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Serious Programming Note: We'll Probably Be Moving

As some of you might have heard, National Geographic has decided that pseudonymous writers (other than Mark Twain) aren't going to be part of their online presence. I usually don't discuss ScienceBlogs inside baseball stuff, but I'm not getting any response from them (I've received emails telling me how much they want to talk to me, followed by no response). The odds are really, really good I won't be here for much longer, but for now, I'll still be posting here, if for no other reason than my contract requires a certain number of posts per week. Once that's sorted out, unless I can be…

Around the Web: What grades mean, Finding women to speak at tech conferences and more

Grades and what they don't mean Would I attend my own conference? Why conferences need more diversity Thoughts on library Linked Data 'An Unwanted Consequence' This Is How--And Where--Science Dies In Our Classrooms When Content is Everywhere, Marketing is Queen Facebook Testing Instant Ads Based On Status Updates, Wall Posts Future Tense Lots of "People" You Interact With Online Are...Not Real What Forty Years of Research Says About the Impact of Technology on Learning: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis and Validation Study From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement Strictly business?…

Around the Web: The Tim Hortons School of Probability, $10K degrees, Mocking Rebecca Black and more

The Tim Hortons School of Probability Innovation & Longevity in Digital Publishing: Surfing the S-Curve Creating a Degree for 10K Mock Rebecca Black All You Want, She's Laughing To The Bank 7 reasons people don't use twitter, and why 'It's a conversation' is the answer to all of them Why Women Rule The Internet Why don't journalists link to primary sources? A return to "bursty work" Results: What (if anything) prevents women from accepting conference invitations? A very brief history of Scholarly HTML Is It Time to Rebuild & Retool Public Libraries and Make "TechShops"? To each…

The Buzz: Fishing For the Truth

The observation of World Oceans Day June 8 sparked a lively online debate about the environmental repercussions of seafood consumption. Is it possible to know whether the fish you are eating is truly sustainable? Why is Pacific cod "safe" but Atlantic cod off limits? Is farm-raised salmon really better than wild? Jennifer Jacquet of Guilty Planet, who works with the Sea Around Us Project at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Center, argues that the best solution is to refrain from eating seafood altogether. "I believe people are realizing that the 'choose this but not that'…

A Note from ScienceBlogs

We have removed Food Frontiers from SB. We apologize for what some of you viewed as a violation of your immense trust in ScienceBlogs. Although we (and many of you) believe strongly in the need to engage industry in pursuit of science-driven social change, this was clearly not the right way. How do we empower top scientists working in industry to lead science-minded positive change within their organizations? How can a large and diverse online community made up of scientists and the science-minded public help? How do companies who seek genuine dialogue with this community engage? We'll open…

New research on social networking software

Fred Stutzman just posted his latest data on the use of Facebook, this time comparing the incoming college freshmen of Summer 2006 to Summer 2005. Quick notes: - more people enter college with already existing Facebook accounts - less people announce their political affiliation - people have more out-of-network friends Fred notes some possible explanations for these trends. I posted my quick thoughts in the comments on his post. You can find my quick analysis of Facebook here and all of Fred's posts related to his Facebook research here. In related news, Danah Boyd posts about the latest…

Three labs simultaneously discover a new clock gene!

Thus reports The Scientist: Researchers from three different labs have identified a new circadian gene in the mouse, according to two papers in Science and one paper in Cell published online this week. Mutagenesis screens revealed that mutations in a protein called FBXL3 lengthen the mouse circadian period by several hours, and biochemical analyses showed that FBXL3 is necessary for degradation of key circadian clock proteins. I'll probably have something more to say once I get hold of the actual papers. In a perfect world, the three groups would have done Open Notebook science, found each…

Another sign of victory

Old timers here may recall the saga of Abunga Books, an online bookstore with the sole distinction of having a feature that allowed customers to ban books from the inventory that they didn't like…which meant, of course, that evolution and atheism and anything that touched on those two was promptly purged. You can imagine how people here responded to that empowering policy: they scurried right on over to help ban the Bible and C.S. Lewis. The hypocrisy of Abunga was then exposed: they honored requests to ban Phillip Pullman, but banning the Bible was not allowed. So much for the illusion of…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Publicity Update

