Scott off the presses …
Further proof of our interconnected world (as if we needed any):
A university in Hamburg, Germany, just contacted me about using one of my Flickr photos from last year’s Summer Streets in New York City for a brochure about sustainable urban transportation that it’s producing in cooperation with the international NGO World Future Council.
I’m not even sure what to say about that, other than “cool.” (Or whatever “cool” is in German.)
Summer Streets on Park Avenue
I can’t resist writing about the Riverside red-tails:
Reason No. 137 that I love commuting by bike in New York City: I get to watch baby hawks go to flight school.
Last year, I was fascinated and then heartbroken by a pair of red-tail hawks that built a precarious-looking nest over the West Side Highway, produced a trio of hatchlings, then lost their offspring before they got a chance to take flight, apparently to rat poison.
So I was happy—but concerned—this year when the hawks returned to Riverside Park and took up in a new tree, this time just off the West Side bike path that I frequently ride to work. (New York real estate experts would no doubt call this new nest an upgrade—it has great views of the Hudson River.)
I didn’t watch the pair as closely as I did last year, because I had a newborn of my own that took up most of my attention this spring. But I did check the updates occasionally at blogs that obsessively follow urban hawks, and I always looked up at the nest when I passed by their tree.
Riding home last week, I noticed more commotion than usual. Photographers—call them hawkarazzi—were pointing their lenses skyward, and parks employees were surrounding the hawks’ tree with a temporary fence and signs warning dog walkers to keep their pooches at bay.
The baby hawks were learning to fly.
My first contribution to the online environmental magazine Grist:
The fish we choose to eat—and the way we fish for them—can have a tremendous impact on our oceans. As part of a personal goal to eat healthier, I’m trying to increase the amount of fish in my diet. It’s a lean protein with great health benefits. But there are risks, as well: Some types of fish can be contaminated with mercury and PCBs, and sometimes seafood is harvested in a way that’s bad for the oceans.
A new Sustainable Seafood Guide from the Natural Resources Defense Council can help me—and you—make better choices about what we eat. It provides seven basic guidelines to follow when shopping for seafood or ordering at a restaurant, as well as specific advice about America’s five favorite types of seafood, from shrimp to tuna to fish sticks.
I think every family has an amazing story somewhere in its past. My wife’s family doesn’t have to go back too far.
Recently, they reconnected with long-lost relatives who survived the Holocaust. If you’ve heard of the book Suite Francaise, you might know part of the story. The author, Irene Nemirovsky, died in Auschwitz but left behind a suitcase with a manuscript, which her daughters were afraid to open for more than half a century because they couldn’t bear to read their mother’s final words.
When they finally did, they found not a journal but two finished novellas and notes for more. The book’s publication made headlines around the world. My wife’s great-grandfather was Nemirovksy’s cousin, and he never knew what became of her. Now, thanks to the book, the two sides of the family — in France and America — have reunited.
I wanted to help tell their remarkable family story, so I created a website for my wife’s mom, who has spoken about it to book clubs and library groups. The site is called Suite Francaise Family, and we plan to add more, including multimedia features and a photo gallery. It’s been a rewarding project and a nice opportunity to apply my online media skills to something a little more personal.
Next, maybe I’ll look for some great stories from my side of the family to tell.
Talking Science, the outreach arm of NPR’s respected “Science Friday” broadcast, has produced and posted this video of my talk at the Jan. 29 Social Media for Science Writers panel. Enjoy!
I have my first column up on The Huffington Post today, and it’s getting a decent amount of traffic. I’m a bit torn: I’ve got my concerns with HuffPo and its business model (i.e., not paying most writers for content), but on the other hand, it’s nice exposure.
For now, I’ll just enjoy my prominent placement on the Health page and set my conflicted feelings aside to deal with another day.
Here’s the beginning of my post, which was fun to write:
Yesterday, my wife forwarded me an “Important Announcement Regarding Your Recent Purchase of Peanut Butter” that she got from Fresh Direct, the online grocery service here in New York City.
This was not a good e-mail.
As my wife will tell you, peanut butter is very important to me. She even mentioned it in our wedding vows (along with my love for the Pittsburgh Steelers). If I had to choose one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t even be a close contest — peanut butter would top the list.
And you know what? Compared to a lot of the other things that I love to eat, it’s not even that bad for me. Unless, of course, it’s packed with Salmonella.
Here’s SWINY’s promo of an upcoming panel that I’ll be a part of:
They are everywhere you look these days – social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, ShareThis, etc. This barrage of new communication tools can be overwhelming, and many of us are wondering – what the hell is all of this stuff? How do I sort out which of these tools will benefit my career? How much of my precious time should I be spending to figure this out? What does it all mean for science communications?
