Hello.

In case anyone stumbles across this blog, I'd like you to know I'm now in Journalism School and writing a new blog, which you can find here: hayleydunning.com

I escaped academia! Well, OK, I'm doing another Masters, but it's not leading to a life of university halls...

Audio slideshow

The Forest Rules

Jack Horner pauses again, his face frozen in a characteristic scowling smile. I wonder if he does it for effect, or if, like me, it takes him a little while to process and comprehend the voices of children.

Kristina, Liz and Katherine are enchanted, and I have to admit I'm getting there too. He's been their hero since childhood, a palaeontologist truly deserving of the title "maverick", as he describes slicing up his own museum's fossils in order to eliminate unnecessary dinosaurs other researchers have been so eager to assign as separate species. You would be surprised how many of your favourite dinosaurs he has proven are just juveniles of other species. Like we tell the kids at the Forest, if you saw a tadpole next to a frog for the first time would you ever know they're the same species?

Someone asks him where he studied. Another pause and the hint of a sigh.

"I studied at Montana State University for seven years," (muffled sounds of awe) "I flunked every class I ever took. I have severe dyslexia."

Silence. Brains taking it in. So that's why all the pauses.

Still, he manages to be an absolutely enthralling speaker, and by the time he got onto Chickenosaurus I was the caricature of a child on the edge of their seat, hands gripping the sides, leaning in, breathing softly. Birds evolved form dinosaurs, raptor-types. As fledgling embryos, chickens, and all other birds, begin with some typically dino characteristics, such as teeth and a long tail. At some point during their development, specific genes switch on to curtail these features; the tail bones are fused, the fingers are docked into wings, and a chick is born. What Horner proposes, and is already beginning, is to find those genes and switch them off, effectively reversing sections of evolution to bring back creatures with features not seen in 65 million years. Another researcher has already had success culturing teeth inside a chicken beak, and spurned on by this, Horner and his colleagues hope to hatch a full chickenosaurus in the very near future.

So it would seem the Jurassic Forest has taken over my life. I should be writing my thesis, but I consider days not working at the Forest as more of "days off". It's subtler than that too, it's like the Forest is a part of my "new life", as I prepare fully for the move to Vancouver. I don't do the things I used to do. I haven't written anything sciencey for a while, I haven't updated this blog very regularly. I haven't even visited the BBC Focus forum for a while, and I love Focus and the folks there. I have the opportunity to write a review of a book my office mate wrote about rough diamonds, and I haven't even attempted it yet. Why would I not want these things to be a part of my new life too?

Then again, maybe it's because my job means I have to get up before 8 most days, and frankly I'm not used to that.

Tales from the Jurassic Forest

I'm standing next to a young family by the display where three Utahraptors are trying to hunt a big Apatosaurus. I turn to the young boy and ask him if he thinks those little guys could really take down that big guy.

He looks at me from under one small raised eyebrow. "They're just statues"!

Fair enough, but I happen to think they're pretty impressive statues. I decided to get myself a summer job to keep me sane while finishing writing my thesis (although, to be honest, I've not written a word of my thesis for a worrying number of weeks), and ended up at the Jurassic Forest - an old-growth woodland north of Edmonton filled with 40 animatronic dinosaurs. It's a unique park for Canada, only opened last summer, and is provides impressive educational fun, especially as many of the dinosaur species have been found in Alberta. And they are more than just statues: they move, they roar, they scare.

Here's one little guy: Styracosaurus. The day I had my camera it rained a lot, so better pictures of the big guys to come later!

The job so far has been a lot of fun. I've leanred a lot about the dinosaurs, but also about the forest. Part of the job, and part of the experience for visitors, is the forest itself, which was virtually untouched in the making of the park. A natural route was found through the trees, and with the consultation of a specialist all sensitive plants were avoided and left in peace. No trees were cut down, although this has had one unexpected donwside: today was an exceptionally windy day and at least a dozen old, brittle trees actually came down. I saw one fall; a big crack and down came a tree that was probably decades old, approaching a century. I don't think I've ever seen a tree fall, let alone such a tall, aged one. The wind also tends to make the dinosaurs crazy, electronics and mechanics malfunctioning all over the place.

