The Ed's Up #171 - a goodbye, and then the usual.

First, a farewell...

Everything ends, so let’s start there. Effective immediately, I’m closing down my blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science. I’m not going anywhere, though; since 2015, I’ve been working at The Atlantic as their first staff science writer, and will now be focusing fully on my writing there.

Having ended, let’s return to the start. I started the blog in August 2006, on little more than a whim. It was my first proper foray into science writing. I told my friends that I wanted to get regular practice, and to build up a portfolio of work that I could then show editors. But mainly: I really wanted to write. I had an urge to explain, to describe, to tell stories—an itch that my day job at a cancer charity wasn’t scratching.
I’ve since written more than 1,800 pieces under its banner. At first, I wrote for free, to an audience that numbered in the low dozens. Then, I moved to a succession of paying communities: the ScienceBlogs network (then run by the now-defunct SEED magazine), the Discover blogs network, and finally National Geographic’s Phenomena.

This is where I honed my skills through nigh-daily practice, built my reputation, and taught myself how to do journalism. I started collecting links to the pieces I had read during the week. I won awards, including the National Academies Keck Award for Science Communication in 2010. Editors did contact me to do freelance work for them after reading my posts, conference organizers asked me to speak to their delegates, and social scientists wrote papers about the blog. Not Exactly Rocket Science has been the centrepiece of my career.

But everything ends.

Over time, as I wrote for more publications, and as I began to self-identify as a journalist rather than a science communicator, my approach to blogging also changed. More and more of the posts were fully reported, and the writing style skewed closer and closer to what I’d write in paying publications. And yet, for the longest time, Not Exactly Rocket Science remained the one place where I had control over which stories I should cover, and over how I should cover them. Blogging was freedom.

But The Atlantic, whose online writers have long fused the freewheeling ethos of blogging with the traditional rigours of journalism, now offers a similar freedom, combined with all the benefits of editorial support. Consequently, it’s where I’ve decided to devote all of my energy. It’s where Not Exactly Rocket Science will live on, in spirit if not in name.

This blog changed my life. It gave me a career. It cemented my desire to write. It connected me with communities that opened my eyes to the art of journalism and the realities of social justice. It led to friendship and love.

It’s ending now, but not really dying. It just became something else, right under my nose. (The same has been said for blogging in general in countless hot takes.)

In this final post, I’d like to sincerely thank: National Geographic for hosting Not Exactly Rocket Science since 2012; Virginia Hughes, Amos Zeeberg, and Jamie Shreeve for recruiting me into their various networks; to Carl Zimmer for being a constant source of encouragement since the very earliest days; and to everyone who has read my work over the last decade. If you’d like to keep up with my writing, you can subscribe to this feed, or just follow the links in this newsletter. 
 

A Break in the Search for the Origin of Complex Life

"In Norse mythology, humans and our world were created by a pantheon of gods who lived in the realm of Asgard. As it turns out, these stories have a grain of truth to them. Thanks to a team of scientists led by Thijs Ettema, Asgard is now also the name of a large clan of microbes. Its members, which are named after Norse gods like Odin, Thor, Loki, and Heimdall, are found all over the world. Many of them are rare and no one has actually seen them under a microscope. But thanks to their DNA, we know they exist. And we know that they are singularly important to us, because they may well be the group from which we evolved." (Image: Jim Urquhart)
 

An Ancient Toy Could Improve Health Care in the Developing World

"Prakash has now created [a simple centrifuge]. Modeled on an ancient children’s toy, and made with little more than paper, string, and tape, it can spin at speeds of up to 125,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). That’s more than enough to, say, separate cells or malaria parasites from blood samples. And it’s actually much faster than a lot of desktop centrifuges, even though Prakash’s device is entirely hand-powered, weighs less than 2 grams, and can be made for just 20 cents. He calls it the paperfuge." (Image: Nature) 
 

Why Killer Whales (and Humans) Go Through Menopause

"Almost all animals reproduce until they die, even very long-lived ones like elephants and blue whales. As far as we know, just three species buck the trend: killer whales, short-finned pilot whales, and humans. Women go through menopause between 45 and 55 even though they live for a long time more; the same is true for hunter-gatherers without access to modern medicine. Likewise, female killer whales stop reproducing in their 30s or 40s, but might live for decades more. That’s an evolutionary mystery. Why give up so many chances to pass your genes to the next generation? This question is really two separate ones. First, why stop reproducing early? Second, why survive beyond that point?" (Image: Reuters)
 

