About Me
I’ve been writing for millenia. Currently I write for Science, Nature, Scientific American, Hakai, and Quanta, among others. And I’m proud co-proprietor of a science-ish blog, The Last Word on Nothing.
In the deep past, I’ve written for Mosaic, The Sciences, Science 8x, Discover, Sky & Telescope, and Astronomy. I’ve written columns for USA Today and Defense Technology International. I’ve reviewed books regularly for Nature, the Wilson Quarterly, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. For some years, I mostly wrote books.
In fact, I’m an English major in life. So I see science as a story, as a plot moved by tensions between the characters. The characters can be theory and observation, or two theories, or individual scientists. The stories I find I like best are about scientists who are competitive, varied, and individualistic members of a single group with a single purpose. I think of these groups as schools of fish or birds that form, dissolve, and re-form as though they’re bound within an invisible line. A lovely idea but hard to write, and I’m still working on it. In the meantime, I tend to write profiles of individual scientists, which I love to do.
Also: Science jargon can be taken as metaphors for life. And I’m the Finkbeiner of the Finkbeiner Test, which appropriately has been questioned. And I have definite opinions on non-fiction writers which I am happy to share with you.