Professionally, I wear a lot of hats. Personally, I very rarely wear hats, except for in the dead of winter, which rarely occurs here in South Carolina, because my head is very large, and finding hats (but not commas) that fit is very hard. One of those hats is was as the “researcher” for the science podcast, Skeptically Speaking.
Today, Skeptically Speaking changed its name to Science for the People. Continue reading “Science for the People”
Today is Mary Anning’s birthday. This is a repost of an announcement (21 Dec 2012) of a book recommendation I did for Skeptically Speaking about reading to my daughter about Mary Anning. To this day, she knows the name of one paleontologist, and it is Mary Anning.
I will be providing a quick book review of a book that is very special to my older daughter and me, Rare Treasure: Mary Anning* and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown, for the Skeptically Speaking “Science Books for Your Gift List” episode. The episode will be available to download at 8PM (ET) tonight (Friday, 21 December 2012)
*The band Artichoke has a fantastic song about Mary Anning that is available to download for free (MP3 – 2.2MB).
UPDATE: According to the producer of Skeptically Speaking, KO Myers, my review comes up at 47:33 in the podcast. While I would be flattered by anyone downloading the podcast only to listen to my two minutes, I would strongly recommend listening to the other reviews, which I hear will include Bug Girl reviewing Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta & Catherine L. Craig even though spiders aren’t bugs.
I will be providing a quick book review of a book that is very special to my older daughter and me, Rare Treasure: Mary Anning* and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown, for the Skeptically Speaking “Science Books for Your Gift List” episode. The episode will be available to download at 8PM (ET) tonight (Friday, 21 December 2012)
*The band Artichoke has a fantastic song about Mary Anning that is available to download for free (MP3 – 2.2MB).
UPDATE: According to the producer of Skeptically Speaking, KO Myers, my review comes up at 47:33 in the podcast. While I would be flattered by anyone downloading the podcast only to listen to my two minutes, I would strongly recommend listening to the other reviews, which I hear will include Bug Girl reviewing Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta & Catherine L. Craig even though spiders aren’t bugs.
Tonight I’ll be interviewing physicist Sean Carroll about his new book and particle physics as the guest host for Skeptically Speaking.
This week, we’re looking at one of the biggest science stories of 2012, and one of the largest instruments in the history of science. Guest hostMarie-Claire Shanahan spends the hour with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, author of the new book The Particle at The End of The Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World. They’ll discuss the search for the particle that gives all the others their mass, the story of the Large Hadron Collider, and the challenge of communicating with a broad audience about difficult topics in cutting-edge physics. – Skeptically Speaking
You can listen in live via UStream at 8PM ET tonight 9 December, or catch the podcast version next Friday, 14 December.
The latest episode of Skeptically Speaking is out, where you can listen to host Desiree Schell talk to WIRED writer David Dobbs about Naomi Wolf’s latest book, and to your truly about the disastrous media coverage of ENCODE. Listen online, grab it in podcast form, or find on one of the many radio stations that carry the show.
A big thanks to Desiree and producer K.O. Myers for having me on the show, and helping me sound less incoherent than I might have.
I’ve got two clarifications on some dates I tossed out during the interview:
I said ENCODE has been going for at least five years. I was thinking of the post-pilot phase, which began in 2007, after the pilot phase publications. ENCODE itself began in 2003.
I said people have been studying transposable elements for at least 30 years. I had in mind the 1980 papers on selfish DNA by Orgel and Crick and Doolittle and Sapienza. But of course don’t forget that Barbara McClintock discovered transposable elements in the 40’s and 50’s, and won her Nobel Prize on the subject almost 30 years ago.
The Finch and Pea 