Labs

For obvious reasons--I'm building a science blog network here--I've been paying close attention to the S cience B logs.com Diaspora . It is always fascinating to find out what a place looks like from the inside, and there's been a lot of that type of reflection going on. Then there's the teaching moment, the learning from SB's mistakes, but to be honest, the mistakes they've made (and are making) are pretty basic--so there's not a lot to take note of other than to marvel at how the thing managed to survive as long as it has. Finally, there's the prospect of picking up some of SB's talent. I admit, I've been circling the devastation not unlike a vulture, and I've even made a few inquiries and posted a few strategic comments around the fringes in an effort to at least get the word out to departing SBers that there is an alternative science blog network out there. One that doesn't suffer from a lack of vision or the corrupting influence of a...

inure: to harden somebody to something: to make somebody used to something unpleasant over a period of time, so that he or she no longer is bothered or upset by it Here is a google trend for you. It shows the beginning of the decline in our interest in coverage of the ongoing gulf oil spill. I don't bring it up to make you feel bad for going on with your life. I certainly have. I even went to the beach last weekend and sarcastically told my wife during the ride down that one day we'll reminisce about swimming in the ocean to our grandchildren who will react with a mix of disbelief and disgust ( The ocean!? Gross! ). My better half didn't find it amusing and used it as a case in point for why it's generally better if I don't talk. She's right. Anyway, it's a familiar trend. We dispoil it, feel guilty for a bit then move on (read: forget about it). While we watch with increasing passivity as THE GULF OF MEXICO is turned into a toxic wasteland , I can...

Cool video from the ESA showing what Mars bound astronauts would see from their cockpit -- the Red Planet turning below. Time-compressed video of single Mars Express orbit 27 May 2010, with inset showing altitude. Celestia simulation of Mars Express orbital path 27 May 2010 Source: ESA

Over the course of assembling FoS and finding ways to contribute "content" that compliments that of FoS's science bloggers, I've stumbled onto the answer to a question that has befuddled me all my many years, What do you want to do when you grow up ? Of course it's a little late for me, but maybe the method by which I discovered my true calling could be of some use to someone not so...old. 1. Quite by accident, having decided on science as the general theme of my favorite website, I was halfway to my answer without even knowing it. 2. Fast forwarding to today and taking a critical look at my subsequent contributions to my favorite website over the past year--see the LPB and /r/FoS/ ( ? )--and the mystery of what I wanted to do when I grow up is definitively solved. So what's the answer to the question? Astrobiologist . But back to the method. Step One: Look at your list of favorite websites and glean from them a general field of interest. Examples might be ...

Recently John sent me the code for a ResearchBlogging.org widget that he wanted added to his sidebar. While adding the widget I discovered that it was highly uncustomizable . That is to say, it is what it is, and if it doesn't fit the scheme of your blog (height, width, color, etc.), well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Needless to say, I like my cookies soft and chewy (read: malleable). One solution I hit upon was to piggyback on Research Blogging's twitter account ( ResearchBlogs ) and Twitter's profile widget builder (which enables you to customize, among other things, the widgets colors and dimensions). What's more, Research Blogging's twitter feed includes posts from their News blog . Another minimalist solution was to run a Research Blogging feed ( pick one ) through a pipe where you can then use the badge option to add a somewhat customizable widget to your web page. To compare, here's a page with all 3 options side-by-side . If you hav...

If you build it... I've been working on my science-blog-network, online-magazine ( FoS ) for a little over a year now. As part of its development, I've been experimenting with repurposing a subreddit as a FoS specific forum. After numerous iterations, I think I've hit on the right balance. http://www.reddit.com/r/FoS/comments/aszmg/meta_field_of_reddit/ Over the years I've witnessed dozens upon dozens of great writers and contributors emerge from the ranks of the everyman only to be willfully ignored, and in some cases, openly resented by the "professional" journalists and editors who were too busy feeling threatened by the changes the internet was forcing on their profession to recognize all the untapped potential those same changes were putting within their reach. It was this perpetual (I realized) state-of-missed-opportunity that finally caused me to abandon the established media a few years back, and started me down the road that has led me here. Today ...

Artist's impression and animation of a celestial impact suggested by observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so — not long ago by cosmic standards. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites. -- August '09 Press Release Image and Animation Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech