Gift Shop & Haberdashery

Hello again, We’ve been on Mars – er, I mean in Antarctica for 1 week now. It’s similar to what one might imagine being on Mars is like, but with breathable air (nice air). The landscape around McMurdo Station is all volcanic rock. Rock and dirt everywhere. Stand in the middle of McMurdo and spin around and you’ll see about 230 degrees of rock and dirt as far as the eye can see, and about 130 degrees of extraordinary beauty looking across the Ross Ice Shelf toward the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. Right across from the station, shown in the picture, is Mount Discovery (slightly obscured in…

I just noticed that there's a workshop being offered from June 13th to June 18th, 2011, in Vancouver, Canada, that provides technical and hands-on training for "scientists and non-scientists interested in human cloning." This course has a price tag of $1400 (does not include transportation, room and board) and apparently provides the following: "This professional course (which can accept only 12 clients) will guide participants through the various methodologies involved in the production of a human clone. This includes extensive lectures on the various techniques as well as a significant…

Although I can't remember where I saw "play with duct tape" on the list of learning objectives, I figured it would be cool to make a paper pinball machine with the kids - it's kind of "educational." (right?). Anyway, this ended up being a lot of fun, and (if I do say so myself) our pinball machine is FREAKING AWESOME! Here are some pictures, and the video at the end is where Hannah and Ben demonstrate its awesomeness. VIEW FROM FRONT VIEW FROM TOP And the video... (Follow David at @dnghub)

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here lately. Things have been busy at the museum, and I've also been writing in other places. In particular, These days I'm a guest blogger at Boing Boing, and on top of that, I'm also having fun starting a children's novel. This novel has a mouthful of a title, Lizzie Popperfont and the Collider Whale Tale, and it's been partly inspired by my time here at the Natural History Museum. More importantly, there's going to be an underlying and subtle narrative that asks, "What happens to society and culture when only self interested elites are aware of the…

Just a quick note for you Brits out there (and specifically Londoners I guess). Tonight (Sept 24th), the Natural History Museum is hosting a "Science Uncovered" evening, whereby scientists and staff from various departments will be on hand. As well, there will be a place where cocktails can be purchased, which will probably make all the sciencegeek talk all the more lively than usual. Plus, if you have some biodiversity or fossil flavoured artifact you want looking at, this is also a good time to pop by and show the item off to a panel of experts (they will be manning a sort of "Antique (…

(Well, actually 6 since the first ad below is just a bit of fun...) - - - JOB POSTING: "IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME" This is a call for outstanding candidates to apply for a tenure track assistant professor position within the context of the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia. The successful applicant is expected to work in areas of interest to current faculty members, to interact with related groups within our network and to have demonstrated ability in producing research material of excellent quality and interest. Due to the competitive nature of this process,…

@dnghub Twitter Feed Happy Biodiversity Day! Well, it's been about 5 weeks, and the Phylo project is close to 100 cards, all ready for free printing. As well, a set of rules is now available that is polished enough to go through some beta testing. Today, we even have an "Oil Spill" card, and I'd like to invite people to leave comments on what text should go on this particular card. Is it too lenient right now, or too harsh? We're really hoping that as the project progresses, the comments on the site will ultimately guide what needs to go on (or off) the cards. In fact, while I'm making…

@dnghub Twitter Feed Original article can be found at our Science Scout site. - - - (Acronyms used: SSBFME = Science Scout Badges Free Market Economy) So... It's been a few years since the Science Scouts were born, and (at last count) we have received over 300 emails from various Indian or Chinese Embroidery companies looking to "offer their badge making services." Finally, we're now of mind to finally lay out a game plan for the selling and obtaining of these Science Scout badges, physically. And basically, we're going with the free market model - specifically the SSBFME. In other words, if…

Seriously, if there's a day to enjoy the outdoors, then that would have to be Earth Day. If, however, you find yourself stuck inside due to poor weather, volcanic ash plumes, or some other reason, then go check out the Phylo game (http://phylogame.org). It's been up for about a week and a bit, and is already gaining some steady traffic (it's creeping up on google and giving the Greek pastry a run for its money!). Normally, we only put up one new card per weekend, but because it's a special day, we're putting up 6 new cards, and with a variety of different art styles to boot. As if that…

A few months ago, for fun, I took a course on "Writing Books for Children." It was pretty good, in that it kind of forced me to sit down and come up and work through an idea. Or at least, work through it enough so that it was close to the stage of maybe querying publishers. For readers who have followed this blog for a while, you probably know that children's books have always fascinated me, especially with two young children in my own household. It's probably why I've written about it on occasion (see here, here, here, and here for examples). There's something altogether amazing when you…