The weather kept me busy today, but during the weekdays I often take school groups on tours (with varying degrees of success, dependant on age group and how aware the teachers are that I am not there to keep the children from being unruly) and on weekends I wander the trails generally being friendly. I like it in the evening, when there are less people and more wildlife. I've seen frogs, squirrels, a moose, woodpeckers, Canadian geese, a sandpiper, hares and a porcupine nest, although none of the critters themselves yet. And mosquitoes. The wind has kept them down this week, but the ponds and swamps are chock full of larvae, all ready to eat me alive. But I'm happy and proud to finally be able to recognise birds, frogs, trees and flowers of all kinds.

Aside from the day-to-day, we occasionally have speakers come to the Forest. A couple of weeks ago we had Phil Currie, the University of Alberta dinosaur expert who I've interviewed a couple of times for The Gateway (although he didn't recognise me). He gave a talk about the dinosaurs of Alberta, which was very interesting, but more entertaining were the audience members. I was sat at the back behind a bedraggled mother trying desperately to pin down two young boys. I thought then that perhaps she saw the talk was going on and bought tickets on the off-chance it would entertain them. But I was soon proved wrong when the question period began. The older boy, who must have only been four or five, stuck his hand up and asked how the coelacampha survived. All of us frowned, what was he talking about? After a while Phil gave up and said that perhaps that was a dinosaur he hadn't heard of, to which the kid replied "Nooo, it's a fish!" Then it all clicked, he'd said coelacanth. This was a fish believed to have gone extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, until one was caught off the coast of South Africa in 1938. It seems they had been lurking in deep waters for millions of years, evading our grasp. How the little guy knew about the coelacanth was a mystery to all of us.

Later, as they stood in line waiting to get a book signed by Dr Currie, his mother confessed to me she knew more about dinosaurs than she ever wanted to, and frankly she would be glad when he could read for himself!!

Phil Currie and our ride-on Ankylosaurus

Steam-rolling along

I've been extremely busy lately, which is to say I took on too much to do this semester. But I'd rather be busy and a little stressed than doing nothing and depressed.

So I keep gathering a list of stuff I should post about, but the longer the list gets, the less I feel I have the appropriate time to sit down and bash them out.

Here are the big things.

• I got into the UBC graduate school of journalism.
• The science writing class I'm taking with New Scientist writer Bob Holmes is awesome, and Bob has already said we should have a chat about where to go next in my career, mentioning New Scientist internships (which would probably be the coolest thing ever, but will have to be next summer).
• I'm giving a talk at local critical thinking event Logicon about science journalism which should be awesome enough in itself, but lately it's been getting some astounding publicity, so my talk had better be good!

The semester will finally come to an end in a couple of weeks, and I'm hoping to let a lot of this sink in, and to try and keep up journaling. My boyfriend just asked me if I ever kept a journal, and, well, I've tried a few, but never seem to able to keep them up. But, if I want to be a writer I should practice prolifically.

But, for now, before another busy day tomorrow, I wanted to post my most recent non-fiction writing class essay, which I got back today. I got an A+, I finally cracked it.

_______________________________________

Directions

Depart.

At the end of the road turn left. Pass Budmouth Technology College on the left. Beware of teenagers crossing the road in droves - remember hiding at your friend’s house at lunchtimes, to avoid that boy and that girl. Feel the pressure of growing up like anyone else, and assume it’s normal. Say goodbye to the sea at night, excited to leave your hometown.

At the roundabout, take the third exit. Enter Bristol city centre. Heavy traffic ahead – expect delays. Stress about exams, stress about friends and boyfriends, stress about course choices. Go straight on. Go out of your mind at exam time, fail to stop for sleep, leave the lights on all night and run down the battery. Can’t tell dreams from waking life anymore; fail to follow the instructions in an exam, cry in front of the teacher, panic about the future.

Follow the detour North and park in Reykjavik harbour. For one year live in bliss, happiness, adventure and enjoyment. Learn the rules of a different road, the only one, which loops around the island and always takes you back to the city you love. Know that life can be good, but know that this can’t last. At planned end of diversion, re-enter Bristol city centre and join rush hour traffic. City pollution high – forget how easy it was to fill your lungs on last year’s route and struggle for breath.

Exit the highway with a first class degree and growing uncertainty. Recalculate route?