A couple of cool items in the promotion of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: -- A little while back, I spoke to Alan Boyle, who writes the Cosmic Log blog for MSNBC, who posted a very nice story about the book last night. Mainstream media, baby! It also uses this very cool picture of Emmy and me in my lab: (Many thanks to Matt Milless for taking that and a bunch of others.) -- This weekend (either Saturday or Sunday, depending on where you are), I'll be on the Science Fantastic radio show, talking about relativity with Michio Kaku. There's a lsit of stations that carry it linked from that…

links for 2008-02-23

sillybean » Translation from Aburt-speak to English of selected portions of his SFWA presidential platform[1] "I don't understand why people on the internet are so mean to me, but I fully expect that my patronizing approach will bring them to their senses." (tags: SF writing silly politics) Why We Banned Legos - Volume 21 No. 2 - Winter 2006 - Rethinking Schools Online "Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom." (tags: culture economics education ethics games toys society politics) The God Particle - National Geographic Magazine Blah, blah, Large Hadron…

Dihydrogen monoxide kills — and they knew it!

I thought this sad case of a woman dying of water intoxication was the result of mere ignorance, but it turns out it was an act of willful, criminal stupidity. In an online recording of the show, the DJs can be heard making comments joking about people dying from water intoxication, even discussing a case in Northern California two years ago in which student Matthew Carrington, 21, died after drinking too much water during a fraternity pledge. One of the DJs even admitted they maybe should have done some research before the contest. One female caller, who identified herself as Eva, also…

What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?: the impact of birds on aircraft

The best coverage of the science behind the apparent "bird-strike" cause of yesterday's USAirways miracle on the Hudson can be found at Scientific American online: It basically comes down to the physics equation for kinetic energy: Energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. The velocity of the aircraft allows for the impact of this feathered bird to generate enough force to cause an engine to malfunction. [A 12-lb Canada goose struck by a 150-mph aircraft at lift-off generates the force of a 1,000-lb weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to birdstrike.org.] Yes, this…

On WAMU-NPR: Religion, Science, and the Climate Divide

Tomorrow at 130pm, I will be a guest on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi Show to discuss the communication challenge on climate change and strategies for overcoming political polarization. Also as guests from Copenhagen will be Richard Cizik, formerly VP of the National Association of Evangelicals and Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. In 2008, Cizik and Chivian were named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people. Earlier this year in a paper published at the journal Environment, I discussed the efforts by Cizik and Chivian in…

Yale Enviro 360: Obama's Plan for the Energy Economy

What's a vision of the future of science journalism? Consider Yale Environment 360. The university and foundation-sponsored online magazine and social media site is updated daily and weekly, publishing feature reporting, analysis, and longer opinion articles by leading journalists, scientists, and policy experts. It also hosts a daily blog tracking environmental and science issues. Longer articles feature a participatory user comment section. Consider the value of today's featured article at Environment 360, a lengthy preview of Obama's energy plan. It's written by Keith Schneider, a former…

AU Students Cover Young Voters & Activists in NH

American University students watch the Iowa Caucus returns as they prepare to head to New Hampshire to cover, film and analyze the first presidential primary in 2008. Photo by Glenn Luther. The New Hampshire primary drew the analytical eye of 28 undergraduate and graduate students from American University's School of Communication, who were on the ground in the Granite State for the special topics course "Covering the 2008 Presidential Election." Cross-disciplinary teams are creating short documentaries to show young peoples' influence behind-the-scenes and on the vote. AU students are…

Links: Blogging on the Brain 7/15/2010

Swarming Quadrocopters? Nanomagnetic remote control of animal behavior. Blogs are data-mined for personality research. Vote for method of the year! (My vote is for induced pluripotency) If you think that the less competent you are, the more competent you think you are, then you are incompetent.Confusion on the Dunning-Kruger effect. Time on task effects in fMRI research: why you should care. Spontaneous Eyeblink Rate as an Index of Creativity. The advantage of being helpless: infants can outperform adults in some ways. Career Considerations: Center Grants and P-mechanisms from the NIH Get up…

