This is Bud, a puppy that my friend Allison was puppy sitting last summer. We took him to the fair. Another thing I miss about Texas that is strangly missing in Boston: my secret puppy fix was regularly administered through random everyday encounters.
Monday, October 31, 2005
No Longer in Texas, But Still Texan
The house finally sold. We no longer have an address in Texas. YEEHAW! God, that is a huge weight off my shoulders. When the dogs are crazy and need exercise but it's too cold to leave the house, I miss Texas. When Bostonians are rude and talk funny in such a way that I misunderstand and make social blunders, I miss Texas. When it costs over $10 for a freakin' movie ticket, I miss Texas. When I bruise myself tripping over a dog and ramming into a piece of furniture because our overpriced apartment is way too small, I miss Texas. When I want to hang out with my old friends and family, I miss Texas. AT ALL OTHER TIMES I am really happy to be out of that crazy state!
This is Bud, a puppy that my friend Allison was puppy sitting last summer. We took him to the fair. Another thing I miss about Texas that is strangly missing in Boston: my secret puppy fix was regularly administered through random everyday encounters.
This is Bud, a puppy that my friend Allison was puppy sitting last summer. We took him to the fair. Another thing I miss about Texas that is strangly missing in Boston: my secret puppy fix was regularly administered through random everyday encounters.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Bloody Journalists
A guy in my graduate program asked me today, "Are you one of those people who went into Science Journalism because you are an escapist and thought it would be all about how 'cool' science is?"
My first reaction was quite paranoid, either because he used the words "those people" or because I am probably an escapist and I have some guilty feelings about it. It's true: I have always hated reading the newspaper and having political discussions with people. It just makes me feel helpless to hear about awful things. I still read the newspaper, usually avoiding the sections that will just depress me, and I suppose I humor some of my friends and family by having the occasional political discussion, but it never gets me anywhere but down.
Today in the class that I TA, which is a freshman course for communications students, the lecturer showed photos by famous photojournalists in history. He flashed up, one after another, images from World War II and Vietnam and Iraq and Ethiopia--all the pictures you have seen before of dead, dying, tortured, or oppressed people. He showed us one particular picture from a Vietnam napalm attack. You know the one with the children running from the smoke, with the one girl crying in fear, naked from head to toe, and soldiers looking on in the background.
Then, he showed us a film taken at the same time as that picture. It was color and showed the same girl, though you get a more vivid and active view of how injured she was. You could tell for certain that her clothes had probably been burnt off--she wasn't just interrupted during a bath, as I had previously thought. In the same footage, within feet of this little naked girl, there was also an old woman carrying her dead grandbaby whose skin had been flayed off by the burning chemicals. I just started to cry when I saw that. (I'm so glad that I didn't happen to be sitting with my students during lecture today.)
This isn't the first time that my journalism professors have traumatized me this semester. Two of my other professors within the first two weeks of school mentioned murder investigations that they covered. One described vividly a police beating he wrote about. The other went into great detail of the rape of an elderly woman, mentioning weapons and acts that I just didn't want to know about. I felt kind of victimized by these professors, who are just so hardened to this type of story that they don't recognize it as crossing a line that sensitive people such as myself draw and try never to cross.
I think that today is the day that I realized a major difference between the fields of Science Writing and Science Journalism. In science writing you can guiltlessly limit yourself to writing about what scientists and educators think is important, how science is helping and sometimes hurting people, what people are curious about, and what is just gosh darn neat-o. I don't think that you can get away with that in science journalism.
I think that journalists of all ilks, but specifically print and photo journalists, feel this obligation to be deep and thoughtful and present only what is important. True, they write and illustrate feature stories and human interest stories, but they do so with disdain for their readers and for the market forces that demand them to. They call it fluff and hold it up as an example of how the medium of the newspaper is in decline.
I'm so sick of hearing about how young people don't read the newspaper and how they want only to hear about Brad and Jennifer. I question this need to constantly share and obsess over the horror of what is happening in the world. Please let me keep writing about astronomers and robotics engineers who are wasting our money on less-earthly pursuits. If anything, let it be a breather to balance out the bad that we all have to swallow in order to be "good citizens."
My first reaction was quite paranoid, either because he used the words "those people" or because I am probably an escapist and I have some guilty feelings about it. It's true: I have always hated reading the newspaper and having political discussions with people. It just makes me feel helpless to hear about awful things. I still read the newspaper, usually avoiding the sections that will just depress me, and I suppose I humor some of my friends and family by having the occasional political discussion, but it never gets me anywhere but down.
