely. So it was a pretty cool surprise to walk into today's story meeting and be told;

"You're doing a story on the space shuttle."
And, with my timeliness news-hat on, my first question was, "What about it?"
"Well it docked with the ISS this morning."
"So what?" I said.
"I don't know, but give me a minute and a half on it."
"Sure thing Mr. Editor man."

I took this as an opportunity to tell the masses (all 10 people in my class, and whoever stumbles upon this post) about the fate of the shuttle, and how we're essentially screwed to get people to the ISS in the near future. But now I'm just giving too much away, so.... here.

Shedding light on a new paradigm of science writing

2010-02-09T18:11:00.007-05:00

Or, how to avoid stupid mistakes and actually be a good science journalist

So today I officially got clearance to start an independent study project for my Masters of Journalism program. As I unfortunately found out after I came to Western, the Science Journalism course is only one of the possible electives. And, it turned out to be a no-go for this year.

But all hope is not lost! I'll be diving into the literature, and conducting ~~interviews~~ journalistic research with science writers who I think are super-cool to try to figure out the best field in the world.

The project will, hopefully, yield rewards not just for me, but for everyone who is/wants to be a science journalist. Hopefully.

The theories on how people learn science from the media are pretty fleshed out, and that's what I want from the academic-types. But the question it brings up is, does it really work? Sure it's how people learn from media, but they still have to read/listen/watch the thing first.

So that's where I turn to the science journalists. What works? What leads? What did you do to finely craft your best story? If I want people to learn about something, first I have to make them care. Because if they don't care, they won't stick around.

Or maybe I've got it all wrong, maybe my job isn't to try to teach. Maybe my job is to find the "awe" and inspire interest, as the New York Times found out. At any rate, I'll be using this blog to track the progress of my project, and share my findings.

So, to the people on this list (and maybe some who aren't), consider yourself warned, I'm coming for you:

David Dobbs
Carl Zimmer
Thomas Levenson
Andrew Revkin
Jay Ingram
Candis Callison
Nicola Jones

Oh, and wearing a lab coat to the interview might make researchers feel more comfortable, but maybe I should avoid wearing this one.

Illustration by David Parkins, Nature via scienceblogs.com/bioephemera

Boom De Ya-Da, Boom De Ya-Da

2010-01-08T18:47:00.000-05:00

So I've written the top of this post about five different times, and I really don't know what to put. I really want to be all thoughtful and introspective, but really theres only one way to describe my first week at Daily Planet ....

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! ehehehehehhehee.

Just to get it out of the way.

<----- Here is me being a huge fanboy ubernerd. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's been so amazing seeing everyone of my classmates' work over the last week. People are hitting the front page, getting on the air, and making it on TV.

Speaking of TV. I was on TV! (12:40) One of the other interns (Natalie Clark) and I were supposed to be shoe models for a story about how walking in high-heels puts less stress on your knees than running shoes (weird eh?) when the camera man snapped wide and... there we were!

What's even more fun than being on TV is that some of my WORK got on TV. My job is to, every morning, come up with a long list of stories for the Planet Now section of the show. My boss, one of the show producers, then shortlists it. We take it to the story pitch meeting, where the show producer cuts it down to what will be on the show that day.

My boss and I then cut video, write scripts, make phone calls to researchers etc, and put together the Planet Now and Weird Planet sections of the show. In only one week I've had the chance to write five stories. Two of which went through unedited. Yes!

I'm very excited to head into next week. I'm supposed to go on a film shoot Friday, I have a meeting with the Executive Producer, and hopefully I'll learn a ton more about making science fun!

I look forward to hearing everyone else's stories, and I hope they're having as much of a blast as I am!

This year's solstice - The longest day of the year

2009-12-21T08:50:00.009-05:00

I'm not crazy. I swear. I'm also not making some point about the meaning of existence. Actually, it's all really quite simple.

