Joel Achenbach, renaissance man and writer with the Washington Post makes the world come alive for the reader. It doesn't matter the subject, Joel makes it clearer and more understandable. He takes complex science and makes it fun. He takes the driest of politics and makes me interested. He takes on garden weeds and baked beans and makes me laugh. He take words out of the blue and makes magic.
"It has the same mass as Earth but is more than half again as large, suggesting that it is fluffy, with an extensive atmosphere. "
Come on. Admit it. You want to read about fluffy with extensive atmosphere, don't you? You just have to find out what is behind that description.
and
"One possible source of the cloud droplets is potassium chloride, which she said is pink when in liquid form. “It could be a pink planet,” she said."
And really after our lovely blue earth, a pink planet? Well sure! It drew me in.
He also wrote an article in today's paper , "Hubble Telescope Probes Cosmic Dawn". Great work at making some pretty far off worlds and some challenging theory make it into my brain. Joel challenges me to learn new things about the world and it doesn't hurt at all.
Science writing for the common man by an uncommon man, who would probably be the first to say he was just an ordinary guy, a common man. You have to be good to make it read so easily.
I have been reading his work for 14 years now. I can honestly say that Joel always makes it very good.
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