Drug abuse at work: The scale of the problem

CBS News has a pretty good video describing the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse in the workplace. Perhaps most shocking is the statistic depicted in this info-graphic: Our friend Suzanne Greenlee is the benefits director for the food service company Sodhexo USA, and CBS interviewed her for the story. Her company offers free anonymous substance abuse counseling for all its employees, but I suspect that's quite rare in the industry. In a longer version of the interview not available online, Suzanne says that her company believes it saves more money by addressing the problem than the costs…

Storm World Paperback is Out

So here's some news: The paperback of Storm World, with a new author afterword and a new Katrina cover, is officially published today. I haven't held a copy in my hands yet, but I know they've shipped from Amazon. You can click here to pick one up online. Meanwhile, we already seen our fifth named storm of the season develop--Edouard, which could strengthen into another Texas landfalling hurricane. I don't like all this action in the Gulf of Mexico--or for that matter, all this early season action period. We've had 8 Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic in the past five years. The way things…

Bill Clinton is a Neuroscientist

From David Remnick's outstanding profile of Bill Clinton in The New Yorker (not online): "'I keep reading that Bush is incurious, but when he talks to me he asks a lot of questions,' Clinton went on. 'So I can't give him a bad grade on curiousity. I think both he and his father, because they have peculiar speech patterns, have been underestimated in terms of their intellectual capacity. You know, the way they speak and all, it could be, it could just relate to the way the synapses work in their brain.'" I just love the reference to neuroscience. The whole article, though scrupulous and fair,…

The Buzz: The Open Laboratory 2008

The third edition of The Open Laboratory 2008, a compilation of the best science-related blog posts of last year, is now available for purchase in the Lulu Marketplace. The book was started by ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic in 2006 as a way to lend credibility to the new media form of blogging and package it in a way that is accessible both online and off. "This book was produced communally with people submitting over 800 posts, other bloggers reading and judging them, bloggers editing them, bloggers designing the cover and typeset, and bloggers publishing it - Yes We Can!" Bora said in an…

Voyage of the Endurance, Now in Google Maps

A new Google Earth overlay allows you to track the progress of HMS Endurance. Sure, it lacks the glamour of Shackelton's initial voyage--but armchair explorers don't have to eat seals. When the HMS Endurance deploys from Portsmouth, UK every fall, it has a mishmash of strategic and non-strategic objectives. Named for the ship commanded by famed Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton during his ill-fated 1914 expedition, the modern day Endurance has exploration as only a small part of its overall mission. Scientific research and public outreach are also on the docket for the 118-person crew…

Freedom Fighters vs. Weak Positions

On Aardvarchaeology, Martin Rundkvist tells the story of a 14-year old Swedish Muslim girl who also happens to be very good at karate. Recently this young woman was disqualified from a tournament because she wears a veil and the rules state "that the umpire needs to be able to watch for damage to each contestant’s throat." She was also disqualified from solo performance, despite that lack of potential for neck damage. Martin writes, "Things are changing in the karate world. You couldn’t compete wearing any kind of veil until last year. When it became allowed, Iran’s women’s team immediately…

Teaching and Going Home

Spent 5.5 hours on site in Wales today and 7 hours by car, train and plane to get from there to Skavsta airport. I've got another couple of hours by bus and train before I'm home. The trains I rode in the UK were on time but often did not leave from the platforms indicated by the online trip planner. No big news on site today. I did some topless deturfing in the sun and taught a bright student to use a metal detector. Funny how much wordless knowledge you accumulate and spell out only when teaching. "Grab clod, wave over dish, listen, divide clod, wave, listen, toss quiet half, repeat. Close…

Choosing and Accessing My Reading Matter

I listened to BBC Click about the future of publishing and had the idea to look at a couple of parameters in my reading habits: where I get the idea to read each book-length text, how I get hold of them and what form they take. Here's about the past year, April 2011 through March 2012 (38 books). Inspiration 45% Author I like 32% Recommendation from friend / family 13% Chance discovery 5% Publicist pitch 5% Work demands Access 34% Gift (all but two from Super Dear Reader Birger) 16% Library 10% Download (2 public domain, 1 creative commons, 1 pirated) 8% Workplace 8% Review copy 5% On-line…

