I just sent off the story based on a fairy tale to Writers of the Future, which means a) it's actually kind of DONE, after being in various kinds of progress since 2007, and b) I have TWO stories in the submission process! Almost like a real writer ( Read more... )

A friend of mine mentioned that it would be neat to celebrate Edward Jenner's birthday (perhaps aka "If You're Not Dead of Smallpox, Thank a Vaccinator" Day) as a holiday, a la Carl Sagan Day. But Edward Jenner's birthday isn't until May (May 17, if you want to put it on your calendar now) so I went looking for other Science! anniversaries to ( Read more... )

1. Correction: upon review it turns out Spallanzani was a priest, so there wasn't a Signora Spallanzani in the picture, and quite possibly he did have to sew his own taffeta overalls for mating frogs ( Read more... )

A History of the Life Sciences (Revised and Expanded Third Edition) by Lois Magner

This is a random-number-generator read--a while back I read Carl Zimmer's Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World. It was an excellent book, and it made me curious about the development of scientific and biological knowledge, so ( Read more... )

Now I'm going to have to wait for another cold snap to try blowing bubbles in air under 5FAlso, I keep forgetting to post about it, but I went bow-shooting last week with my new bow and new arrows. I only had one arrow completely off the backstop (it got stuck in the ceiling, and I had to go pull it down with my bow--luckily no one but me goes ( Read more... )