! Remember to drive on the right !

Pass Helsinki and follow the road round to Kasityolaiskatu and your boyfriend’s apartment. Confined space. Weather conditions worsening, put fog lights on. Driving range limited – spend six months standing on the streets in the morning darkness handing out free papers to the solemn population. Round the market square and park next to the mall. Sit on the steps of Kop Kolmio and hold back the tears, sucking them back up into your frozen brain. Wrestle with the language, fight with your boyfriend, grapple with employment. Ask locals for directions – end up more lost.

Take the road to the shore, then take the ferry ahead. Spend two months at the shipyard cleaning the largest passenger ship in the world as it gets pieced together, growing to sixteen decks of filthy cabins. Battle the bully boss who doesn’t pay foreigners properly. Ignore the dirty mess builders leave in the toilets, ignore the dirty grins of Eastern Europeans, try to ignore the shocked faces when they learn you’re from rich and powerful Britain.

Drive to the shore in winter when the water is frozen over – the sea is now full of obstacles. Know that you are dangerously adrift, but trust the directions – you will be back on the road soon.

New directions plotted, via hometown. School zone ahead. Slow down. Remember that, contrary to many people in your situation, you had a happy childhood. Try to drag those feelings back over your tired body – feels more like fingernails scraping. Remember that, unlike people not in your situation, good memories only make you feel worse, now that you’re no longer living them.

! Remember to drive on the right !

Cross the ocean and exit the highway. Bear right, pass the West Edmonton Mall on the left and pass the first couple of weeks. A new route is proposed. Go all the way around the roundabout – stay in the right lane. At -40⁰C petrol and motor oil start to freeze. Car splutters and stutters in the morning, ice encroaching on the windshield. Drive through a snowstorm without snow shovel, without space blanket, without emergency first aid.

Speed camera ahead. Get irate at boyfriend. Threaten him with violence, threaten him with marriage. He’s 9612 kilometres from your location, but manage to push him away. You’ve gone too far. If possible, please make a U-turn.

Traffic light ahead. Caught speeding through red light – hand yourself in to the authorities. Test positive for depression. Take the next pill.

Toll road. Try to make up all the sleep lost on past journeys by stretching your time in bed, apathetic. Fear the outside, avoid your lab mates, face research with panic, and exposure with despair. Decide to inform your instructor of your violation.

Merge onto the motorway. Keep in mind your red-light run-through that could so easily have been a crash. Accelerate slowly, cautiously, heading for a new destination: decide to take the alternative route you thought you had passed. Take some wrong turns. Find friends and mentors that help you figure out why you keep going awry.

Tired drivers are dangerous drivers: pull over and take a break. Can’t sleep at night but sleep into the afternoon. Doctor prescribes sleeping pills. Take the next pill. After ten months, fall asleep at the wheel and make an emergency stop. Tell the doctor you want to change pills, not take more. Take the next pill.

Avoid congestion charge zone. Avoid thesis work, avoid self-righteous lab mates, avoid supervisor around campus, only do the things that keep you going, that get you up in the morning. Know that you will eventually have to travel via thesis, but take the scenic route.

You have not yet reached your destination. At the end of the road turn West, towards a different ocean.

Dinosaur news

The problem with depression is not being miserable as such, but that emotions are never constant.

I can spend an hour, a day, a few days in energy and motivation and a state of excitement. But it's never constant. It's a real shame when feeling good is tainted by the impeding downturn.

The point of this is that I haven't written for a while because I've done a lot of very exciting things, but whenever I have any time to sit down and write about them I'm sapped of all energy and joy. Luckily, this evening I'm sustaining myself with the thrill of anticipation - next week is 'reading week' - essentially a week off.

I'll start with journalism updates since they're always the most fun. Also, I haven't seen my supervisor since December and done very little thesis work, although I am giving a talk a the Arctic Workshop in a couple of weeks, which is scary but exciting...

I am extremely pleased with how my Iceland feature turned out in New Trail:

http://www.newtrail.ualberta.ca/Winter2011/Features/Features%20Current/IcelandCometh.aspx

(If you clock on the image of the magazine cover on the left you can view the article in the mag, where it looks just beautiful).

