This blog came out of the realization that people -- average, ordinary people -- don't know much about the Mysterious and Complicated Realm of Science. It's not that science is always complex, or full of jargon, or about things that don't matter in everyday life. It's that it's so rarely explained in a way that everyone can understand. Basic science is something as easy as looking out the window and paying attention to what you see. It affects every part of modern life, and we need to understand it to make good choices about our food, our lifestyles, and who and what we vote for. This blog is an attempt to bring ordinary people and science closer together.
This is not a place for politics, or closed minds, or emotional arguments. It is here to lay out the facts as we know them, with minimal bias. It cannot address issues of personal health or safety, only the technical background that helps you evaluate those things for yourself, or ask educated questions of professionals. The best opinions are based on a thorough understanding of the real world, and this blog is here to help you get that.
To that end, let's take off the lab coats, put away the degrees, and talk like regular people would over lunch.
About Alison
I'm a plant person, first and foremost. I have a Bachelor's degree in plant biology and a Master's degree in plant pathology, both from the University of California at Davis; I'm working as a professional gardener and consultant right now. That wasn't my first career choice, however, and the string of colleges I attended gave me a wide array of academic disciplines and viewpoints. (My first major was in quantum physics.) I picked up chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, ecology, entomology, physics, mathematics, and a dab of geology, along with things like women's studies, Russian folklore, and the history of Cuba. That's just on the academic end; I've dabbled in electronics, computers, carpentry, cooking, bicycle repair, machine shop, writing fiction, graphic design, and various crafts.
What this sort of background has given me is a sense that lots of things interconnect. The more of those things you grasp, the easier it is to understand why something works the way it does. Complex systems aren't that complex if you break them down enough, and show how the pieces are like the pieces of other things we know. I've been told I'm good at that.
A memory I think about when explaining things happened when I was a freshman physics major. I was sitting in my first physics course, in my first term, when the professor wrote a formula on the board. I had just started calculus, so when he started with a swooping curve, I was a bit lost. He paused, as if he could pick my confusion out of the whole lecture hall, and said, "I realize not everyone here has had calculus yet; this is an integral. Think of it as a big S, which stands for sum -- it means you take all these little bits and add them together to get the total." And with that, he covered two weeks of calculus lecture in less than a minute. When the much more technical explanation came along in calculus the next semester, I clung to that one-sentence description as a roadmap to what was really going on. That taught me the power of simple, plain-English explanations. It's the sort of thing I strive to do.
Onward
I welcome your questions, as it's easiest to explain when answering a specific question. In the meantime, I'll try to touch on a few topics that have been in the news, or which have come up in conversation. If something doesn't make sense, please tell me -- I want these posts to be easy to understand.
Thanks for reading!
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