I spent the last 4 years of research toward my PhD focused on how people make decisions about politics, particularly weighing risk, perceiving communication, prioritizing sources of information & thinking about trust.
I have a lot of thoughts after the #debate & #news cycle.
But social media doesn’t seem like the best place to share a nuanced perspective in a series of posts.
So I haven’t decided where & whether to weigh in. But there’s sure a lot to say.
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.” - Kurt Vonnegut, in his letter to students at New York's Xavier High School in 2006 #art
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has announced this year’s regional Emmy nominations & Serving up Science, the quirky PBS series I write & host, has received two - including one for host ☺️
You really never know where a career in #science will lead. It’s an honor to be nominated & I’m incredibly grateful to work with such a wonderful team at WKAR!
“The universe is expanding, and faster now than it did in the past. Scientists don't know why, but the leading explanation is that the universe contains something that has a repulsive gravitational effect - it pushes the universe apart instead of pulling it back together. This phenomenon is called dark energy.”
- NASA, image by the Euclid European #Space Agency telescope ✨
‘Tis the season I lose my kitchen for a week. But that also means I get to hang out with the great WKAR-PBS folks who make Serving Up Science so much fun. Season 5 should be a good one 🌶️
I’m nearing the end of a book & it’s one of those instances where I’m simply not ready to say goodbye to the complex set of characters I’ve come to know.
Oh well. I suppose that’s a sign of great storytelling. 📚 #books#reading
Do you see a series of sunken rectangles or 16 circles?
This is The Coffer Illusion.
Our brains are geared toward identifying objects & here, “pixels” are grouped to form edges & contours, shapes, & objects. The image is inherently ambiguous so there is no “right” grouping.
Rectangles dominate first for most people - including me, but keep staring & the image may flip to circles.
Pioneering geologist & oceanographer Marie Tharp changed our understanding of the ocean.
When Tharp sought a geology job at Columbia in 1948, women couldn’t go on research ships. So she was hired to assist male grad students.
Back then, many scientists still assumed the bottom of the ocean was featureless. Tharp figured out how to use data to create sketches of the ocean floor. Her hand-drawn maps helped develop plate tectonic theory. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/marie-tharp#science#history