Nigel Hey's Blog, page 11
August 9, 2012
Long Live Curiosity!
Long Live Curiosity, the mobile Mars Scientific Laboratory! It is highly unlikely, virtually impossible, that Mars does not contain the chemical building blocks of life that Curiosity is looking for, unless they're buried beyond the reach of the super-rover's instrumentation. But some interesting questions remain. . .
If hot springs, hydrothermal vents, or subsurface water are found, the chances of finding life take a huge bound farther into the realm of the likely, rather than the mere...
If hot springs, hydrothermal vents, or subsurface water are found, the chances of finding life take a huge bound farther into the realm of the likely, rather than the mere...
August 2, 2012
Here’s to the good guys, and gals
It’s wonderful how, when feeling down about the prospects for your book, something can happen that helps out – reader appreciation (http://preview.tinyurl.com/brqjg4a).
In early spring I realized that, not being Tom Cruise, I would need to come up with an extra measure of promotional adrenaline to market my autobiography, Wonderment, which comes out on October 1. The idea was to compose a list of people – mostly writers – who might be willing to read a pdf copy of my manuscript and give me a f...
July 25, 2012
Bitter-Sweet Britain
Just as the 2012 Olympics were to begin, Britons were given the bad news – that the output of the economy, the GDP, had dropped by 0.7% between April and June, meaning that the country is truly in a double-dip recession.
To say Britain is going through bitter-sweet times may understate the situation. This was to be a bumper year, with the Olympics following on the Queen’s Jubilee. In general London folk are loving it. But so far the sweetest experience I’ve had in England this summer is seein...
July 18, 2012
The 1960s: A Tourist's View of Generalissimo Franco's Spain
MADRID, September 1966 -You don't hear very much about Madrid in the States, but take it from me this is one of the swingingest if not THE swingingest cities in Europe.
The general image of Spain in the States seems to be one of a country which, like Yugoslavia is a dictatorship (though of a radically different kind) and therefore somewhat less desirable than for instance, London, Paris or Rome.
But in the center of the city Madrid seems freer and easier than any of these places. Madrid peopl...
July 11, 2012
Writing About a Writer's Life
“[A]lthough each of us gets a different life story – a different part of the puzzle – our tribe needs the wisdom of us all for truth to emerge,” wrote Tristine Rainer in Your Life as Story (Putnam, 1997) After reading this, I felt almost duty-bound to write my own autobiography. And so, as a lifetime science writer and journalist, I decided to do just that. I finished the manuscript this spring, and gave it the name Wonderment: A Love Affair with Adventure, Writing, Travel, Philosophy, and...
June 28, 2012
Today's Favorite Books
This morning, for a change, I sat down and wrote two book reviews and decided to share them with you in this blog post. The books were very different, one digging deep into a story about gene therapy through narrative nonfiction, the other being a brightly illustrated introduction to nuclear fusion science and technology, ideal for high schoolers and their elders alike. It was a treat to indulge myself and write about two books that I really, really liked -- both written by degreed scientists...
June 23, 2012
The 1960s: Of Wales and Welshness
THERE MUST HAVE been a lot of singing and beer drinking on March 1 in Llandudno and Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff and Caernarvon,. For every March 1, in case you have forgotten, is St. David’s Day.
St. David is the patron saint of Wales. In the obscurity of the far-distant past, in the sixth century when there were wolves in Wales, it is said that this pious and gentle man dedicated his life to making Wales what it is today
-- a peninsula to the west of England measuring 7,409 square miles and popu...
June 9, 2012
The 1960s: Escapism, Pre-Internet Style
SCARCELY a day goes by at our New Mexico house without the mailman’s bringing a letter from some strange corner of the globe, plastered with exotic stamps and wadded thick with air mail stationery.
In the past few months we have received letters from the British Virgin lslands, England, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Bermuda, Spain, Mexico, and the little British Caribbean island colony called Dominica. They descend on our mailbox like bright-plumaged birds,
a philatelist’s dream of inf...
May 30, 2012
The 1960s: Gerbilmania
THE WORLD may be different, now that we have gerbils.For the uninitiated, the gerbil is a small rodent which in the 1960s was being sold in large numbers by mail-order throughout North America..
It is said that the gerbil is similar to the jird and jerboa, likes people, eats almost anything, and hardly ever needs to use the bathroom. Furthermore, it likes to leap and drum on the ground with its back feet, may live to five years of age, and likes to dance. Gerbils are also amazingly amorous.
R...
May 27, 2012
The 1960s: PR New York Style, 1966Recently (in 1966) I h...
The 1960s: PR New York Style, 1966
Recently (in 1966) I had the dubious pleasure of playing host briefly to a high-power public relations and promotion man, friend of a New York friend who had business in Albuquerque the next day. To me it was a remarkable experience.
Bigshot, being the type who would always fly first-class, was the first to emerge from the plane, and I recognized him on the spot. The overtailored Brooks Brothers suit, the cigar at the ready, and the crewcut hairpiece were as...
