(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

Life Science. From Flickr, by David Prior

Physical Science. From Flickr, by darkpatator

Environment. From NSF, via pingnews.com

Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by chatirygirl

Education & Careers. From Flickr, by DimsumDarren

Politics. By Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force, via pingnews.com

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by ShutterCat7

Brain & Behavior: Visualization of fiber tracts in a DTI measurement of a human brain. By Thomas Schultz, via Wikimedia Commons

Technology. From Flickr, by gualtiero

(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

Life Science. From Flickr, by jurvetson

Physical Science. From Flickr, by Tetine

Environment. From OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory, via pingnews.com

Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by WachoPerro!

Education & Careers. From Flickr, by jurek d.

Politics. From DOE, via Wikimedia Commons

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by gierszewski

Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by fabbio

Technology: A 64-bit memory chip from the mid-1960s. From Flickr, by jurvetson

(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

Life Science. From Flickr, by ellhoisa

Physical Science: “Burning Mountain” in Namib desert. From NASA, via pingnews.com

Environment. From Flickr, by Felix Francis

Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by Peter Kaminski

Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Zara

Politics. From Flickr, by D’Arcy Norman

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by e-magic

Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by BrianScott

Technology: Compact disc. From Flickr, by rodrigo senna

(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

Life Science: Snake skin. From Flickr, by Tambako the Jaguar

Physical Science. From Flickr, by Tambako the Jaguar

Environment. From Flickr, by Tambako the Jaguar

Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by mrhappy

Education & Careers. From Flickr, by DimsumDarren

Politics: Iceberg, Tracy Arm, Alaska. From Flickr, by WordRidden

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by stephcarter

Brain & Behavior: Rat neurons, by Dmitry Sarkisov. From Flickr, via ewedistrict

Technology. From Flickr, by greefus groinks

What’s your name?
Greg Laden

What do you do when you’re not blogging?
Not blogging? Oh, that. I am a part time biological anthropologist (I work in South Africa) and a part time advisor in the University of Minnesota’s Program for Individualized Learning (A BA/BS program).

More below the fold…

What is your blog called?
It is called Greg Laden’s Blog.

What’s up with that name?
I used to have a blog called “Evolution… not ‘just a theory’ any more…”

Then, I was asked to join ScienceBlogs. The old name wouldn’t do because it is too similar to a couple of other blogs on Sb. Also, it turns out that the quotes in the name are messy in HTML land. Katherine Sharpe, the Sb editor, suggested that I use “Greg Laden’s Blog” (which still has a quote mark, but only one). I resisted. I thought it would look dumb. My wife, Amanda, and I spent a weekend (in part) working on the name problem. Originally, I thought “How about Pharyngul-b” … you know, to get PZ Myers’ traffic and all. But PZ lives too close to me and I figured he’d kick my ass. Anyway, we came up with a list of names mostly having to do with my African connections, but they all sounded too much like Ubuntu. So I ended up taking Katherine’s suggestion.

How long have you been blogging, anyway?
My first post was on December 14^th, 2006.

Where are you from and where do you live now?
I was born in Albany, New York. Later, I lived in Boston for seventeen years, except about three of those years were in Zaire and one was in Milwaukee. I moved to Minnesota about ten years ago, and most of the time lived in South Mineapolis, but I currently live in a distant suburb.

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
I would.

Any educational experiences or degrees you’d like to mention?
My B.A. is from the University of the State of New York; my M.A. and Ph.D. are from a small college in the Boston area that begins with an “H.” (If you actually say “Harvard” people think you are being pretentious).

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
Human evolution: The evolution of human diet, human sexuality, and the human mind.

Last book you read?
I can’t remember the last fiction book I read. But I do regularly read fiction. (I hate it when people say “Novels? I have no time for that.” How unenriched their lives must be.) But I still can’t remember the book; it might have been Loose Lips by Rita Mae Brown.

The last non-fiction book I read was Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl. Actually, I’m still on the last chapter.

What is your idea of a perfect day?
There are two perfect days:
1) Being entirely alone and doing nothing but reading and writing, with a quick trip to the gym;
2) Doing no work at all but hanging around with Amanda (spouse) and Julia (daughter) at the lake, with two or three bouts of fishing, at least one successful.

