As my own professional wings spread, conferences became less formidable. My steadily growing credentials gave my words weight. I grew to express the unexpected and controversial, and even to help plan some of the meetings that had once awed me. Meetings became fun.
Basis AUTHOR: KEN CROSWELL, pp.13 Not long ago, I spent two hours in the library in pursuit of a single fact: a certain astronomer's first name. I was writing about Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. Alpha Centauri is ]actually triple; it consists of two bright stars and one faint one. The faint star is called Proxima Centauri, because it is the closest of the three. The two bright stars have been known for centuries, but who discovered Proxima? According to my source, the star had been found in 1915 by someone named R.T. Innes. Thus began my troubles. Editors like writers to supply first ...