We hear about the winter solstice being the shortest day of the year, and we take it to mean we have less sunlight hours today than any other day of the year. The tilt of Earth's rotation around it's axis causes the northern hemisphere to be tipped away from the Sun. So rather than rising high in the sky, it skips along the horizon. This means less daylight hours today than yesterday.

Today, however, December 21st, 2009, is longer than yesterday. In fact, this year's winter solstice has more daylight than any other winter solstice in history.

The simple reason is: the Earth's spin is slowing down.

Tidal friction is one of the leading causes.

The moon's gravity pulls not only the oceans towards it, causing tides, but it actually stretches the Earth.

These distortions cause friction which saps energy from the Earth. When the Moon was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, the day was about six hours long! And this isn't just sunshine day, this is six hours for a full day/night cycle.

It's not a speedy decrease, though. We've picked up only about two milliseconds in the last 190 years. Right now we get about nine hours of sunlight at the winter solstice in mid-latitudes. Next year, it will be a tiny little bit more.

So, if you are one of those who want to find meaning in everything... take solace in the fact that even on the darkest day of the year, it will only get brighter.

*images courtesy of Museum Victoria, and the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon*

Digging up the Dino Guy

2009-12-17T21:53:00.010-05:00

While I'm definitely an avid fan of science and all the spectacularness it brings, I'm also pretty keen on education. Especially, that's right, science education.

When I got the opportunity to make a radio documentary, I wanted to do something science-y. I also wanted to shirk the negativity thats extremely common in the media, and create something happy.

Poking around on the internets for armchair scientists, I came across the Open Dinosaur Project. And lo-and-behold there is an interview with one of the project's volunteers, a London man named Bruce Woollatt.

The Open Dino project is all about crowd sourcing dinosaur bone measurements, to give keeners without PhD's the chance to help advance the science. Above been a huge dino-fan, Bruce makes dinosaur models. Many of these have worked their way into the London Children's Museum.

Bruce also teaches art classes for kids at the Library, and I was delighted when he invited me into his home to see his latest creation, a 1/10 scale Tyrannosaurus Rex. You can follow along with Bruce's work here.

But as for MY work, I got a good insight into probably one of the best ways to develop the wonder that's so important in children. Thanks Bruce, and keep up the good work.

The Health Impacts of a Changing Climate

2009-12-17T21:38:00.004-05:00

What the future will look like – without all the doomsday prophecies.

It’s hard to go through the day without hearing someone mention climate change, how you should be reducing your carbon footprint, or noticing the cute sustainability slogans on t-shirts at the mall.

What’s even harder is trying to wrap your mind around what climate change could really mean for us. The ice caps are deteriorating, and the annual average temperature is on the rise, but it’s hard to gather what that means for regular people.

The way it’s usually framed is by saying there will be more hurricanes, flooding, and mass hysteria.

Dr. Peter Berry studies the human health impacts of climate change for Health Canada. He said, “because climate change is very complex, and climate scientists are trying to project decades into the future, there is a certain amount of uncertainty about what to expect.”

Berry said increases in severe storms, hurricanes and other natural disasters are our best prediction of what will come about from climate change, but they are not guaranteed changes.

What is pretty well assured is a rise in temperature, and increased precipitation levels. In most of Canada it will be warmer, and rain more often.

Berry and the Health Canada team said simple things like more rain and warmer days can lead to serious health threats. The kind that could affect your daily life, not just natural disasters.

Berry said one of the often overlooked issues of global warming is the warming itself. Heat waves can be a serious health threat, especially for certain vulnerable sub-sets of society.

A warm spell is considered a heat wave if the temperature for three consecutive days is over 30 degrees Celsius. With the average temperature going up, these events will become more common.

For instance in London, Ont., the average numbers of days in the year with a temperature above 30 degrees is nine. In 2002, London hit that level 23 times. It is estimated that we will see such scorchers 36-plus-times per year in 2050.

