Three years ago yesterday, on March 11, 2011, the nuclear power plant at Fukushima Daiichi was hit by a tsunami that followed an earthquake less than an hour before. The tsunami waves exceeded the height of the seawall protecting the power plant by as much as thirty feet. The facility flooded, and, over three days, explosions at the reactors occurred. The accident is categorized as … Continue reading Fukushima Daiichi, Three Years Later
As we begin 2014, we take a look back at Lofty Ambitions over the last year to see where we have been and where we might be going, to see how our interests emerge and shift, to share a few highlights in hopes that our readers take a few minutes to re-read one of our posts. We continue to focus on aviation and spaceflight, science … Continue reading Recap of 2013: 5 Posts to Re-Read
We have perused science writing handbooks and anthologies before, and we’re at it again for the recently published anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013. It’s the time of year for “best of” lists, and this book is chockfull of great articles on a wide array of subject matter from the past year. This year’s iteration is edited by Siddhartha Mukerjee, who is … Continue reading The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013
Last week, in our post “Cancer, Risk, & Otherwise,” we wrote about our friend Adam Schmitz. We grew to know Adam when we were all students at Knox College more than twenty-five years ago. At the time, we had our whole lives ahead of us. As William Wagner wrote this week in “Rage Against the Dying of the Light,” we felt as if we had … Continue reading Cancer, Risk, & the Language of Loss
When Anna’s mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2012, we were upset. But we weren’t shocked. Age increases a person’s risk of cancer. Though in otherwise good health, she was in her seventies. She lived pretty much exactly as long as Centers for Disease Control statistics estimate for someone born when she was. Statistics are tricky, though. At birth, a white woman born … Continue reading Cancer, Risk, & Otherwise
This is the latest post in our series “Writing in General, and Science Writing in Particular.” To peruse all our posts on SCIENCE WRITING, click HERE or the tag in the right sidebar. A Field Guide for Science Writers (2006) In our last post, we discussed The Science Writers’ Handbook, which was published just this year. Today, we talk about A Field Guide for Science Writers, … Continue reading Writing in General, and Science Writing in Particular: Handbooks (2)
Today, we are participating in Chapman University’s Literary Pub(lishing) Crawl. If you’re in the area, we encourage you to join us for panels with writers, editors, and agents and a book signing featuring former head of Disneyland Jack Lindquist and journalist David Henley. On Saturday, we’ll be walking for the second time in PurpleStride Chicago. Last spring, Anna’s Mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and … Continue reading PurpleStride Chicago
Today marks the second anniversary of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Along with the Chernobyl accident in 1986, it is designated as a level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The amount of radioactive contaminants released during Japan’s accident is, however, far less than in Russia’s. Also, recent predictions for health consequences suggest that the rise in cancer … Continue reading Fukushima Daiichi, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons
Note: Photographs in this post were taken at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque in May 2011. Two years ago, on March 11, 2011, one of the worst nuclear accidents the world has ever known occurred at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. The cleanup continues today and will continue for years to come. That prefecture in Japan remains devastated. One need only … Continue reading The Second Anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident
On this date in 1942, TWA Flight 3 crashed with twenty-two souls aboard. The aircraft was a DC-3, flying from New York to Burbank. Roughly fifteen minutes after takeoff from Las Vegas, one of several stops on the cross-country trip, the plane slammed into a cliff. The nineteen passengers and three crew were killed. The investigation posited that the pilots mistakenly used the compass heading … Continue reading Airplane Crashes, Airline Safety, & Risk
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