Annalee Newitz Moderating Hieroglyph Talk

Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of io9, and contributor to the project, did a great job moderating the discussion on Project Hieroglyph with Neal Stephenson and Lawrence M. Krauss at LA MOCA last night. The event was expertly run by Zócalo Public Square.

After the event, I got the chance to chat with Newitz about publishing. Unfortunately, I was extremely inarticulate and couldn't remember names of any author that I wanted to mention in the conversation. Chalk it up to the fact that I was totally geeking out, plus tired from a long work day followed by an hour plus drive into LA for the event. But it was well worth it. Thanks, Annalee for the well wishes and drinking a toast to my writing career.

One tidbit I overheard Newitz telling another writer who was speaking to Newitz before me: The best way to get io9's attention if you want to write for them is to submit information about your interesting blog posts to tips@io9.com. They may be interested in using your story or at least a link to your blog.

Below is a full video of the event. At 61:12 I got the chance to ask a question of the panel (which I'll discuss in another post).

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(Note: You can play the video while it's downloading, but you cannot fast forward past the point that has downloaded.)

Scientific American Restores Blog Post

Good for Scientific American for restoring DNLee's blog post. The insult she is responding to is egregious. It is more than just a personal attack - and most personal attacks are probably best ignored. This is about taking a stand against sexism and racism. Such reprehensible behavior should not be tolerated. I think it was brave of DNLee to respond publicly and applaud her for doing so.

When DNLee's blog post was taken down (within an hour of being posted), it was looking like Popular Science turning off comments on their site due to Trolls. Now that the post is back, I see this as empowering science, and a show of support for women and minorities in science.

There is a lot of science controversy lately. Ultimately, I think it is good for science to get this level of scrutiny. It gives the public the opportunity to dig into the issues facing science and make it better. We should not have blind faith in science, and we should not be asked to. We should always be critical.

On the same day as DNLee's post, NPR covered the rise of "cheating" in science (e.g., faked experiment results), and the efforts to crack down on cheating. This is another example of science policing itself, like I mentioned in a recent post about shady scientific journals.

While the Popular Science actions were disheartening - like science was losing the war against trolls - cracking down on cheating and bad science journals is very encouraging. The scientific community is cleaning house