The high heat puts your body under stress as it tries to maintain a safe internal temperature. For a lot of people, a cool glass of lemonade and some rest and relaxation will get you through. But for some, it’s not always so relaxing.

“Seniors are at particular risk for heat-related illness and death because heat tolerance and thermoregulatory capacity decrease with age,” said Health Canada in the report Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian assessment of vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity.

The difficulties seniors can have when dealing with increasing heat is of particular concern for Canada:

· In 1981, ten per cent of Canadians were over 65.

· In 2005, that level rose to 13 per cent.

· In 2036, it is expected that 24.5 per cent of us will be over 65.

Berry said the best way to protect yourself from heat waves is to seek out air conditioning. Or, if you don’t have a/c, hunt down the “cooling centres” Health Canada is pushing for.

Dr. John Howard, chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CARE) said the method Health Canada is advising isn’t the best long term strategy.

“In the mitigation of heat, what happens is we consume energy. So it’s a… reinforcing cycle,” he said.

Having people crank the a/c when it gets hot will help protect them from heat waves, but the strategy would ultimately speed up climate change, he said.

As long as the energy source to power the air conditioners leads to the release of green house gases, cooling centres are a short term strategy to fix symptoms, rather than attacking the underlying problem.

Another problem Berry said we will run into with higher temperatures and more precipitation is increases in some diseases.

“Canada lies at what is currently the northern margin for efficient transmission of most arboviruses, so disease outbreaks tend to be rare and have historically tended to occur in late summer,” said the Health Canada report.

Arboviruses are diseases transmitted by invertebrate vectors like mosquitoes, ticks and sand flies, which are collectively known as arthropods.

The ranges in which these animals are active, and the times of year when they are out, are in part controlled by the temperature. Having a higher average temperature could lead to expanded ranges and population sizes, said Health Canada.

“We are seeing an expansion in vector numbers are they are moving northward,” said Health Canada.

In Canada, arthropods are well known for transmitting diseases like West Nile virus and Lyme disease. Having the bugs out longer would likely lead to more cases of these diseases, as well as the other diseases they could harbour.

The Health Canada report said that there is a possibility exotic diseases like dengue fever, malaria, and eastern equine encephalitis could be brought into Canada.

In addition to increasing the range of many vector-borne diseases, the elevated rainfall levels will also be problematic.

Increases in precipitation levels will lead to higher volumes of water running over the surface. The water can pick up chemical or biological contaminants and carry them to the nearby sewer, stream, or aquifer.

These contaminants can be nearly anything: oil, road salt, pesticides, fertilizer or other animal wastes. When these products reach bodies of water, they can trigger algae blooms, or aid the growth of water-borne pathogens like E. coli, Giardia, or Shigella.

In 2001, the Walkerton, Ont. E. coli outbreak was preceded by increased levels of rainfall, which led to the contamination of groundwater sources, said Health Canada. It was one part of a set of issues which led to seven deaths and 2,300 people becoming ill.

The protections against these diseases are mostly handled through infrastructure. It seems likely that, with a little work, our health institutions and infrastructure should be able to adapt to these changing conditions.

But, if the increases in flooding, severe storms, and hurricanes being predicted holds true, then infrastructure systems like waste treatment stations and hospitals may not be able to keep up.

With the number of unknowns facing us with climate change, Dr. Howard of CARE thinks we need to take a different approach to fighting it.

“I think we need to be individually more responsible. I think we often say were going to leave it up to somebody else all the time. We have to reduce our energy use; we have to look at other ways of transportation. We need to do it individually. We need to do it collectively,” said Howard.

The health issues outlined by Dr. Berry and Health Canada were those we can expect with even the most conservative understanding of climate change.

Dr. Robert Lannigan, a professor of microbiology and medicine at the University of Western Ontario said we need to change our outlook on climate change if we want to stay healthy.

“Climate is the biggest driver of human health. We are a part of the ecosystem, not apart from it,” he said.

