Every now and then, I get an email from someone who’s keen to get into science writing and wants to know how I started. Whenever I reply (and I always try to), I’m always left with the nagging feeling that my experience is but one of a multitude of routes that people have taken. Science writing (whether you want to call it journalism, blogging, communication and so on) is a diverse field, as are the people working in it.

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On the Origin of the Science Writers | Not Exactly Rocket Science

Science of Doom has a nice simple, fully detailed calculation to set people straight on the part or radiative physics they are bound and determined to be confused about. And no less than Roy Spencer also tried to pitch in.Probably as the result of my recent post explaining in simple terms my “skepticism” about global warming being mostly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, I’m getting a lot of e-mail traffic from some nice folks who are trying to convince me that the physics of the so-called …

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The Greenhouse Effect Denied

With innovation, entrepreneurship and significantly smarter fiscal policies, America should eventually escape its “hireless recovery.” But what won’t hasten new hiring — and might even dampen job prospects — is the mythical belief that higher education invariably leads to higher employment and better jobs.

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Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren’t

While going through other schedule changes recently announced for All Freelance Writing, I put out an offer to two of our writers that will take them away from this blog. They both accepted, so I wanted to let everyone know about the change.

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Two Writers Leaving All Freelance Writing

- originally published on “The Recovery Room” 28 July 2010 An interview I did last Saturday with Jesse Locks of “See Jane Do” is going to air tonight on KVMR at 630pm PST. Sorry for the short notice! We talked about my experience in Louisiana as well as what’s happening now. I will also be featured in the “Extraordinary Jane” column which will run on Sunday in the Nevada City/Grass Valley paper The Union

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Celebrating 100 Days of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

…among people in mentally demanding occupations, the fault line between those most likely to be considered intellectuals and those who are not tends to run between those whose ideas are ultimately subject to internal criteria and those whose ideas are ultimately subject to external criteria. _Sowell_Intellectuals and SocietyIntellectuals do not like to be judged or called to account. Because most of their ideas cannot be tested — or falsified — by the real world, they see themselves as b…

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Unfalsifiable Intellectuals and the Rise of Cargo Cult Science

In the NEJM article ” The ‘Meaningful Use’ Regulation for Electronic Health Records “, David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P. (ONC Chair) and Marilyn Tavenner, R.N., M.H.A

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Science or Politics? The New England Journal and "The ‘Meaningful Use’ Regulation for Electronic Health Records"

As a result of my mother’s health IT-related cerebral hemorrhage and resultant multi-month hospitalization (as mentioned here and here ), with transfers to nursing homes then back to acute care due to setbacks, I recently had the chance to observe her care in a small community hospital. This was a hospital that, in her last several days there before going back to a nursing home for rehab, went live with a major vendor CPOE.

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An Open Question on Moral Authority and Healthcare IT

Non-native writers face discrimination online. Much of this negativity come for failing to write English “properly” – at least according to prospective clients. Looking been around various forums and markets, I’ve come across more than a few exclusionary advertisements about “native English speakers only” and such.

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ESL Discrimination: Real or Ridiculous?

Globally NOAA just reported that June is the fourth month in a row of record global temperatures, and the first half of 2010 is on a record pace.  This is all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,” as a recent NASA paper noted. Globally nine countries have smashed all-time temperature records, “making 2010 the year with the most national extreme heat records,” as meteor…

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As nation, Russia, and world swelter under record-smashing heat waves, The New York Times sets one-day record for most unilluminating stories

The search box is located in the upper right corner of IE and Firefox while Chrome has this thing integrated in the address bar itself. The function is however the same – it offers you a convenient way to search using your favorite search engine

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Do More with your Browser’s Search Box

It’s time for Part 4 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series here on Freelance Writing Jobs, and today, you’ll learn about manipulating search engine results and how to handle negative conversations about your brand online.  You can find links to Parts 1-3 of the series at the end of this post. First, it’s important to understand that this is not a lesson in search engine optimization, although some of the suggestions in Part 3 and Part 4 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series certainly do apply to SEO as well. With that said, here we go… What kind of results do you get when you Google your name or your freelance writing brand name (if it’s different from your personal name)?  Are they the results that you want people to find when they type your name into the Google search box?  If not, then you have some work to do if you want to build your online brand reputation and build your business.  Fortunately, writers are in the perfect position to do exactly that because we’re great at creating content!  With a bit of strategy, we’re positioned to be the best content marketers! The key to manipulating search engine results is to leverage the power of the compounding effect of blogging and content sharing as discussed in Part 3 of the Building Your Freelance Writing Brand series.  Generating incoming links to your own amazing content and getting others to write about you and your amazing content are the free and easy steps that you can take to begin the process of adjusting search engine results for your name.

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Building Your Freelance Writing Brand – Part 4

Colonel Quaritch and his exoskeleton from Avatar Science fiction is sometimes a playground to explore what it would be like to have a different body. Most recently, in Avatar and Iron Man 2 we saw people joined to exoskeletons, which are being developed in real life for the military and for rehabilitation.

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Giving Beyoncé-Level Booty to the Gluteus Minimus Set | Science Not Fiction

(click to enlarge) The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is one of the fundamental plots in astronomy. I remember it being one of the very first “sciencey” things I learnt about astronomy. It’s a very elegant plot, as it relates two very basic quantities about stars, their temperature and their brightness,  and presents a visually memorable picture.

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Plotting Astronomers

In psychology, the term ” identified patient ” refers to a family member — often a child or a teenager — who gets scapegoated for behavior that is actually just a predictable response to dealing with an unhealthy family. Tony Hayward is BP’s identified patient.

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Tony Hayward Is a Scapegoat

Using my Tattered Rose Tutoria l, create 3 large flowers. Add chunky vintage style gems to the center. Sew or fabric glue to a scarf

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Make This: Hot Glue and Tattered Rose Scarf & PIn

The concept of “primitive” is one that is very often misunderstood. Properly defined, “primitive” means “more like a particular ancestor”, refers only to individual characteristics (not whole species or lineages), and is contrasted with “derived” (not “advanced” or “more evolved”).

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Platypus and the problem with primitive.

The Eyjafjallajökull eruption as seen by NASA’s Terra satellite In theory, geoengineering seems like the ideal remedy for our climate ills. Some white reflective roofs here, a little ocean fertilization there, a few simulated volcanic eruptions, and voilà! you have a potential fix for one of the world’s most intractable problems. But there’s good reason to believe that many of these proposed schemes would prove much costlier to the planet over both the short- and long-term than more mainstre…

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The Best Flavor of Geoengineering Stills Leaves a Bad Taste | Science Not Fiction

John Mattick, University of Queensland, is one of the leading proponents of the idea that much — perhaps most — of the human genome is functional. He has been making claims along these lines for at least 15 years, but seems to always present it as a new idea. Readers of this blog may also remember the Dog’s Ass Plot included in one of his publications

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Mattick on transposable element function.

Ray Bradbury is the last living of the great early titans of science fiction, now that Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke have passed. He said he’s attended every Comic-Con since the first one, when he went to the El Cortez Hotel and spoke to a few of the 300 attendees that year.

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Comic-Con: Ray Bradbury and ‘90 God-damned Incredible Years’ | Science Not Fiction