Is Bon Jovi an idea worth spreading? Not sure, but it seemed to do wonders with a certain amount of context at a conference I recently attended. This being the TEDactive conference: a satellite event where attendees viewed and immersed themselves in the TED universe at an "off site" locale, all the while taking in an HD video version of the big show that was occurring only 2 hours away in Long Beach. This mention of Bon Jovi is in reference to a bus ride that occurred during the conference, where karaoke was suggested and quickly adopted with great enthusiasm. A great idea right? Well,…

So, I'm going to TEDactive next week, and it looks like it's one of those conferences where the networking will be particularly beneficial (maybe even more so than the talks). Which means, I really should get some business cards. And since I have trading cards on the brain, why not make business cards with a distinctly biodiversity theme. Anyway, it's been years since I've had business cards, mainly because sometimes I don't think my head could handle any more email or correspondence, and I've always figured that the act of putting my contact info on little pieces of paper out there in the…

Well, now it can be used for the Phylomon project. You know, the one where we're hoping we can guide an open source project into a free and massive card collecting game that is fun and even perchance (oh no, here it comes...) educational. Now that we're at a stage where we're confident that the mechanics of obtaining images is sound (check out the submissions pool here, and the few from this pool that we've already lined up for beta testing as shown below), we're ready to move onto other crucial components of the project. Namely gameplay and content on the card. In many ways, we think these…

If so, you should join this facebook group. Or to discuss further, please go to http://friendfeed.com/phylomon. Here's part of what started this group and project: a friend of mine passed on this "letter to Santa:" It quite nicely demonstrates an issue with advocates of biodiversity - that is, what can we do to get kids engaged with the wonderful creatures that are all around them? They obviously have the ability and the passion to care about such things, but it appears misplaced - they'll spend a ton of resources and time tracking down fictional things, when they could easily do the same…

Was it one of these (From wiki)? In any event, hopefully you picked the one about Henrietta Lacks. If you didn't: then you really need to get yourself a copy of this book, entitled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and written by Rebecca Sloot, to find out why you should have. I've just pre-ordered it, and am looking forward to reading it. The advance reviews are really good, and the story of Henrietta is really one that needs to be spread widely (this is speaking as someone who use to be pretty deep into the signal transduction field where use of HeLa cells is pretty much par for…

Yesterday, I got this message: Subject: Free TEM? Hi David, We have an old (functional) Philips TEM 400 electron microscope that we're going to send away for scrap metal. I'd love to keep it for student training but we don't have the space. Before we send it away as scrap metal I just thought I'd ask if you were interested in having it for the Biotech teaching lab? Thanks! GD If you're wondering, the TEM 400 weighs a little over a ton, and looks a little like this: I've jokingly tweeted about putting it in my kitchen, but in case I can't use it (which seems quite likely given its size),…

Just saw this at Inkling. Looks like there is a Welsh company that has taken to making paper out of feces. Their primary brand is Sheep Poo Paper and I think the logo alone is worth a visit. Click here to check it out. Oh, and if you're in the festive mood (it is, after all, American Thanksgiving this weekend right?), you have this to look forward to: My wife is Welsh, so now it's off to find her and make some obligatory fun of her people.

Nov 27, 2009 Dear lovers of science, badges, and various degrees of alcohol consumption Today, I'll be scanning the comments at the Facebook group to create a few more Science Scout badges to put up sometime tomorrow, but if you've got a great idea best way is to send via my twitter account (@dnghub). I'll also make a habit of sending this sort of request out more frequently by twitter in the future. Thanks, (and may your repute always be exemplary and your physique above average), Science Scout Dave Ng

So I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, and will be heading off to London, UK in July 2010, and I'm curious to hear any advice on how to best increase your chances for that low maintenance sabbatical house swap. I've done the sabbaticalhome.com thing (link), posted on craigslist, will put stuff up on websites I have access to, have found a notice board at my own institution, but I have to admit it still all seems very much like a "shot in the dark" thing. So, I'm wondering if the comment thread can be used to highlight any other tricks of the trade, or general advice about figuring out that…

(I'm guessing that at least one of my five readers are from UBC, so here goes). Of course, this happens just before Halloween... The other night, I moved a human anatomy torso model from my lab to my car. This was in preparation for an elementary school visit the following morning. It's basically this model shown here: Anyway, the organs can be removed for closer examination, and essentially I dropped the brain somewhere in the transport. I'm even pretty sure where it likely fell (somewhere between the Michael Smith Labs which is next to the Bookstore, and the main parkade by the hospital…