World of Warcraft - Kicking ass and taking names

2009-12-17T20:13:00.005-05:00

Well not really. It's fun, but WoW has a pretty strong track record of causing a lot of crap for a lot of people. But for one person I met, internet gaming plays a massive (oh pun), positive role. Since this is a story instead of a video, I'm not going to set it up too much.

Three years ago, Lisa Weissman was married, working full time as a payroll clerk, and an avid tennis player.

Two years ago, she started playing World of Warcraft, a massive online role-playing game.

Now, Lisa is single, jobless, and mostly just stays at home.

But it wasn’t the WoW. In July of 2008, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

WoW has certainly seen its fair share of blame as the cause of many social ills. But for Lisa, it was the opposite.

"The game certainly has a lot of positive attributes,” she said. “I know a lot of people are afraid of addiction, people are afraid of losing friends, but for somebody who is sick, it truly is a blessing. It's a way to still be in the world but not have to leave your home."

The 35 year-old New York resident has regressing remitting multiple sclerosis, one form of the disease she battles along with 2.5 million other people worldwide. According to the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, the disease is two or three times more common in women than men, and 57,000 Canadians have been diagnosed.

Most of the time, Lisa needs a walker to help her get around. She has optic neuritis, an inflammation of the optic nerve, which leaves her blind in one eye and with 30 per-cent vision in the other. Her left side is mostly numb.

Lisa is also one of 12 million people who are celebrating the five-year anniversary of the online game by Blizzard Entertainment. She plays WoW one-handed, and she loves it.

"For days when I'm home, it's an amazing social source, I mean it has helped me tremendously to be able to interact with people,” she said. “It's certainly very good for people who are disabled. I have a lot of disabled friends on there; some who have lupus, some who have MS, and some who are in wheelchairs."

Lisa’s sister Michele Landau, 40, is also an avid WoW player. She remembers what it was like when she found out her sister had MS.

Before she started getting sick “she was always on the go. She would hop in the car and wherever she ended up, she ended up,” said Landau.

“It was upsetting,” said Landau. “More for the fact that I knew she was going to lose a little bit of independence and freedom. That hurt all of us, knowing she wasn’t able to do whatever, whenever she wanted to.”

As her health regressed, Lisa had to leave her job. Her husband felt he could no longer take care of her, and the two separated, she said. Her mom started to come over and help.

On Nov. 25, 2009, her mother passed away from cancer. Lisa said the social web she had built up on WoW helped her tremendously.

"When my mom passed, I logged on and spoke to so many people who were so supportive, and who just opened up their hearts to me.”

Lisa’s life has gone through many changes. She may have had to stop playing tennis, but one thing she never lost was her competitive side. Her in-game character is a warlock named Dotee, and while she mostly plays to have fun and relax, it doesn’t mean she’ll back down from challengers.

"I remember one day when I wanted to be the warlock class leader, and the guild leader chose someone else over me,” she said. “He was like 'You know, your damage hasn't always been great.'”

Lisa did everything in her power to beat him the next time around, and the leader’s “ego was shrunk.”

“I was quite happy about that,” she said.

Lisa said WoW can be taken extremely seriously by some players. The competition leads some people to become demanding of other players, but Lisa said she has never been criticized.

"Nobody ever really got on my case. I think they were very taken back that I was blind in one eye, and couldn't see well out of the other and that I was still able to just play a video game. Nobody was going to sit there and comment,” she said.

But the case has been made against WoW, and other videogames, about of the risk of video-game addiction. Players often devote many hours per day to the games, sometimes to the detriment of real-life responsibilities.

Landau said that while she has met people with those traits in her own experiences playing WoW, that’s not the case for her sister.

“I don’t think she uses it as an addictive escape. I think she uses it more as a social thing,” said Landau. “It gives her an ability to help people. If she didn’t have MS, and she was able to get out and do things, she would be doing the same thing in real life.”