Off to See the Teacher(s)

I'm leaving in a couple hours to attend the Michigan Science Teacher's Association conference in Lansing. Michigan Citizens for Science has a booth there to recruit new members and get science teachers involved in the battles over science education in public schools. Rob Pennock, Greg Forbes and I will be acting as carnival barkers, trying to pry their attention away from all the corporate displays. Step right up, folks, step right up. It should be a fun weekend, actually, as it always is hanging out with those guys. My buddy Dan is coming tomorrow to lend a hand as well and, presumably, to…

Euro Skeptics Forums

The European Council of Skeptical Organizations (ECSO) has set up an on-line forum. Explains ECSO chairman Amardeo Sarma, "The purpose of this forum is to promote discussion with ECSO and other Skeptics Organisations. So if you have some question or a suggestion to a particular Skeptics Organisation and do not have direct access to them or do not speak their language, here is where you can ask. If someone from that organisation is reading this forum, you should get an answer or reaction. If possible, ECSO members will point responsible people from that organisation to this question or…

Best. Movie. Line. Ever.

Over at Andrew Sullivan's place, he's been presenting candidates for best movie line ever. Since I seem to have control of a blog of my very own, I'd like to present my nomination: Holly Gennero McClane: After all your posturing, all your speeches, you're nothing but a common thief. Hans Gruber: I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And since I'm moving up to kidnapping, you should be more polite. (transcription from IMDB) Apparently my affection for this line is not widely shared, however, as finding the clip online has proven to be beyond my google skills. On the other hand, I did…

You Say You Want a Revolution?

I'm suffering through a wretched cold at the moment, which will limit my blogging activity. If you're looking for something to do, though, you might want to check out the Revolutionary Minds blog set up by the Corporate Masters. This is basically a short-form online version of a feature from Seed, in which they ask smart people to discuss Big Questions-- a more limited version of those Edge questions that John Brockman does every year. The current question is: The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social…

1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic Archive

Just a quick note to spread the word: The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine has put up an online archive of material about the 1918 influezna pandemic. The 1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic Escape Community Digital Document Archive In the summer of 2005, the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School was contacted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and asked to conduct research into and write a report on American communities that had experienced extremely low rates of influenza during the infamous 1918-1920 influenza…

And what are we consuming, by the way?

This article by David Ewing Duncan, "The Pollution Within," is in the new issue of National Geographic. (He was also on NPR this morning.) So, while we're on the subject of consumption her at The World's Fair, I think we need to get far past very narrow senses of what consumption means. So, Duncan asked himself, what is he really consuming? The tag line on the piece: Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains from carpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking a toll. Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there for years--and fears about…

Pat Robertson and the Dominion Meteorology Report

Image: Idiot Box / Matt Bors And now, of course, Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network can interpret geological events as well. On January 13, just a day after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the reigning televangelist explained why God hates Haitians: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story.…

#FridayFollow: HeroMachine and Informed Comment

Jeff Hebert is an amazing artist. He created the banner for this page as well as that for Living the Scientific Life and Dispatches From the Culture Wars. His primary work is for HeroMachine and his work can be viewed at his online portfolio. Juan Cole at Informed Comment is, along with Robert Fisk's reporting, my primary resource for Middle Eastern politics and perspectives. I encourage everyone to check out his work and subscribe to his twitter feed. To cite an example from one of his recent posts: You obey the Geneva Conventions and the rest of international law on the treatment of…

New Cognitive Daily podcast!

