Science Scouts Redux!

Just a quick heads up to let you know that the Science Scout website has been completely revamped. It's now capable of accepting comments (anecdotes) of why you feel particularly inclined to deserve certain badges.

As well, there are a few these new badges for you to peruse through:

And the start of an attempt to organize according to locale (separate Facebook group sites for individual cities - starting with Vancouver, New York, and London).

But here's the best bit of news...

We're working on real badges! That's right! Nerd Merit Badges are game on to see if they can make some for us. This is particularly exciting, since it was probably the request I got the most often - "when can we get real badges?"

Anyway, have a visit and hopefully a chuckle or two. Better yet, leave us a story - if folks do that part, then the site would be all the more richer in showing a little bit of the real stuff of science culture.

Here's a recent story that warms my heart:

(From Dennis) We have a field station in Costa Rica in the mountains. A visiting researcher and his grad student came down to see some of the orchids. On the third day of the trip, as they were looking in a tree from the ground, Scott, the grad student took a step back and fell down the embankment about 30ft towards the river. He stopped just a few feet from the river but couldn't move. We had to put him on a back board and pull him out with the help of 8 young men from the area. An ambulance was called and he spent the next 5 days in the hospital in pain. I took him back to the states, he was on pain killers, a week early. An MRI showed that he had torn his Glutius Maximus. He is the only person I know that has broken his butt, literally, while doing science.

Here's the kicker, only the day before after a close call the researcher said they needed to be careful or one of them would end up earning the Science Scout badge for seeking medical attention (The Truth).