Today in the class that I TA, which is a freshman course for communications students, the lecturer showed photos by famous photojournalists in history. He flashed up, one after another, images from World War II and Vietnam and Iraq and Ethiopia--all the pictures you have seen before of dead, dying, tortured, or oppressed people. He showed us one particular picture from a Vietnam napalm attack. You know the one with the children running from the smoke, with the one girl crying in fear, naked from head to toe, and soldiers looking on in the background.
Then, he showed us a film taken at the same time as that picture. It was color and showed the same girl, though you get a more vivid and active view of how injured she was. You could tell for certain that her clothes had probably been burnt off--she wasn't just interrupted during a bath, as I had previously thought. In the same footage, within feet of this little naked girl, there was also an old woman carrying her dead grandbaby whose skin had been flayed off by the burning chemicals. I just started to cry when I saw that. (I'm so glad that I didn't happen to be sitting with my students during lecture today.)
This isn't the first time that my journalism professors have traumatized me this semester. Two of my other professors within the first two weeks of school mentioned murder investigations that they covered. One described vividly a police beating he wrote about. The other went into great detail of the rape of an elderly woman, mentioning weapons and acts that I just didn't want to know about. I felt kind of victimized by these professors, who are just so hardened to this type of story that they don't recognize it as crossing a line that sensitive people such as myself draw and try never to cross.
I think that today is the day that I realized a major difference between the fields of Science Writing and Science Journalism. In science writing you can guiltlessly limit yourself to writing about what scientists and educators think is important, how science is helping and sometimes hurting people, what people are curious about, and what is just gosh darn neat-o. I don't think that you can get away with that in science journalism.
I think that journalists of all ilks, but specifically print and photo journalists, feel this obligation to be deep and thoughtful and present only what is important. True, they write and illustrate feature stories and human interest stories, but they do so with disdain for their readers and for the market forces that demand them to. They call it fluff and hold it up as an example of how the medium of the newspaper is in decline.
I'm so sick of hearing about how young people don't read the newspaper and how they want only to hear about Brad and Jennifer. I question this need to constantly share and obsess over the horror of what is happening in the world. Please let me keep writing about astronomers and robotics engineers who are wasting our money on less-earthly pursuits. If anything, let it be a breather to balance out the bad that we all have to swallow in order to be "good citizens."
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Studying the Occult...ation
My latest paper for class is on scientists who study eclipses and other astronomical events involving celestial bodies in alignment, specifically occultations and transitions. (Astronomy primer: During an occultation, something, such as a planet or moon, blocks the light from a distant star or planet.)
I'm pretty thrilled by the concepts of: 1) giant balls of fire, dirt, or ice whizzing around in space and occasionally lining up in straight lines, 2) anything blocking out the whole freakin' sun, 3) geometry equations that calculate the exact moment that these things will be visible at specific locations on Earth, and 4) people who spend all their time and money studying these events, which last only a few seconds or minutes. Here's an excerpt that was cut from my paper because I was getting a bit too caught up in the excitement and cornball drama:
"Every bit of preparation over the previous year led up to this brief moment, in which every second counted. If the equipment failed, they would get nothing. If the sky suddenly turned cloudy, they would get nothing. If the instrument operators made an error, they would get nothing. Thousands of dollars, months of research, hundreds of hours of equipment testing, days of organizing and traveling to a remote and isolated location, all of this would go down the toilet if just one little thing went wrong during those few precious seconds."
In summary: Astronomers are one crazy lot, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they might have their priorities straight.
[Image from http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sunearthday/2004/vt_gallery.htm]
I'm pretty thrilled by the concepts of: 1) giant balls of fire, dirt, or ice whizzing around in space and occasionally lining up in straight lines, 2) anything blocking out the whole freakin' sun, 3) geometry equations that calculate the exact moment that these things will be visible at specific locations on Earth, and 4) people who spend all their time and money studying these events, which last only a few seconds or minutes. Here's an excerpt that was cut from my paper because I was getting a bit too caught up in the excitement and cornball drama:
"Every bit of preparation over the previous year led up to this brief moment, in which every second counted. If the equipment failed, they would get nothing. If the sky suddenly turned cloudy, they would get nothing. If the instrument operators made an error, they would get nothing. Thousands of dollars, months of research, hundreds of hours of equipment testing, days of organizing and traveling to a remote and isolated location, all of this would go down the toilet if just one little thing went wrong during those few precious seconds."
In summary: Astronomers are one crazy lot, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they might have their priorities straight.
[Image from http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sunearthday/2004/vt_gallery.htm]
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