Stories by Jennifer Ouellette

The big news this week — for me, at least — was the release of my new book, Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, which traces various scientific strands that weave together to make us the people that we are.

Shameless self-promotion alert! Tuesday marked the release of my fourth book for Penguin, Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self.

This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with Drexel University physicist Dave Goldberg, who writes the io9 “Ask a Physicist” column and is the author of one of my fave physics books of 2013, The Universe in the Rearview Mirror.

This week saw the release of the Edge Annual Question: What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Many excellent responses were submitted; the Time Lord zeroed in on the various entries dealing with Falsifiability, cause and effect, IQ, and the universe as his faves, while Kate Clancy took a good, hard look at The Way [...]

“Information is the currency of nature.” — Seth Lloyd Jen-Luc Piquant spent the entire week at the FQXI conference, exploring the foundational questions relating to the Physics of Information in the idyllic beachfront setting that is Puerto Rico’s island of Vieques.

If you’re a fan of poisons and 1920s New York City, be sure and tune into PBS American Experience at 8 PM EST tonight, when it debuts the TV adaptation of Deborah Blum’s bestselling The Poisoner’s Handbook.

Welcome to 2014! Just when you thought the excitement of the holidays was over: apparently today is Zero G Day! No, you won’t be able to float because of the combined gravity of Jupiter and Pluto.

It’s the last physics link fest of 2013! Not surprisingly, there were tons of Christmas-themed items circling the Internet this week.

Christmas approacheth (for those who celebrate) and Jen-Luc Piquant received an early present: the Cocktail Party Physics post, “The Science of Mysteries: Leave Us the Counterpoint” — an homage to a key theme in the Dorothy Sayers classic mystery Gaudy Night — was selected for Open Lab 2013.

Sometimes science is all about uncovering hidden patterns. When Daniel Zitterbart of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany spent some time in Antarctica researching seismology several years ago, he noticed something curious about the local Emperor penguins: the males tended to huddle together in very dense formations, often thousands at a time.

The winter solstice isn’t until next week, but the earliest sunset of the year already happened. How’s that possible? We’re getting awfully close to Christmas.

I’ve never been particularly nostalgic, despite loving history (and science history in particular). But it’s fun sometimes to take a look back on more recent events — if by recent one means nearly 20 years ago — to remind ourselves of how quickly things change and perhaps provide a bit of perspective on the hectic [...]

What’sa matter with the way I talk? I am a val, I know But I live like in a really good part of Encino so it’s okay. – “Valley Girl,” Frank Zappa (1982) Frank Zappa’s quirky Top 40 hit from 1982, “Valley Girl,” doesn’t get much radio airplay these days, even on the “nostalgia” stations, [...]

This week kicked off with (another) Giant Leap For SpaceX: as Elon Musk’s company conquered Geostationary Orbit. Meanwhile, NASA funding shuffle alarms planetary scientists since it means that NASA Might Stop Exploring the Planets.

It’s that time of year again, when bibliophiles scour their groaning bookcases and pluck out the best reads of the year, just in time for the holiday shopping season.

As you read this, we will be winging our way back home to Los Angeles after a lovely stint across the pond. The Time Lord has much to be thankful for, since — defying our expectations and the bookie odds — his book about the hunt for the Higgs boson, The Particle at the End [...]

Jen-Luc Piquant is currently shivering her pixelated heart out in Merry Olde England, where the Time Lord is among the finalists for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books; the festivities take place this Monday.

This week, my guest on Virtually Speaking Science was TIME health reporter Maia Szalavitz, who specializes in addiction, among other topics.

This was the week we all turned our clocks back one hour, thereby disrupting our sleep/wake cycles. And here’s a post about how Ben Franklin, rudely awakened by dawn in Paris, dreamed up Daylight Savings Time.

Happy All Saint’s Day, one day late! There were lots of fun Halloween-related science links this week, including The Argument For and Against Kicking Werewolves in the Testicles;  The Bernoulli Fallacy and other zombie myths of physics; The Harvard Doctor Who Accidentally Unleashed a Zombie Invasion.

Via This Colossal, Jen-Luc Piquant was thrilled to learn about a nifty new tool called the Pixelstick. The brainchild of Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan of Brookyln-based BitBanger Labs, the Pixelstick lets users create long-exposure light paintings — and yes, they have a Kickstarter campaign.

Another week, another round of physics link-y goodness! On October 23, the Bad Astronomer wished everyone a Happy Mole Day and gave 6.02 x 10^23 reasons to celebrate.

I have been largely silent publicly about the events of the past week that ended with the resignation of our blogs editor, Bora Zivkovic, mostly because (a) I was waiting for all the facts to come in and trying to process those facts in the throes of considerable cognitive dissonance, and (b) others have addressed [...]

This has been an extremely difficult week for many of us in the science writing community. Actually, that’s an understatement. It’s been utterly shattering.