Science Journalism Award winners
November 6, 2013 9:30 PM   Subscribe

2013 Science Journalism Award winners from the American Association for the Advancement of Science: [via Romenesko]

Also:

Certificate of Merit - Radio: Ashley Ahearn of KUOW Public Radio in Seattle for a three-part series on coal in the Pacific Northwest (11 March, 12 March, and 18 June 2013)
posted by mediareport (4 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
Neat! Adrien is my Ph.D. advisor, although I don't work on either Foldit or EteRNA, and I'm only in the video for a few seconds in the cafe shots near the end. I definitely have a greater appreciation for the effort required to produce engaging and informative science journalism than I used to.
posted by Serf at 12:20 AM on November 7, 2013


I know what I'm going to be doing when I pretend to be working today.
posted by glaucon at 5:00 AM on November 7, 2013 [5 favorites]


"I fucking love science", so I won't be reading these.

Actually, thanks for the links!
posted by mulligan at 6:48 AM on November 7, 2013


The carp. Do anything to keep them out of Lake Michigan. Dam up the river if that's what it takes, build a fence six miles high, forty miles deep. It really is an emergency. Those fish are psychos -- look at the carp attack vids on youtube, ninja fish leaping out of the water and smacking people down in their boats; I'd want to take a shotgun in the boat with me, it could be good practice for pheasant hunting, as pheasants are about as unpredictable as these damn jerk carp are, they come flying up and test your reflexes. The difference of course is that the pheasant is going away from you, and the carp doing it's damnest to give you a concussion, a broken nose or jaw, whatever. Bastards.

I just watched a couple of those vids again -- a shotgun wouldn't do it, you'd need a shotgun set up as a machine gun, set it up in the front of the boat like helicopter door gunners in Vietnam and just blast them.

Letting those carp into the great lakes, just a disaster. They are garbage fish, they are dangerous, they are unrelenting; they are The Terminator of freshwater fish, in that they just don't stop.

~~~

If you go to New Braunfels -- and I recomend that you do so, it's just about halfway between Austin and San Antone, really sweet little town -- if you go to New Braunfels, go and swim in or tubing down the Comal River, the clearest, cleanest, most beautiful water; really nice.

It used to be lots nicer, it used to be that there was nothing in that river, you look at it and into it and through that crystal clear water you'd see the white rocks all along the bottom, all across the river and as far as you could see upstream or downstream; a gorgeous Texas river. But now you see algae, or some type of green garbage plant(s), and they grow in there super-thick, and have to be hacked out yearly or they'd take the river over.

My understanding is that a number of years ago, someone dumped an aquarium into that river. The end.

Along with the algae/garbage there are also lots of pretty fish, same as you'd see in an aquarium shop, one of them the same species of fish I had in an aquarium for years. That part is fun, go under with a mask, snorkeling, with a can of that squirting fake cheese shit, you'll be surrounded in seconds, all kinds of fish. Probably I'm giving them polio or something from feeding them that garbage but it seems they like junk food same as we do.

So that part is fun, but fact is that the Comal River would be so much nicer had that person not made that mistake.

~~~

Anyways. There is still a chance that those fish can be kept out of those lakes, I say spend whatever it takes to make sure of it. It's a good story, a bit long-winded it seemed to me, but I hung in with it.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:05 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


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