SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS
By Richard Harrison | December, 2021
A verbatim conversation with a new PhD student of mine, as they prepared to submit their very first paper for publication: Student: “Hey Rich, why does it say I have to pay $2,750 to submit my article?” Me: “Don’t worry, these are publication fees, not submission fees!” Student: “So, we have to pay to get published? Wow, this is ridiculous!” Me: “Welcome to the wonderful world of academic publishing—we do the research, write the papers, review them, edit the journal—all for free – then pay the journal to publish it and pay them again to read it…”
THE POWER OF MYSTERIOUS WORDS
By John Eiler | October, 2021
One of the joys of growing up in a little-remarked upon corner of the upper Midwest USA is that it came with its own secret words and rituals—cricks and bubblers, hotdishes and euchre. The Wisconsin patois served as a daily reminder that humans have a passion for using mysterious languages to express the numinous: cants and glossolalia that describe new things or express new ideas or emotions, and that draw lines, intentionally or otherwise, between the community of “insiders” and everyone else.
DID SHAKESPEARE GET IT WRONG?
By Becky Lange | August, 2021
How many of us have had the chance this summer to look up into the night sky, far from the urban/suburban lights, to engage in some thought-provoking star gazing? Consulting the night sky was the habit of our forebears, for the dance of the stars gave valuable guidance: when to reap and when to sow, how long till dusk, how far from home, whether to engage in battle or in love. Though Shakespeare, for one, begged to differ when he wrote, “Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck”.
WHAT HAVE NEUTRONS EVER DONE FOR US?
By Richard Harrison | June, 2021
I hereby call this extraordinary meeting of the Society for the Protection of Analytical Methods [SPAM] to order. Brothers and sisters, we face a grave threat. For decades, we’ve provided X-rays and electrons to study the structure and properties of natural materials – everything a mineralogist could ever dream of. But now this!
NATURE’S UNDERGROUND LIBRARIES
By Jon Blundy | April, 2021
The city of Oxford (UK), where I have relocated since my last editorial, is a provincial metropolis of some 150,000 souls about 90 km northeast of London. Oxford is famous for its ancient collegiate university, with colleges dating back to 1096. The University of Oxford is slightly less well-known for its remarkable Bodleian Library, created in its present form in 1598 by Sir Thomas Bodley. It is one of just six copyright libraries in Britain and Ireland. A copyright library (or ‘library of legal deposit’) is one that, since 1662, has the right to request and store for posterity a copy of every new work published in English.
ALPS AS INSPIRATION
By John Eiler | February, 2021
Looking down on the Earth from space, the Alps appear to be a small, and possibly unimportant, adornment to the tremendous girdle of “Alpide” orogens that stretch the full width of the southern margin of the Eurasian continent. But seen up close, and with historical perspective, the Alps punch far above their weight. From the deepest prehistory of our hominid ancestors to the modern age, the Alps have been a formidable barrier to trade, communication, migration, and conquest across the small, but storied, “peninsula” of Europe—a fact brought home for me when I recently toured a museum in Bolzano (Italy) dedicated to the life and remains of “Ötzi”, a man who met his end five thousand years ago in the high peaks and ice fields of the Ötztal Alps.