Starting today, each week's CogDaily Research articles will be available in podcast form! We're working on making them available directly from iTunes, but for now, you can download them from the CogDaily blog. Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (AAC format) Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (MP3 format) We're committed to podcasting the reports on peer reviewed research we've covered each week (they'll appear here each Saturday), so if you don't have time to read them online, you can listen while you exercise or commute to work. In the…

The 2007 Science & Engineering Visualization Competition

Today's issue of Science contains the winners of the 2007 Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge, and the journal's website has an online exhibit that features all of the winning images. The competition is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation, who created it with the editors of Science five years ago. The aim of the competition is to make science comprehensible to more people, and to encourage the growth of scientific literacy, at a time in which it seems to be becoming increasingly rare. The image above comes from a poster by aeronautical engineer David Willis and…

Friday Film: Victorian children + amateur zoology + giant robot squid

The Anachronism (Full Film) from Anachronism Pictures on Vimeo. The full length version of The Anachronism, a short film by Matthew Gordon Long, has been released online. The only thing wrong with it is that it isn't longer. Give yourself a treat this weekend, enjoy the steampunk, and, if you're like me, reminisce about taking a textbook out into the forest to name things in Latin! I'll just give you one warning: this is a filmmaker who, unlike many others, knows how to let a mystery rest undisturbed. Yes, the film leaves you curious as heck, but in the end, I think that's a much better…

Join me on BBC Radio 5 Live tonight - skeptics vs woo

Tune in to Richard Bacon's talk radio show on BBC 5 Live tonight, where I'll be fighting the skeptic's corner for the evening's debate: Should we all be looking for our inner self?: Some therapists claim the key to a fulfilling life is finding your 'inner self'.But is it all just nonsense? Is our inner self a powerful healer that can give us peace and confidence in life?Or is it just a load of hocus pocus?We'd love to hear from you: call 0500 909 693, text 85058 or email bacon@bbc.co.uk I suspect I'll be up against someone from the bizarre InnerSelf website, which seems to be a mix of bland…

Link-O-Rama

Finally got back from my meeting minus a piece of luggage or two. Unfortunately the trip came with a shocking reality of anthropogenic effects on marine systems. Before I headed to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, I asked around and searched online to find some localities to snorkel while I was there. Myself and two close friends loaded up in a rental car and went off to visit the sites on my list. These sites were 4 years ago the best in snorkeling the island had to offer. Unfortunately today, they are degraded coastal systems dominated by sewer runoff, resorts, industry, and trash…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Victor Henning

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Victor Henning from Mendeley to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I was born in Hamburg/Germany in 1980, moved to London in January 2008, and as a direct consequence, have…

Birds of Chernobyl

There is a new piece of information regarding the mammal vs. bird controversy in Chernobyl: Brightly Colored Birds Most Affected By Chernobyl Radiation: Brightly coloured birds are among the species most adversely affected by the high levels of radiation around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, ecologists have discovered. The findings -- published online in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology -- help explain why some species are harder hit by ionising radiation than others. Dr Anders Møller of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Professor Timothy Mousseau of the…

Fornvännen's Autumn Issue On-Line

Fornvännen 2013:3 is now on-line on Open Access. Morten Axboe and Magnus Källström on a classic find of runic gold bracteates from Trollhättan, recently expanded by a metal detectorist who would have been better informed about how to go about things if Swedish law had encouraged responsible metal detector clubs. Lennart Bondeson et al. on a recently found and previously unknown type of penny from the time of King Canute, probably struck for his rebellious Danish viceroy Ulf jarl – who was also his brother-in-law. Lennart is an extremely well-informed and responsible detectorist. Kenth Hansen…

Divorced - for having an affair in Second Life

And other miscellania. That one is from the Indy: "she had once awoken from an afternoon nap to discover him sitting at his computer watching his online character - whom he had named Dave Barmy - having sex with an on-screen call girl." Weird or what. Somewhat more spicily (not to say utterly made up) is this from the DailyMash. Which also confirms that running is stupid and that we're all buying the change bulshytt. But I promised to be less cynical, so I'll point to you what Sarah pointed me to. On another plane, Halliburton seeks patent on patent trolling amused. While we're on amusements…

Freepers Go Apeshit Over Autopsy

If you're looking for the folks for whom the Worldnutdaily exists, look no further than Free Republic. It's basically a central online gathering place for every deluded and ignorant pedestrian right winger in the country. And you just gotta see the total meltdown they're having over the autopsy of Terri Schiavo. Some of these people actually believe that Terri had broken legs and even a broken back when she was admitted to the hospital 15 years ago. Never mind that the medical reports from the hospital staff don't say anything like that, and they checked for any signs of abuse or…

