Archive by tag | story telling

The Poisoner’s Guide to Story Telling

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The Poisoner's Guide to Story Telling

Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-Prize winning science writer and the author of five books, most recently The New York Times best seller, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,.  She also writes for publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Lapham’s Quarterly and blogs about chemistry, culture (and the occasional murder) for the Public Library of Science at Speakeasy Science, blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience.  She is the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism at University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Read more

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Making Hay

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Making Hay

This week’s guest blogger is Jan Zalasiewicz. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, UK. His main research interests are in palaeoenvironmental change during episodes of Earth history ranging somewhat irregularly from the early Palaeozoic to the present (‘Anthropocene’) time. He has published two popular science books_, "_The Earth After Us":http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-After-Us-legacy-humans/dp/0199214972 and The Planet in a Pebble. He is discussing science at the Hay Festival, tying in nicely with our mini-series on science festivals. An Oscar is unexpectedly heavy. Given that such a thing is often awarded to actresses who tend to the fragile  … Read more

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Science: A Four Thousand Year History

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Science: A Four Thousand Year History

This weeks guest blogger, Patricia Fara, discusses some problems she faced when deciding how to begin her most recent book "Science: A Four Thousand Year History". She lectures on the history of science at Cambridge University, where she is Senior Tutor of Clare College. Her other successful books include Newton: The Making of Genius (2002), Sex, Botany and Empire (2003) and Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment (2004). Lewis Carroll knew how difficult it can be to tell a story. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’, asked the White Rabbit. Alice listened for the answer. ‘Begin  … Read more

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Story-telling, Statistics, And Other Grave Scientific Insults

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In the second of our series of guest blog posts, Aaron Clauset (homepage, blog), Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Member of the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, discusses the tensions between number- and narrative-based descriptions in science.  Read more

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