Hope everyone had a nice holiday, but I guess it's now back to the grind with a brand new year. For myself, I'm pretty stoked with a number of things coming up that will focus on this thing we call "Biodiversity."
And why is this? Well, basically, 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Biodiversity.
I also think it's going to be an interesting year for me coming up, because of the following:
1. Yesterday, whilst driving home from work and going a good 50 or so clicks on the road, a squirrel ran out in front of me in such a way that it entered somehow in between my two front wheels, and was briefly under my car. Since this happened at a relatively fast speed, I really didn't get a chance to react except to turn my head back to see the fate of the squirrel.
What I saw was a squirrel rolling uncontrollably in a sideways direction (I'm guessing the momentum of moving across the road and the loss of balance by the wind gust caused this). Thankfully, miraculously one might say, the squirrel must of rolled in such a way as to not get squished by my wheels! Once the squirrel stopped rolling, I saw him briefly pause and then boot it for the forest on the other side of the road.
That, to me, is a freaking sign!
"You are a very very very lucky mammal"
2. Which makes sense, because I'm planning on doing a sabbatical this year. Specifically for 6 months from July 2010 to Dec 2010 at the (dum dum dum) Natural History Museum in London. This is so exciting to me, that I can barely contain myself. It has literally been a dream of mine to do some work there, and if all works out, I'm going to get a chance to do this with my family in tow, and all the excitement of living in a different city for half a year (p.s. if you'd like to rent a house in Vancouver, check this sabbaticalhomes.com posting out).
3. Obviously at the NHM (see, I'm already using shorthand lingo), I'm going to help out with their biodiversity programming. In this respect, the museum is going to have a central role in the various programs run throughout the UK. I'm even hoping to bring a project of mine over to play around with in UK (this I'll talk more about soon, but for now, will simply leave you with the slightly cryptic term phylomon).
Anyway, all in all, it looks to be an interesting year.
Anyone else in the science communication arena doing something for the International Year of Biodiversity?
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Oh, will you be popping across to Frankfurt at any time? Our museum isn't as big as the NHM, but we have some damn fine tar pits. Plus at least one of your SciBlings.
Hrm, phylomon? How about PhyloMan?