I never got it back for edits and they actually changed very little of it, which I take as a huge compliment, although I always find writing about Iceland fairly easy !

For The Gateway it has become a bit of a running joke that this semester I have been writing almost exclusively dinosaur (or fossil) news. Here's a sampling:

University reveals fossilized fish skull at Paleontology Museum

New species of flying reptile found

Antarctic expedition unearths rare fossils

Dino lab volunteers get their hands dirty cleaning fossils

However, by far my favourite article I wrote was this one:

Dinosaurs may have survived longer than previously thought

Not only was it the most revolutionary and important thing I covered, I feel it's my best work so far. Finally, I felt I had the chance to do with science journalism what I've really want to do. Part of the reason I think I managed to do it with this subject is because I have a relatively deeper understanding of this particular topic (that is, relative and absolute dating techniques). I managed to get in some things most science articles don't cover: simple error on a number ("yields a date of only 63.9 – 65.7 million years ago" rather than just stating the 700,000 year average that most articles have), uncertainty in an emerging method ("Heaman acknowledged that because it is so new, it will no doubt be met with some uncertainty") the need for further research, that one result is not conclusive ("Our first strategy will be to go back to this site and look at a couple of other dinosaur bones") and how the community will greet the result ("The result of at least one individual outliving the traditional extinction of the dinosaurs will fuel research, as other scientists seek to use the technique to support or oppose the new idea").

After I interviewed the guy he told me that he was next being interviewed by the local CBC news in his lab, and invited me to hang around. I accepted with gusto. It turned out to be extremely interesting, not only did I get to hear more about the technique, I met some interesting characters. The CBC interviewer and her cameraman were shown in by a guy who works as a science communicator for the university. This was one fascinating guy. He had worked making documentaries for Discovery and National Geographic for a number of years, and now wrote a lot of the University's sci and tech Express News, the first press releases. These thigns alone were captivating enough, but as we stood in the background watching the CBC woman hopelessly try to understand what Heaman was saying, we shared opinions about the nature of science journalism and how much of a shame it was this story and a million other worthy ones like it would just be 2-minute snippets packaged up and simplified for a 'popular' audience.

To top it all off, I got this email from Heaman after the story came out:

Hi Hayley, I had a chance to look at the article you prepared for Gateway last night and just wanted to commend you for a great job. This is the most accurate report on our study so far. Larry.

Perfect.

My writing class has been hit and miss. I got my grade back for the last essay I posted here and although it was still 'good', my teacher's comments made me shrink and cringe. She said I belittled the journalist too much, and it made the whole piece too... trite. And she's right. Why did I submit a piece portraying a journalist as dumb and irritating to journalism programs?

The next essay went similarly badly, as my teacher pointed out my whimsy-addiction. Whimsy, fairytale, these are my soft place to fall, my comfort zone. She said to me that she usually doesn't push people to come out of their comfort zone, and won't penalise them for not doing so, but thinks that my writing would be so much better if I managed to write a piece perfectly straight. I took this as a sort of compliment - she thinks I can do it and wants to see me do it. I got an extension on the next essay, to remove the whimsy, and we have already started the last essay, which I am very pleased with. I'll post the final draft in a couple of weeks.

I'm also taking a couple of new classes. I'm taking a class that's anything and everything to do with the Arctic, taught by the very charismatic John England. He is a wonderful fellow that loves Arctic explorers and pauses lectures for tangents on his heroes, philosophies of the Arctic or ideals of learning - that it should be about knowledge rather than facts.

This Tuesday I also started an 8-week evening class titled 'Writing about science'. Although I wasn't sure exactly what this meant, I paid up my $300 a few months ago anyway and waited. It turns out it is exactly what I wanted - basically a science journalism course - taught by Bob Holmes, who writes for New Scientist! Just had one class so far, but I think it's going to be fantastic.

Sections are getting shorter. Attention running low. There must be other things. I have some scribbled notes in my notebook. This is one of the problems with depression - I have these thoughts, then as I walk to university or drift to sleep I start expanding them, thinking about what to research to make them clearer, maybe how I can write them up into larger pieces.... but they all get lost in the dregs of the days.

