Discover’s Year in Science issue

Discover magazine just sent me my contributor’s copy to its Year in Science issue, which reminds me that I haven’t posted anything on it.

I wrote two small pieces for this issue. Number 15, Self-driving cars hit the road, looks at the progress being made in driver-less cars. It built on a European project that brought the first ‘train’ of driver-less cars onto a Spanish highway last year.

The second was Number 58, Crowds train computer translators, looking at how the Hmong expatriate community worked with Microsoft to create an online translation engine for a dialect of Hmong.

I hadn’t written for Discover before, so it’s another new publication for me. It will be brand new in all but name the next time I write for it, too. The magazine just moved from New York to Waukesha, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee. My understanding is that all its editorial staff stayed behind. I thought it was an interesting dilemma: leave your national magazine in a time when the industry is shedding jobs, or leave New York. But the staff seemed to think the choice was clear.