2 excellent science blogs and the sexual battles of ducks
The sexual battles of ducks : Not Exactly Rocket Science Kinkiness Beyond Kinky | The Loom | Discover Magazine This was just a fascinating story about some of the evolutionary pressures affecting duck sex. With videos, no less! Check out Ed Yong’s take at ScienceBlogs’ Not Exactly Rocket Science and Carl Zimmer’s at Discover Magazine’s The […]
PopSci’s Apple iPad Hands On, and what the magic tablet means for us
Apple iPad Hands On | Popular Science PopSci’s hands-on impressions with the Ipad. There’s already been more than enough coverage of one of the most-hyped gadgets of all time (after the Iphone?), and it was never going to be able to live up to that hype. Other commenters have already noted its notable flaws (no […]
Forcing Scientists Into The Public Square | QUEST Community Science Blog – KQED
Forcing Scientists Into The Public Square | QUEST Community Science Blog – KQED. A blog post by Barry Starr, who I know from the Stanford at the Tech program, about getting scientists to do more outreach. He talks about why he thinks its important for scientists to get involved in outreach, and why their incentives […]
Signs that You Should Scrap that Piece of Writing & The Original of Laura
Ten Signs that You Should Scrap that Piece of Writing Caroline Hagood gives sage advice on when to scrap a piece of writing. Among the highlights: 1. If it needs explanation, apology, or perverse amounts of liquor to be enjoyed. 6. If it came to you in a dream, on acid, on a spiritual retreat, […]
Entrenched Journalistic Practices (and Charlie Booker’s “anatomy of a newscast”)
I recently came across some discussion about whether newspapers and TV news shows couldn’t take some tips from things like blogs and online video in order to focus more on the news story and less on some of the less important reporting around it. One piece (which I’ve had trouble locating since) deconstructed a typical […]
Learn.Genetics™
Learn.Genetics is a site created by the University of Utah to teach people about genetics. It’s got great design, lots of helpful information, and virtual labs that walk you through four common molecular biology techniques, some of which we used to give hands-on experience with when I volunteered at the San Jose Tech Museum. The […]
Nick Veasey’s X-ray Photography
While looking around for more interesting images, I came across Nick Veasey’s work. He’s used X-ray photography to reveal the unfamiliar insides of many familiar objects. I thought many of his images were striking, and his gallery of X-ray photos is well worth checking out. Source: Nick Veasey’s website
Photo Gallery of Cool New Science Images
As I’ve previously noted, I like cool, preferably scientific, images. I really enjoyed taking pretty microscope pictures as a graduate student, and I’ve been enjoying working on the Megapixels section of Popular Science and the Bull’s-Eye section of Science Illustrated, as well as for the various photo galleries I created for PopSci.com or posted about […]
Spirit was willing, but the front wheels were weak
After providing wonderful images of Mars for 6 years, and then getting its wheels stuck in sand, NASA announced a few days back that it would give up efforts to extricate the Spirit Mars Rover. While it can’t move around, it will serve help out as a stationary research platform. The webcomic XKCD had a […]
The Scale of the Universe
The Scale of the Universe. A nice animation that lest you zoom in and out from the smallest physically possible distance (the Planck Length of 10^-35 meters) to the estimated size of the known universe. I remember watching an Imax movie with the same basic concept. No matter what, I think it’s just hard for […]