What’s your greatest habitual annoyance?
My greatest habitual annoyance is the presumption so many people make that everyone else is religious, or “at least spiritual,” and that all others are somehow abnormal.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Juts Hunsenmeir and her daughter Nickel, and Jack Ryan. (I have a wide range in fiction!)

Your favorite heroes in real life?
Julia and Amanda, Charles Darwin, Rosa Parks, and Stephanie Howes.

What’s your most marked characteristic?
My most marked characteristics are my flaws.

What’s your fatal flaw?
See above.

In all honesty, my flaws and my gleams are available only to those who know me.

Who are your favorite writers?
Rita Mae Brown, Bob Sapolsky, PZ Myers, and — as with all writers — myself.

What would you like to be?
Rita Mae Brown, Bob Sapolsky, PZ Myers, and — as with all writers — myself.

But seriously? Myself with only gleams and no flaws.

What’s your name?
Dave M. Bacon. Yep, those initial spell a sound like “dumb.”

What do you do when you’re not blogging?
I’m a research assistant professor at the University of Washington where I study quantum computing. My main appointment is in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and I have an adjunct appointment in the Department of Physics. Also while I’m not blogging, I like to ski, hike, make wine, carve stones, and daydream.

More below the fold…

What is your blog called?
The Quantum Pontiff

What’s up with that name?
I like to pontificate. And I love quantum theory. Seemed a natural. For a while my blog was the top hit for the word “pontiff,” which I’m certain means there is a file on me in the Vatican somewhere.

How long have you been blogging, anyway?
Since September, 2003.

Where are you from and where do you live now?
I grew up in the small town of Yreka, California, located about 15 minutes south of the California/Oregon border. This is the “real” northern California (don’t let people from San Francisco trick you; the SF Bay Area is most certainly central California). Yreka is most famous for the fact that “Yreka Bakery” backwards is “Yreka Bakery.” I now live in Seattle, Washington, which is an awesome city — but don’t tell anyone, we’re trying to keep it a secret.

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
Well, most days I try to get work done, but often times my work only seems to make science go backwards.

Any educational experiences or degrees you’d like to mention?
I have a double B.S. from Caltech in Physics and in Literature. Those are called the “no jobs” majors (although having a B.S. in literature, as opposed to, say, a B.A., is kind of a cool pun). Since you can’t get a job with those majors, after graduating from Caltech in 1997 I went to U.C. Berkeley where I got a Ph.D. in theoretical physics.

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
I’m interested in all things in physics and computer science. My field sits squarely between these fields, so I get to spy on both and learn all sorts of interesting things. I also like to play their stereotypes off each other for maximum fireworks. In truth I find both cultures and their science equally fascinating. My main interest, for about as long as I can remember, is understanding what the heck quantum theory actually is. Nearly every year I think I learn a little more about the crazy theory and my biggest hope is that by the time I grow old, I’ll have made peace with it.

Last book you read?
A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy. Mathematicians have a lot to apologize for, but unfortunately Hardy didn’t apologize enough.

What is your idea of a perfect day?
One where I experience something new, create something new, or learn something new. Did I mention I like creating and creativity?

What’s your greatest habitual annoyance?
People who are without a sense of when they are in the way and people who can’t properly form a line. Can you tell my roots are British? Those Brits are great at forming a queue.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Not exactly a hero, per se, but I love the portrayal of a physicist in Good Benito. I’m a big sucker for all portraits of scientists in fiction.

Your favorite heroes in real life?
I’ll take Richard Feynman for the brilliance and wit, Jerry Rice for the work ethic and determination, Joe Montana for the perseverance and cool, my wife for her vision, Cormac McCarthy for the prose, Jorge Luis Borges for the puzzles with infinity, and my handicapped sister for her Zen-Buddha nature.

What’s your most marked characteristic?
I’ve got a loud laugh. Or so I’ve been told by my office neighbors who come by and shut my door.

What’s your fatal flaw?
Like nearly all physicists, I possess a lot of extralusionary intelligence (i.e. I believe because I know physics and physics is hard, I therefore am certainly qualified to talk about subjects outside of what I know, since they are all easier than physics).

Who are your favorite writers?
Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, Alan Lightman, William Faulkner, Neal Stephenson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Cormac McCarthy.

What would you like to be?
When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut or a ‘cutter doctor’ (i.e. a surgeon). These days I want to be an awesome dad, and the person who figures out something interesting about quantum theory.

