February 18th, 2009
Thank you, Mr. Conrad.
You’ve given me everything I needed.
Posts Tagged ‘foresters’
January 3rd, 2009
“What is your writing about?”
On New Year’s Eve, a stranger asked me this question. And although it caught me off guard, in retrospect it was actually pretty pertinent in terms of questions one should contemplate at the end of one year and the beginning of another — mostly because I didn’t have a straight answer.
Of course, it didn’t help that Karl was standing right beside me. That’s a bit like explaining your Master’s thesis to a peer reviewer while your supervisor looks on, listening to your every “um” and “uh.” Luckily, he was willing to help:
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December 9th, 2008
Yes…
Sometimes, an article pops up online that is exactly what I need.
A team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists has found for the first time that tropical rainforests, a vital part of the Earth’s ecosystem, rely on the rare trace element molybdenum to capture the nitrogen fertilizer needed to support their wildly productive growth. Most of the nitrogen that supports the rapid, lush growth of rainforests comes from tiny bacteria that can turn nitrogen in the air into fertilizer in the soil.
Until now, scientists had thought that phosphorus was the key element supporting the prodigious expansion of rainforests, according to Lars Hedin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University who led the research. But an experiment testing the effects of various elements on test plots in lowland rainforests on the Gigante Peninsula in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument in Panama showed that areas treated with molybdenum withdrew more nitrogen from the atmosphere than other elements.
Oh, science. How I love when you come through for me.
November 21st, 2008
Hmm. Needs more fun.
I realized the other day that what I’m working on isn’t quite fun enough. Some parts of it are fun to read (I think) and (I know) some parts of it are fun to write. But in thinking so much about wordcount and moving from Point A to Point B (or in this case, Sequim to Port Angeles), I lost sight of the things that make the story enjoyable on both levels. Simply put, there isn’t enough crazy in it — it’s not nearly audacious enough. There are very specific technical challenges (“how do I solve for x in 5K words?”), but not enough “rabbit vs. hat” antics, not enough gauntlets thrown down for me to pick up.
So, some wiki spoilers:
November 6th, 2008
The things that make me weak and strange get published online.
It’s been a while since I posted fiction. Since this scene will inevitably be cut (or changed significantly), you can have it:
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October 23rd, 2008
Things only tangentially related to the story I’m writing:
- UCSB study finds physical strength, fighting ability revealed in human faces
Subjects were asked to rank the physical strength or fighting ability of the people in the photographs on a scale of one to seven. When the photographs depicted men whose strength had been measured precisely on weight-lifting machines, the researchers found an almost perfect correlation between perceptions of fighting ability and perceptions of strength…
They also found that perceptions of strength and fighting ability reflected the target’s actual strength, as measured on weight-lifting machines at the gym. In other sections of the study, the researchers showed that this result extended far beyond the gym. Both men and women accurately judge men’s strength, whether those men are drawn from a general campus population, a hunter-horticulturalist group in Bolivia, or a group of herder-horticulturalists living in the Argentinian Andes.
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I wish the world was flat like the old days
And I could travel just by folding the map
No more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways
There’d be no distance that could hold us back
October 12th, 2008
STC 3: Short and Long
Write a paragraph, 100-150 words, in sentences of seven words or fewer words. No sentence fragments! Each must have a subject and a verb.
The result:
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October 6th, 2008
STC 2: I am Garcia Marquez
Instructions
Write a paragraph to a page (150-350 words) of narrative with no punctuation (and no paragraphs or other breaking devices).
The result
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October 4th, 2008
STC 1: Being Gorgeous
Instructions:
Write a paragraph to a page (150-300 words) of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect — any kind of sound-effect you like — but NOT rhyme or meter.
The result:
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