Science Writing

I have to admit I'm not much of a reader. I subscribe to a couple of magazines, I read selected articles in the newspapers - mostly online versions and way more sports than I should - but rarely do I pick up a book and read it cover to cover, and even more rarely a work of fiction.

I have lots of excuses. I have twin boys (6 years old) so I don't have many care-free weekend days to lounge around reading. I spend way too much time planning for school, which is probably true of most teachers, especially science teachers, so when I do read it's usually researching some topic I'm teaching at the moment. I walk to work, so there's no morning/afternoon subway commute where I could get in an extended reading period. But mostly I just have trouble sustaining the effort needed to plough through a real book.

When I read, it's almost always short non-fiction pieces. And if I can combine reading for pleasure and work at the same time, all the better. I'm sure a lot of people become English teachers so they can be paid to read literature: For me that would just be torture! (How I ever got a Masters in German Literature I'll never know. If reading fiction in English is drudgery, imagine the pain of 2+ years reading fiction in another language - but I digress).

So recently I stumbled on a title that seemed to be made for me. "The Best American Science Writing: 2004." (See excerpts at Amazon.com) A collection of science articles written for various publications including the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Harper, NY Times, Discover, and on & on. These kinds of articles are where you can get interesting tidbits to throw into your lessons that make science discussions lively & interesting. Listen to this opening to the lead article in the book:

The television in the dead man's room stays on all night. Right now the program is Shipmates, a reality-dating drama that's barely audible over the hiss of the ventilator. It's 4 AM, and I've been here for six hours, sitting in the corner while three nurses fuss intermittently over a set of intravenous drips. They're worried about the dead man's health.

Great story, interesting tidbit about what happens to the individual cells of the body after brain death:

In the moments after death, a cascade of changes sweeps over the body. Potassium diminishes and salt accumulates, drawing fluid into cells. Sugar builds up in the blood. With the pituitary system offline, the heart fills with lactic acid like the muscles of an exhausted runner. Free radicals circulate unchecked and disrupt other cells, in effect causing the body to rust. The process quickly becomes irreversible. As cell membranes become porous, a "death gene" is activated and damaged cells begin to self-destruct. All this happens in minutes.

I'm enjoying the stories so far, and looking for the time to read more of them!