What’s your name?
Brian Switek

What do you do when you’re not blogging?
I work for a university-run agriculture project and I’m currently a student at Rutgers University. When I’m not running between class and work, I’m usually can be found reading or visiting local zoos and museums.

More below the fold…

What is your blog called?
Laelaps

What’s up with that name?
In 1866, the vertebrate paleontologist E.D. Cope found the remains of a predatory dinosaur in the marl pits of southern New Jersey, and he named it Laelaps aquilunguis, believing it to be “the devourer and destroyer…of all…it could lay claws on.” Unfortunately for Cope, his rival O.C. Marsh discovered that the genus name Laelaps was occupied by a kind of mite, and in 1877 he changed the name of the dinosaur to Dryptosuaurus aquilunguis. Dryptosaurus might be the correct name for this relative of Tyrannosaurus, but I like Laelaps better.

How long have you been blogging?
I’ve been blogging for a little over a year; I started as part of a scholarship contest in the fall of 2006.

Where are you from and where do you live now?
I was born in New Jersey and have lived there ever since, only recently moving to be closer to my university. No matter how much I try to escape the suburban sprawl of New Jersey, it keeps pulling me back in.

Would you describe yourself as a working scientist?
The best I can say is that I’m a scientist in training, although I’ll always be a “student of nature.”

Any degrees or work experiences you’d like to mention?
I haven’t done anything particularly important or prestigious, at least not yet.

What are your main academic interests, in or out of your field?
I could probably create a long list of sub-disciplines that I’m quite taken with, but most of what I’m interested in falls under the heading of “natural history.” Zoology, paleontology, behavior, functional morphology, comparative anatomy, ecology, taphonomy, etc. are all things I want to know more about, it’s just a matter of what animal I want to know more about at a particular time.

Last book you read?
I closed James W. Valentine’s On the Origin of Phyla and am nearly finished with Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things.

What is your idea of a perfect day?
Getting up early to spend a day in the field fossil hunting, then heading off for some cold drinks and good conversation with other bone sharps, eventually heading home to find out that a new book has arrived in the mail.

What’s your greatest habitual annoyance?
The phrase “Evolution is just a theory.”

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Rincewind from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and Indiana Jones.

Your favorite heroes in real life?
Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, and G.G. Simpson are among my favorite naturalists/paleontologists.

What’s your most marked characteristic?
A voracious reading habit that threatens to makes the floors buckle under the weight of my ever-growing personal library.

What’s your fatal flaw?
A general lack of self-esteem.

Who are your favorite writers?
In fiction it’s Terry Pratchett, but otherwise anything by Carl Sagan, Robert Sapolsky, or Stephen Jay Gould is always informative and exciting.

What would you like to be?
I hope to get my hands dirty as a real paleontologist sometime in the near future, but I want to always keep writing about science no matter what else I might be doing. Where I’ll end up or in what discipline, I can’t be sure, but if I have it my way I’ll be able to fulfill the dream of becoming a vertebrate paleontologist that I’ve had since I first visited the fossil halls of the American Museum of Natural History years ago.

Visit Widgetbox to get it for yourself!

(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

Life Science. From Flickr, by suneko

Physical Science: Jupiter and its moon Io. From NASA, via pingnews.com

Environment: Oil-covered ruddy duck in Oakland, CA, 11/11/07. From Flickr, via wolfpix

Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by Nictalopen

Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Hey Paul

Politics. From Flickr, by Esparta

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Hamed Saber

Brain & Behavior: Brainbow. Different neurons are tagged with different colors. By Livet et al/PA Wire, via ogglog

Technology. From Flickr, by En Syn

(Have a photo you’d like to send in? Email it to photos@scienceblogs.com, or assign the tag “sbhomepage” to one of your photos on Flickr. Note: be sure to assign your photo an “attribution only” or “share and share alike” Creative Commons license so that we can use it.)

First photo here, the rest below the fold.

From Flickr, by CharlesLam

A bouncing basketball, photographed at 25 images per second. By Michael Maggs, edited by Richard Bartz. Via Wikimedia Commons

From the NOAA Photo Library, via pingnews.com

From Flickr, by Unhindered by Talent

From Flickr, by ARTS

From Flickr, by rastafabi

From Flickr, by The Blackbird

Histological section through mouse cerebellum. From Flickr, by neurollero

From Flickr, by Unhindered by Talent