Today at Gotham, we had a lengthy morning discussion about sneezes, and how different people, and different cultures, handle sneezing. Generally, people say “bless you,” as you probably know, but in places like Japan, there isn’t a lot of blessing going around post-sneeze. It’s a cultural thing. Continue reading “How to handle, or not handle, a sneeze”
Awhile back, I wrote a very short essay that was mostly about wintertime and my mother, but also included a scientific reference. When it was about to be published, I felt it necessary to confirm that science with sources from Cal Tech, Space.com, and NASA.
What was the highly technical data I was checking so obsessively? That Earth’s orbit around the sun is elliptical. Continue reading “Writing About Science”
We often turn to writers to glean wisdom about the world. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has been a kind of bible to many troubled teens, as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has been to women struggling to be strong, or Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking has been to people suffering grief.
So, when you write, do you need to be wise? Continue reading “The Wisdom Of Writers”