Nigel Hey's Blog, page 10

A Few Lessons in Life from Navajo Country

This is a tale about the strange and wonde...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>

More of the same? A post-election look at America in the shadow of the Fiscal Cliff

Like most of America I stayed up late on election night, seeing a near-tie for the presidency turn slowly into President Obama’s victory, after which the Republican Party’s Mitt Romney conceded his loss with a gentlemanly grace that illustrated his strengths as well as any public speech he offered in all those months of electioneering. The Republicans did not suffer a “bad beating,” as some of the media said, but just managed to lose, possibly because their candidate was not the fiery orator...

Whither science journalism? The profession is regaining its balance

 Is media coverage of science dying on the vine? Last weekend’s sold-out U.S. convocation of science writers would indicate otherwise. People are interested in science, and science interpreters are serving their interests.
Twice a year, American science writers congregate to assess their profession and its changing position in the greater society, and to learn something about innovations in science and technology straight f...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>

Shakespeare Made Me Do It

Part of the following was extracted from my autobiography Wonderment , published on October 1 by Matador, an imprint of Troubador Publishing.


It may be actually true that I owe my successful, un-theatrical career to William Shakespeare.

The story starts during my 30 months as a provincial journalist in New Mexico, following a succession of similar jobs in Utah, Bermuda, and England. In addition to my editing and reporting chores I produced a weekly column called “The Chaff Barrel.” a life...

How to manage a book-less book-signing event

Yesterday I did something that should go in my autobiography Part 2. On Oct. 20 I appeared at a book-less book-signing event without any books. And it was successful.

Like me, my publisher lives in a remote part of the world, the printer in an even remoter part (Cornwall), and it is taking ages for my books to reach me. The air-freight process started on Oct. 6 after I had paid the exorbitant equivalent of $7 per book for shipping to the US, and with luck it should get here on Oct. 25 (yes, 19...

Life, the universe, and everything

Once upon a future time the wise men of the universe approached their most powerful supercomputer and asked it to determine the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. The computer finally churned out its answer, which, as a surprisingly large number of people know, was 42. 
The computer, in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was named Deep Thought. In the 1980s, when I was freshly re-established in America, I happily joined Adams...

Lessons in Acculturation

(The following is not excerpted from my new book, ‘Wonderment,’ which I call the life story of a science writer, now available by order from traditional and electronic bookstores and described in full at www.nigelhey.com.)


I have always felt a certain pride in the dexterity with which I can adapt from British culture to American culture and vice versa. This month, in deepest Missouri, I was in danger of disproving my own assumption.

It started three years ago, when my new bride and I went on...

'Wonderment' eases into the book market

Now that my autobiography, Wonderment, is beginning its entry into the computer-aided consciousness of readers in the English-speaking world – ebooks first, followed by paperback editions – I am planning ahead for book signings and short talks while encouraging reviewers and book bloggers to lend their helping hands. My binational history and style of living means that the content of the autobiography is binational as well, and that my contribution to marketing extends to readers in America,...

In appreciation of small creatures

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

The Wonderbox

When I was a small boy and ill for some reason or another, my father would sometimes bring out a drawer from some distant part of the house, carry it into the living room, and gently spill its contents onto the carpet. This was no ordinary drawer, for it was stocked with small, intriguing objects that had no immediate purpose. A brass square unfolded into a neat magnifying glass with perfectly machined hinges. A thick, much-tarnished disc turned out to be a one-ounce copper cartwheel penny fr...