Dream of the Dragon

After an over-long hiatus from blogging and my particular brand of unsubstantiated opinion slinging, I’ve decided to bring this beast back into action.

The gap in writing was filled with local reporting in Chicago and the (attempted) cultivation of “hard news” skills. This involves direct acquisition of information, attribution of anything resembling fact or opinion, and the precise excision of bias. Bias was my angle on this blog in the past and reckless opinion was my style. The reporting of my first quarter in grad school built some new fundamental skills while personal style starved on the sidelines. C’est la guerre.

But now I’m a full time science reporter (student, mostly), covering theoretical physics during most of the week. This is too dreamy. This is the stuff of atom-smashing and event horizons, of antimatter and dark energy. And Chicagoland hosts some of the world’s preeminent experts in these fields. For a few more months at least, the second most powerful particle accelerator in the world, Fermilab’s Tevatron, will operate in Batavia, Ill. – that’s right around the corner. Read the rest of this entry »