Landau said that while she is grateful her sister has found a way to continue to be competitive, expressive and social; the game’s developer could still do more.

“Blizzard should make an (in-game) companion in Lisa’s honour. I don’t know what she would like. Maybe a puppy.”

Boidz!

2009-12-17T19:48:00.003-05:00

In the last 20-plus years, birds that feed on flying bugs have taken a huge hit - and no one really knows why.

I set out with my standard story-buddy Steve Howard to try to figure what's going on with the birdies. We talked to some pretty knowledgeable people on the matter.

Mike Cadman works for Canada Wildlife Services, and was the head of putting together the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario.

Dr. Silke Nebel is an ornithology at the University of Western Ontario's Advanced Facility for Avian Research. She was looking into population trends for aerial insectivores over geographic and temporal regions.

Katie Marshall is a UWO PhD student who is looking at how climate change is affecting freeze-tolerant insects. We were hoping she would give us an idea as to whether something was going on with the prey populations which could in turn negatively impact the birdies.

Anyway, I tried to take a "behind the scenes" or round-table approach to putting this piece together. Just a bunch of experts trying to sort out a problem. This is something far different from the proclamation being handed down from the ivory tower that we're so used to seeing in science/science writing.

Hoo-ah. Funky techno beats.

2009-12-17T18:22:00.002-05:00

So, a couple weeks ago, I got to meet Cory Doctorow. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who he was until a few weeks before I met him, but now I think he's pretty cool. The best part about meeting him is that this comic now makes a whole whack of sense.

Cory is an author of the sci-fi variety, and thus he's right up my alley. He's also really nice.

I went to the book launch for his newest book, Makers, at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction in Toronto with some classmates for a group project/feature series we're working on. It's all about maker culture, a do-it-yourself re-revolution that we think is going on. If you're extra keen, we have a blog, and here are the finished pieces slated to be released shortly on Rabble.ca and TheTyee.ca.

Anyway, if you check around the blog or in my youtube channel, there is a video I cut together of us talking to Cory. But, in the theme of the project we were working on, I decided that I wanted to make something that wasn't so stiff. We had a lot of extra footage that wasn't getting used for anything, and I'd never made a video that had music before.

This video is about some of the neat people we met waiting in line to get their book signed by Cory.

Comic via xkcd.com

Won't someone please think of the.... bats

2009-12-17T18:07:00.001-05:00

A lot of people are scared of bats. I think they're awesome.

One time, while working as a maintenance staffer (bathroom cleaner and lawn mower) at Brant Conservation Area, a bat flew into the women's washroom. I got in there with my rubber gloves, grabbed the fuzzy little guy, and helped him find the door.

This has almost nothing to do with this video, except that we caught a bat in the video too.

As part of an environmental journalism course I just wrapped up, I got a chance to meet a lady who devotes her life to bats. I never knew bats were big on migration, but apparently they are. Anyway, the government wants to build a wind farm in the middle of Lake Ontario, and wind turbines are bad news for bats.

The loss in wind speed on the back-end of the turbine apparently creates a drop in pressure big enough to make bats' lungs asplode. Juliette Nagel (the researcher) is trying to figure out bat migration patterns, so we don't make 'em all pop.

This story is about her, and the bat we caught.

Why herro there :D

2009-12-17T17:49:00.000-05:00

For my inaugural post I figure I should spam a bit, outline who I am, and get used to writing in the first person.

This blog was started out of necessity as much as out of interest. As a journalism student, I'm producing a whole whack of content. It's getting lonely just rotting away on my hard drive.

May as well let it stink up the interwebs.

Most of the things that will show up here will be about science, science journalism, and science culture. Oh, and Star Wars. There will probably be a liberal sprinkling of Star Wars.

To make amends with my lonely stash of stories from the last eight months in the master of arts in journalism program at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., today is going to consist of a lot of spamming.

So let it begin....