Everyone’s favorite real-life spaceman, Commander Chris Hadfield, recently returned to earth after 5 months aboard the International Space Station. Interestingly, the press paid little attention to the fact that an alien kitty stowed away on the ISS and grew so attached to Hadfield that he accompanied him back to Canada. As these recent photos show, the cat (unimaginatively dubbed Space Cat) is experiencing a few difficulties adjusting to life on Earth.
It’s not often that you find a number of online comments on a scientific journal’s website. It’s even rarer to discover something that is bordering on a scientist flame war (complete with requests for evidence!). Colin Macilwain asserts in a recent editorial in Nature that he thinks programs to encourage STEM education are a spectacular waste of money. Now this particular stance is already going to incite some backlash. He says that all the overlapping programs are wasting money and that making more scientists will just depress wages by flooding the market.
What ensues in the comments section is a debate over whether increasing scientific literacy for all is important in today’s society and whether there is truly a shortage of qualified scientists to fill open positions. I was excited to see so many scientists engaged in discussion of STEM policy and with well articulated opinions on the subject. Not everyone agrees on the ultimate goal of STEM education, whether it be to raise the level of science literacy universally or to increase the number of students who go on to careers in science. As it is, there is a glut of biologists who are struggling to find employment, though I think fields like computer science may not be experiencing the same problems. I personally, don’t agree with Macilwain, but I think more scientists should be thinking about science and society and participating in the discussion. Science literacy for all!
English: Logo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pursuing an interesting strategy to protect podcasting from patent troll, Personal Audio. Hopefully the newest targets of lawsuits, CBS and NBC, will use their considerably legal firepower to crush the troll instead of settling. That does not necessarily help smaller organizations or individuals. The EFF is starting a campaign to identify “prior art” that will invalidate Personal Audio’s patents for all time.
Twitter has a reputation for occasionally “unfollowing” people for you without your permission. I don’t know if this is true. Maybe I don’t keep close enough tabs on my “followed” list. I do know that it this “bug” (or the rumor of it) is a brilliant feature.
It gives us an out in the awkward social situation when we called out for unfollowing someone. We can blame it on Twitter. Twitter don’t care.
Personally, I think the phenomenon exists. The best way to get the social dynamic established is to have an actual “bug” in the system. I just don’t think it is a mistake.
The Finch and Pea 