Here are a few of the scribblings... wonder if they ever turn into anything:

- Why is (are) science (scientists) always seen as the antithesis of "warm and fuzzy" - e.g. homeopathy, where science can prove it's bunkum, but people think it's still good because it's 'holistic' and given by 'caring professionals'.

- Couldn't we just have night-time lights that 'glow', rather than traditional lights that need a constant energy input?

Back in the snow

Well here I am back in Canada, in the -30 degrees and the thigh-deep snow. Yes, it's a cold winter, but it's true that last year was Canada's hottest on record.

I had a truly excellent holiday period visiting Finland and jolly old England. I reconnected with a lot of old friends and lived in little slots of comfortable old lives. And although I was sad to leave I feel energised for this new semester - I'm taking a wonderful class on the Arctic (pretty much anything and everything to do with it), continuing my non-fiction writing class, taking a class specifically in science writing later on and going to a conference in Montreal in March. And then I have more fun work to do with the CFI, and hanging out with friends and my boyfriend will be around for at least 3 months... yes, a lot to keep me busy, which is for the best.

Anyway, although I haven't been posting over the hols I've been mulling over quite a few things.

Does God care about global warming?

A short musing - it seems odd to me somehow that all those fundamentalist Christians are often the most consumerist, truck-driving capitalists. Surely it should be a Christian virtue to care about the Earth? I expressed this to the CFI at a meeting, and got a worrying response from Brent - that things like that don't matter to people who believe we're living in the End Times. That the global climate going a bit crazy is just proof of the coming Armageddon apparently... worrying.

Short memories

I watched a documentary about the Boxing Day tsunami, and the part that made me think was when people were describing how they had no idea what was going on when the sea suddenly went out really far. Around the world today, that situation would probably not happen - there would be enough people that remembered what it means that people would run away instead of standing and staring. But how long would this effect last? There are numerous examples in the past of collective 'forgetting' leading to fresh disasters. How many people live in the path of Vesuvius today, despite it being one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history? For all our mass media, I think we still have pretty short memories.

Is climate change the death of science journalism?

Reading Unscientific America and listening to a special of the (fabulous, locally produced) Skeptically Speaking, I've learned a lot about the history of science journalism. I seems that it has enjoyed the greatest popularity when the science is positive: when we were reaching for the moon or sequencing the human genome. The blame on the decline of science reporting is often placed in the public's lack of interest, but it seems to me that the constant barrage of depressing news about global warming has a hand in it. I'm not saying there shouldn't be reporting on climate change, but perhaps there should be more of a balance with other topics, positive topics.

This thought was furthered when I began reading the latest instalment of The Best American Science and Nature Writing, an excellent annual collection of articles picked each ear by a guest editor. This year the editor is Freeman Dyson, who begrudgingly admits he had to give over two thirds of the volume to Nature writing, since that's 'what's fashionable now'. To me then, it seems that falling back on environmental topics has a degree of laziness - if it's not something truly new and revolutionary then it's just drumming into the public something they're already sick of, and ignoring plenty of other more fascinating, more ground-breaking research discoveries.

The key to beauty?

While reading The Best American Science and Nature Writing on the plane over to the UK I got absorbed in many interesting articles. There was a section dedicated to neurology, and how it's displacing many of the previous theories for the things we do and experience; an article about a guy dedicating himself to researching the causes of strange conditions, things people believe are just 'craziness'. He set about proving that many of them have deep neurological causes, helping us better understand the way our brains work.

But as I read over a fact I'd heard before I started to think. When we see, most of the time there's simply too much information to process all at once, so a lot of what we image is just 'filled in' by our brain, based on what we've seen before. As we banked around London and I stared out at the winking lights, I wondered if that was what made things 'beautiful' - when they contain so much detail we can't fill in that we just have to look and look at them. Why we stare so long at intricate paintings or flowing waterfalls. There's just too much strange and wonderful information. Whimsical, or am I on to something?

The Arctic is a book of untold stories

Finally, my good friend Jess pointed me to an article the local Arctic specialist journalist Ed Struzik had written when he accompanied her and her supervisor John England on their field research this past summer. She expressed surprise at some parts of the article, how Struzik talked about England, and how she was put out he talked about the gruelling food when she insisted they made him pancakes every morning! I guess it added to the bleak picture of Arctic research, but I think pancakes in the northern desert would have made a funnier anecdote !