Results tagged “oliver morton”

A town that celebrates (or at least tolerates) the geeks among us never has a shortage of science news, and 2008 was no exception. We kicked off the year with the shocking revelation that ESP was DOA, according to researchers at Harvard. Distraught by the news that Miss Cleo and her ilk were frauds, we found that Harvard had set up a more scientific look at love just in time for Valentine's Day. (Maybe it was all part of the plan?)

It's not hard to identify the biggest event in Boston (or at least Massachusetts) books this year: that'd be the departure of David Foster Wallace. The Amherst graduate and imposing literary figure took his own life in September, leaving a generation lost without its intelligent, imposing, idol. Wallace gave us many grandiose works, but the man himself will be missed for a long time to come. At the time, we fought the "self-indulgent" label often stuck on DFW, saying:

As you can see, Oliver Morton’s Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet is not a typical science book. We attended Morton’s keynote address to the Fourth Conference on Clean Energy two weeks ago, remarking then that we found the speech “inspiring.” (We also said that this piece would appear on Bostonist last week, but were beset by delays caused by the holiday and runaway FedEx trucks.*) Given 400 pages to expand on that speech, Morton keeps up the same optimistic tone throughout, capturing both hope for the planet’s future and the joy of scientific discovery.

With these inspiring words, Oliver Morton closed his keynote address at the Fourth Conference on Clean Energy, which Bostonist was fortunate enough to be invited to yesterday morning. Morton, the author of the recently released Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (stay tuned next week for a review and perhaps an interview!) shared his belief that photosynthesis has the potential to inspire new sources of energy in the 21st century.