Welcome to the first Anthonares.net monthly summary! I’m doing this for a few reasons: 1) content on blogs “dies” very quickly. Sure, search engines can find it, but so much gets said and soon forgotten. 2) These pages will show up the first on the monthly archives, giving readers a quick introduction to each month’s content. 3) This will also be a forum to quickly update everyone on any new information that may have come to light since I’ve posted about something. Or, if I need to make a correction I guess this is where I would do that (not that I anticipate needing to do so, but I’m not perfect) in addition to an update on the entry itself.
So, with that little introduction, here’s what been going on here this past month:
- Paris and a bunch of other cities in France witnessed over two weeks of continuous rioting. I called for harsh punishments for the rioters because the situation had descended beneath civil disobedience and into the rabid dark heart of uncivilized humanity (yeah, maybe a bit extreme, I know)
- Kansas added astrology to its science curriculum. While Dover, PA tossed out its creationist school board members.
- Scientists published a nearly-foolproof plan for moving asteroids. Only problem, we’ve gotta find ‘em early. Bring on the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) hunt! I also noted that making it possible to move asteroids away from the Earth means that someone could move them towards us as well.
- I kicked off a weekly segment summarizing a peer-reviewed publication (or two). Jupiter’s cloud bands may finally have been explained. Climate scientists noted that warming will change the way we manage water supplies in arid areas. Antarctic Ice cores showed our CO2 levels are the highest in 650,000 years.
- Howard Dully tells a frightening tale of medicine gone wrong in “My Lobotomy”
- Japan’s Hayabusa probe returned pictures from asteroid Itokawa. Then, it had all sorts of problems and is currently status unknown, not pointed in the right direction, and may not return home
- I disagreed with Jeff Bell about the value of non-engineers in the space advocacy movement. FlyingSinger and Sam Dinkin suggested that all of us “space cadets” need to do a bit more convincing and a little less bickering.
- Budget problems, to the tune of $6 billion, led me to suggest that NASA be divided in order to preserve both its unmanned probes and its manned exploration objectives.
- I started what looks like it might be a long, hard, slog through “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science” by Tom Bethell. The first chapter, Climate Change, set a somewhat disappointing tone for the rest of the book while bringing up an important point: scientists cannot afford to be arrogant about big, controversial issues
- And a few others, just select November 2005 from the Archives menu and scroll down if you’re interested.
So…climate change, climate change, space stuff, climate change. Sorry. Like anyone else I blow with the winds a bit! I’m looking to branch out a bit next month. I’ll be reading, commenting on, and reviewing “Beyond Oil : The View from Hubbert’s Peak” by Kenneth S. Deffeyes. When I’m finished with the P.I.G. Science reviews, I’ll move on to a segment on economic justifications for space exploration (I’m looking forward to that one). And, of course, if something big happens I’ll probably have an opinion about it!
Well, its been interesting reading anthonares this month. You should publish a ‘zine, cause its full of interesting pop science. Perhaps you should consider a career as a pop science writer because you seem to be leaning that way right now anyway…… not that you haven’t changed your career path enough…
Tom,
I’ve thought about publishing something a bit more formal than this blog, but for now I’m just kind of working on improving my writing and communicating skills. I would very much like part of my career to be a popular science writer, but the old adage about popular science writers not being terribly good scientists still makes me afraid that I would lose credibility somehow. Not that credibility matters, but I’m still too young to know what really matters in my career I think.