Blog
HEATHERZEIGER.COM
June 2021: Articles, Recommendations, and Other Stuff
Lately my projects have centered on China, Covid-19, or Fetal Tissue Research. Sometimes they overlap, like my three-part series on Covid-19 origins, which gets into why the lab leak theory has re-surfaced, gain-of-function studies, and the NIH’s role in funding...
January 2021: Articles, Recommendations, and Other Stuff
This winter I’ve written eight articles for Mind Matters News on China and technology. Most of them focus on using technology for censorship and surveillance, both online and in real life. The Chinese government has an extensive propaganda and censorship machine that...
October 2020: Articles, Recommendations, and Other Stuff
If there is one good thing about the COVID-19 pandemic, it's online conferences. As a freelancer, conferences provide an opportunity to step out of the home office and be refreshed and encouraged by fellow scientists, writers, bioethicists, or creatives. Often when I...
What Will We Do After the Pandemic?
Maybe our relationship to work and free time shouldn’t go back to normal after the pandemic.
A Lament for Our Nation
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.Martin Luther King, Jr. Racial injustice, viral pandemics, job loss--Is God there? Does he see? The Psalms have many prayers of lament that ask these very questions and then ask...
Meditation on Holy Week in the Midst of a Pandemic
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said, “It’s tragically fitting that we’re talking at the beginning of Holy Week because this is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly.” I had been thinking about the restrictions placed on us...
The 2019 Coronavirus Spread More Than I Thought It Would
I wrote two articles for Mind Matters on China’s censorship and surveillance practices amidst the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak (here and here). After writing these articles, I had several people ask me about the coronavirus and whether I was worried. I said I...
Writing About China’s Relationship with Central Asia
Six months ago I started writing on China and technology for Mind Matters. This has been a learning experience for me. I had to become familiar with the history of modern China so I could write about current events and analyze news articles in light of China’s...
Writing about Vaccines
For my Biohazards column in Salvo Issue 50, I decided to write about vaccines since it was a hot news topic. I’m sure you’re asking the same thing I was asking about three days before the article’s deadline, “Why, Heather, did you decide to write about vaccines?” I...
The Hong Kong Protests
My latest articles at Mind Matters News cover the Hong Kong protests. The first article addresses the various ways protesters are protecting themselves from digital surveillance. The second article, related to the first, looks at the Hong Kong protesters’ response to...
High-Tech Surveillance
I have three new articles at Mind Matters that cover the use of high-tech surveillance by the Chinese government. Mind Matters is a news site that is part of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. The site covers the intersection of...
Overprotected
My recent article in Salvo Issue 49 (by subscription) looks at the book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The book is based on an article by Lukianoff and...