The Hobomock Scribes

Last week I enjoyed a wonderful visit to Hobomock Elementary School. Thanks to the teachers for welcoming me and to all the students for coming up with such great stories and sensory details for our adventures. I was also grateful to the two intrepid reporters from the school newspaper who asked such incisive questions during our interview. Normally I'm the one doing the interviewing, so I was a little nervous, but thanks to my entourage everything went smoothly. The fourth-grade PR guys filtered the questions brilliantly. My bodyguard kept me feeling safe, our invisible but loquacious ninja made sure there were no awkward silences, and of course my chief-of-staff managed it all wonderfully. Too bad we got in trouble for laughing too much.

As for the previous day's lunch crew...awkward? No, I don't think so.

If any of you are reading this, remember: REVISE. Then revise again. And again...

New Dangerous Waters Cover!

The finished cover for the forthcoming paperback version of Dangerous Waters:

The paperback is coming out on March 5th, published by Square Fish. There's some great new material, including an essay detailing my own sinking ship experience, which was part of the inspiration for the novel.

The cover art is courtesy John Hendrix, an amazing author and illustrator. Check out his work here. This new rendition is a real departure from the hardcover version. I love it; I think it really captures all the elements of the story, and it has been fun to break it down with kids during school visits and discuss the different pieces of the picture.

A Teenager Builds a Robotic Arm

And what did you do on your summer vacation?

The high school kid pictured here, Easton LaChappelle, built a working robotic arm in his bedroom. This is actually his second effort. Talking to Easton and, briefly, his very proud father, was a real pleasure. I love how Easton made use of both incredibly advanced technology and stuff that just happened to be lying around his house, including old dental rubber bands.


Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to meet him or see his workshop, but his personality and creativity definitely come across in this great photo by Mike Basher. Read the full story about Easton and his robot here.

The Mystery of Santa's Data Centers

In The Truth About Santa, my 2009 book on the scientific side of Christmas, I explained that one of the reasons St. Nick bases his operations up at the North Pole may relate to his reliance on a massive data center. To sum up: Santa uses flying robots to spy on kids; the volume of video data captured by these flying cameras is massive; only an enormous data storage and supercomputing facility would be capable of holding and processing all of that video and flagging naughty behavior. 

As I understood it at the time, the problem with giant computing facilities is that they tend to overheat, so companies need to crank up the air conditioning to keep them cool and running properly. This, in turn, implied that Santa chose the North Pole in part to reduce his energy costs. Instead of operating expensive air conditioners he could simply open the windows and let the cool Arctic air flow in.

I was wrong. While reporting one of my recent stories, an in-depth look at energy efficient data centers, I learned that the best companies don't rely on AC at all. Instead, they allow their data centers - like the Facebook facility pictured here - to run as hot as 80 degrees. Even with the hot temperatures, the computer hardware inside performs just fine.

Since Santa only uses the best technology, it is safe to assume that his facilities don't require air conditioning either. Which makes me wonder if his data centers are based at the North Pole at all. If he doesn't need to cool them so drastically, they could be anywhere. Perhaps they are secretly staggered around the world, even in our own urban backyards.

And over the next few weeks, of course, they will be humming....

Swimming on a Jovian Moon

A long in the works article of mine on Jupiter's moon Europa has just been published in Discover Magazine, and it's available online here. The main subject of the piece, planetary scientist Britney Schmidt, was one of the more fascinating people I've ever met. She listens to heavy metal, feels incomplete if she misses SportsCenter, and absolutely will not stop until she finds the answers to scientific questions that are bothering her. I couldn't find room for this in the piece, but she's also a synthesete. I think Feynman saw numbers, or at least equations, in different colors, and maybe Nabokov as well. Schmidt says her brain mixes sound and smell. She says that certain people's voices have a taste. So, to her, the voice of one scientist - she wouldn't name him, for obvious reasons - tastes like vanilla butter cream.