Archive for September, 2007
Brewster Rockit: The Scale of the Solar System
You just have to appreciate a comic strip that’s this good (and scientifically accurate, too)!
Dawn on its way…
NASA’s new Dawn spacecraft launched at 7:34 (Eastern Time) on Thursday the 27th; my apologies for the late post, but I’ve been swamped at work… If you’re a space buff, you already know all about this — but if you only skim the news, you’d have easily missed what little coverage the launch received. I thought it might help to gather up all the links to information on this mission that I can find….
Oh, and two more blog carnivals have popped up…
Yes, this comes right on the heels of another blog carnival post — but you need to check these out: The Carnival of Space 22: The Art of Space is at the wanderingspace blog, while Conspiracy Factory (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) hosts the 70th Skeptics’ Circle. Both have lots of good links for your reading enjoyment, including (ahem…) one I have a soft spot for….
Friday silliness — what does your latte say about you?
You find that indulging doesn’t jibe with your very disciplined life.You can be quite silly at times, but you know when to buckle down and be serious.Intense and energetic, you aren’t completely happy unless you are bouncing off the walls.You’re addicted to caffeine…. You’re occasionally playful, but you find it hard to be carefree.You are complex and philosophical, but you are never arrogant.What Does Your Latte Say About You?So, give it a whorl — presuming, of course, that you ever drink lattes…
Carnivalia
As always, there are plenty of good blog carnivals out there to choose from this week. Click on through, and see for yourself…
Good news / bad news in Peru
Well, in case you haven’t heard the news yet, it’s a case of good news / bad news for the folks in Peru with the recent meteor impact. The good news — that illness they came down with wasn’t all in their heads. The bad news — the illness is a side-effect of arsenic poisoning. It turns out (as the BBC briefly alluded to a few days ago) that the ground water in the vicinity of the new impact crater contains high levels of arsenic. The heat of the meteor’s impact vaporized enough of this water to create an arsenic-laced fog around the crater….
Bloody Vikings!
The background of my father’s side of the family has always been a bit of a mystery. We know that some generations back, his ancestors came across the pond from somewhere in the British isles, and that the family name seems to have a fair amount of history behind it. But various sources have given us a variety of stories for the ultimate source of the name. So when I heard about the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project, I really perked up…
Meteorites, the Media, and Mass Hysteria
When I first heard about the recent supposed meteor impact in Peru, and the sickness it allegedly brought to locals, I was just going to let things go by. Something odd happened in a remote area, and it seemed pretty easy to write the mess off as a miscommunication. But this mess seems to be building up quite a head of steam in the media, so I suppose it’s worth a further look…
Blog carnivals du jour
This week’s crop of good sciencey blog carnivals…
Episode 11 — Colony Collapse Disorder
So, what’s the buzz about honeybees? Listen in to this episode, and you’ll learn about honeybees, how important they are to modern agriculture, and how damaging something called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has become — at least, in the U.S. and Europe. I try to put recent news in a bit of perspective, and talk a bit about the work that still needs to be done….