Chimps Sharpen, Use Spears to Hunt

In February of this year Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist with Iowa State University, witnessed Kenyan chimpanzees break off branches from trees, sharpen them using their teeth, and then use these spears to hunt lesser bush babies, a kind of small primate. The bush babies sleep in the hollows of trees, and the chimps were repeatedly seen jabbing their spears into the hollows and pulling them back out with fresh bush baby babies impaled on the end.A chimpanzee, seen here, finishing up his degree in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix Online. Pruetz recorded a video of the…

Pounding a rhythm to the brain

An article about Oliver Sacks, from the current issue of Seed magazine, has just just been made available online. Author Jonah Lehrer, who met with Sacks to research the article, provides interesting biographical details about the neurologist, including how he started out as a science writer. In the late 1960s, Sacks carried out a clinical study in which a new drug called L-dopa was used to treat patients with encephalitis-induced Parkinsonian symptoms. The study drew heavy criticism, because the treatment had severe side effects, and the symptoms eventually returned in all of the patients.…

Chimps Sharpen, Use Spears to Hunt

In February of this year Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist with Iowa State University, witnessed Kenyan chimpanzees break off branches from trees, sharpen them using their teeth, and then use these spears to hunt lesser bush babies, a kind of small primate. The bush babies sleep in the hollows of trees, and the chimps were repeatedly seen jabbing their spears into the hollows and pulling them back out with fresh bush baby babies impaled on the end.A chimpanzee, seen here, finishing up his degree in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix Online. Pruetz recorded a video of the…

Second 2014 worker fatality at Suncor Alberta oil sands facility highlights alarming industry death rate

Today is Workers Memorial Day. This post discusses one of the thousands of occupational fatalities that occur every year around the world. On Sunday, April 20th,  Shayne Daye, a 27-year old electrician and technician, died as a result of an injury sustained while working at Suncor’s Oil Sands site about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta in western Canada. Suncor is one of Canada’s largest energy companies and credits itself as the first company to develop Canada’s oil sands. Company spokesperson Sneh Seetal said Daye – who’d worked for Suncor for seven years – was working on an…

Learning from my Introductory Physics Class

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. -Thomas Jefferson It's the end of the semester at my college as well as at many schools across the world, and I've spent the last week or so grading final exams. And while I was doing it, I noticed something astonishing. But let me start at the beginning. Introductory physics -- without calculus -- is one of the most notoriously challenging and rigorous classes that students pursuing a career in health, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, veterinarians, and physical therapists, face in their college career…

Does online match-making really work?

The NYTimes has an article today about the "science" of online match-making. I put that in quotes because there really isn't any clear evidence about whether it works either way. You have no doubt seen the ads on TV for the two most popular match-making sites: eHarmony and Chemistry.com. These two differ in approach from the other popular dating site match.com because eHarmony and Chemistry pick matches for you according to a secret algorithm while match.com lets you pick for yourself. (The people at match.com own Chemistry.com, and I assume created it as a competitor for eHarmony.)…

Where Did This Cheese Come From?

"Daddy, do you know where this cheese came from?" I absolutely love this video demonstrating that learning science can be - and should be - fun. Enjoy! This series is a result of a collaboration between broadcast media (NBC) and scientists (National Science Foundation.) From Eureka Alert: National Science Foundation and NBC Learn launch 'Chemistry Now' video series Videos celebrate International Year of Chemistry; available cost-free to students, teachers and fans of chemistry. In celebration of the International Year of Chemistry, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NBC Learn, the…

Never Say Goodbye: California Condor

tags: California Condor, Gymnogyps californianus, Joel Sartore, National Geographic, image of the day California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) 336 (156 wild, 180 captive). Image: Joel Sartore/National Geographic [larger view]. The photographer writes; They survived the Ice Age, but condors barely held out against Homo sapiens. Many of these scavengers were shot or poisoned by fragments of lead left behind by hunters. In 1985 just nine wild birds remained. Captive breeding and reduced use of lead ammunition have brought the species back. Joel Sartore has shared some of his work on this…