Bacteria Send Electrical Pulses as Recruitment Ads

Bacteria are simple, supposedly. Each one consists of a single microscopic cell. But together, these cells have a surprisingly rich social life, and are capable of unexpectedly complex behaviors. For example, a team of scientists led by Gürol Süel from the University of California, San Diego, now has shown that groups of bacteria can coordinate their actions and bolster their ranks by sending long-range electrical signals, not unlike those that course along our neurons and power our thoughts.

 

More good reads in science and technology 

• Neanderthals shared many behaviors that we long believed to be uniquely human. Why did science get them so wrong? By Jon Mooallem.
• A woman was killed by a superbug resistant to all 26 American antibiotics—and she won't be the last, writes Sarah Zhang. And more from Helen Branswell.
• Sugar is the latest dietary villain, but the science is complicated, as Julia Belluz explains
• Fantastic Robinson Meyer piece on the fate of the Gulf Stream—an *actual* debate in climate science
• The hermit who inadvertently shaped climate-change science. Absolutely beautiful story by J. Weston Phippen.
• Really interesting piece on the many things we don't know about the basic biology of CRISPR, by Heidi Ledford.  
• A species of vampire bat that doesn’t normally target humans is now doing so.
• Scientists are building an animal fart database
• New primate species: the Star Wars gibbon
• “Razza the rat nearly ended James Russell’s scientific career.” Behind New Zealand’s wild plan to purge all rats, possums, stoats, and other invasives by 2050. By Brian Owens
• Drive-through trees are monuments to violent deforestation
• And finally... 2016 Ocean Art Contest Winners

 

 More good reads in politics and society 

• CNN reported on an intelligence dossier that supposedly contained compromising information on Trump. David Graham analyses the report, and Buzzfeed’s decision to publish the dossier.  Amy Zegart, who has spent almost 20 years looking at intelligence failures, writes about the biggest intelligence questions raised by the dossier. She also writes about Trump throwing the intelligence community under the bus.
• “She once held off an armed Algerian policeman by threatening to hit him about the head with a shoe.” An obituary of Claire Hollingworth, the utterly badass journalist who broke news of World War II.
• Trump repeatedly spoke to Robert Kennedy Jr., who has long distorted the science around vaccines, to lead a commission on vaccine safety. And while the transition team has backtracked, Kennedy has been urging anti-vaccine groups to speak out. Here’s Seth Mnookin’s profile of Kennedy, and Rebecca Robbins on what Trump can and can’t do to change vaccine policy.
• The dark art of the kompromat. Probably a good time to understand how blackmail works in Russia. By Julia Ioffe
• Obama in Science magazine: The renewable revolution is unstoppable.  
• "The plan we heard today is not compliant with the law. The president-elect has nine days to fix this problem.” Why Trump’s conflict-of-interest plan won’t prevent conflicts of interest. Also, the science of conflicts of interest, and why they matter. By Maggie Koerth-Baker
• Trump makes his son-in-law a top deputy, joining the ranks of Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Mussolini. The move could test anti-nepotism laws, which are surprisingly unclear on this.
• The GOP have taken the first steps to repealing Obamacare but the road might be trickier than they imagine.
• Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO who’s up for Secretary of State, says climate change is real but waffles a lot on what that means.  
• “We tried to save 150 people in Aleppo from 5,000 miles away.” An interesting ethical quandary.
• What Jeff Sessions’ Senate hearing tells us about racism in America.
• First US person to have 'intersex' on birth certificate: 'There’s power in knowing who you are'
• "Trump spent the rest of the news conference demonstrating his newfound respect for the press by taunting them" McKay Robbins covers Trump’s increasingly fractious relationships with the press.
• "We’ve got all the infrastructure that a tyrant would need." Obama leaves behind a huge privacy vulnerability.

You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic. My New York Times-bestselling book, I Contain Multitudes, is out now. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.

And that's it. Thanks for reading.

- Ed