Scribbling Fred

Why blog?

Does the world really need another blog? Probably not. But I’m going to ignore my own advice. Why? Having spent nine decades on this planet, I feel I might occasionally have a worthwhile observation or two about happenings on this third orb from the sun.

As that astronomical allusion hints, I’ve had a long love affair with things scientific. Not as a practitioner but as a passionate observer. For many years I was TIME‘s resident science writer. I’ve authored several pop books about scientific subjects (earthquakes, astronomy, colonizing space). I also helped start Time Inc.’s spinoff science monthly Discover and spent a year revitalizing Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s quarterly Oceanus. But enough with the résumé.

As Henry Luce liked to say of his magazines’ writers, if they’re good they can write about anything. That’s probably not quite true; having been ordered to lip synch in grade school music class, I squirmed during a brief stint as TIME‘s music writer. But generally, if you’ve got a handle on storytelling and can get experts to decode their jargon-speak for you, you can communicate the complexity of science or even music. Intelligently, accurately and interestingly.

That was the prime ambition of Mr. Luce’s magazines. And it’s still the goal of legit journalism. Forget about about fake news. Even social media has voices that tell the truth if you look hard enough. I’d like to be one of those voices. After all, if you’ve been at this storytelling thing long enough, you might even get reasonably good at it.

With that immodest excuse – apologia, in geek speak – I’ll try blogging, not just about scientific subjects, such as the devastating coronavirus pandemic, but other topics in the news. Indeed, just about anything that perturbs me or life on this planet.

Stay tuned.