To address these and related questions, SWINY has summoned a panel of social media experts – including generalists, academics, and science journalists – to share their views and experiences with you. We hope you will join us for this very special program.
Our panelists include:
• Scott Dodd – Web Editor, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Judith Meskill – Self-described “Social Media Evangelist”
• Jay Rosen – Professor of Journalism, NYU
• Christie Nicholson – Editor, Scientific American Online
• Adnaan Wasey – Web Editor, The Takeaway, WNYC Radio
Nice plug from my friends at the Streetsblog Network:
Enough with the bad news. There’s hopeful stuff bouncing around out there in the blogosphere as well. Cheer yourself up by playing around with NRDC’s cool new tool to help communities interested in Picturing Smart Growth, which Scott Dodd writes about on NRDC Switchboard.
My year in review:
Waffles and new flat-screen TV w/ friends on New Year’s Day
Guys weekend in Myrtle Beach
First SciAm article published
Magnolia UWS opens
Giants beat Packers (viewing party at our apt.)
Nook and “Sundays in the Park with George” (both tight)
They Might Be Giants at Beacon Theater
18-1 (hah!)
Super Tuesday
It finally snows
Total lunar eclipse
Sledding in Riverside Park
Lecture on history of New York water supply system (yes, I’m a geek)
Red-tail hawks build nest over West Side Highway (see above)
Read the rest of this entry »
My Switchboard post about following environmental news on Twitter:
NRDC recently added a link to the front page of Switchboard, inviting you to follow our blog posts via Twitter.
If you’re one of more than a million people already using Twitter, it needs no explanation. If you’re not, well … I’ll give it a try, because I think it’s becoming a great tool for tapping into news and conversation about issues critical to the environment, both from NRDC and the larger “green” community.
The Daily Green picked up my story for NRDC about the Supreme Court decision on the whale sonar case:
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its first decision of the term today, and it’s not the best of news for whales.
Last month, NRDC and its allies argued before the court on behalf of marine mammals that are threatened by Navy sonar exercises off the Southern California coast.
FQXi.org just published my latest story for them. This one’s a little different. Instead of a straight-up profile of a single scientist, it’s about a collaboration between two physicists — one older, and one just starting out:
“It’s a bit like a romantic relationship,” says veteran physicist Christopher Isham, describing his collaboration with promising newcomer Andreas Döring.
If that’s so, then it’s fitting that the courtship started out like so many other couplings in the modern Internet age: with an e-mail.
Here’s something a little personal that I wrote for my NRDC blog:
The current most likely scenario from the National Hurricane Center predicts that Gustav could become a Category 3 storm and threaten Louisiana by early next week (although the track is starting to look more like Hurricane Rita’s than Katrina’s). If a Cat 3 comes within 60 hours of making landfall on New Orleans, officials plan to order a mass evacuation, the Associated Press reports — with no Superdome or other citywide shelter for those left behind this time.
All of this compels me to relive some rough memories. As Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore three years ago, I was one of the few people crazy enough to be driving full speed into the storm.
So last night, on Day 5 of our little heat wave here in New York City (now on Day 6 and counting — all with one of our AC units not working), my wife and I were getting ready for bed when the lights started flickering.
There had been blackouts all weekend throughout the city, so we figured it was our turn. We pulled out our flashlights, lit some candles and got ready to wave bye-bye to the power and our final AC unit for the night. As I looked out the window, I could see that the lights were flickering on most of our block … but then I also noticed smoke billowing out of the street below us, which didn’t seem right.
Here’s a story that I wrote for Oceanus, the magazine of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:
For generations of mariners, a tangy, almost sweet odor served as a signal that land was nearby. What sailors called “the smell of the shore” had the opposite meaning to landlubbers, who would catch the same sweet scent wafting over the waves and think of it as “the smell of the sea.” Seabirds probably don’t have a name for it, but the odor means something to them, as well: the opening of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Part of what they’re all smelling is a little-studied gas known as dimethylsulfide, or DMS. Some seabirds, possessing a keen olfactory sense, use the scent to track down its source: blooms of algae floating near the ocean’s surface, where the microscopic animals, krill, and other crustaceans that gather to graze on algae provide the birds with a hearty meal.
DMS does far more than ring the birds’ dinner bell, though. Scientists believe it represents a large source of sulfur going into the Earth’s atmosphere. As such, it helps drive the formation of clouds, which block solar radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface and reflect it back into space.
There’s also a sidebar: For Graduate Student, Research is a Gas
