Do it Yourself Science

Via Boing Boing and Pharyngula, word of a new, subversive (that’s PZ’s term) chemistry book, just out this week from the Make Magazine folks:

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson, part of O’Reilly Media’s DIY Science series.
Thompson is also the author, along with his wife Barbara Fritchman [...]

Hands

One of my favorite writers, science professor and naturalist Chet Raymo, wrote a recent post “Hand to Mind” at his blog Science Musings* about The New York Times review of Richard Sennett’s new book, The Craftsman; I highlighted some excerpts of the Times review here.
Prof. Raymo hasn’t read the new book yet, but has some [...]

Links

We’ve been busy here, recovering from the Festival and celebrating the kids’ successes (including Laura’s big wrap-up prize for most outstanding student performing in three disciplines and going on to provincials for poetry/public speaking and musical theater), doing some more Spring cleaning (I still have a few walls to wash and all of the windows [...]

New from Jay Hosler

Via P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, news that biologist and cartoonist (and Farm School favorite) Jay Hosler has a new book out, Optical Allusions.
I’ve written before, here and in comments at other blogs, about Dr. Hosler’s earlier titles, The Sandwalk Adventures: An Adventure in Evolution Told in Five Chapters and Clan Apis).  He writes about the [...]

Our newest little April fool

Laura’s 4H heifer finally had her calf the other day. We arrived at Bunny’s pen to find her in labor. If you look carefully, you can see the calf’s front hooves poised to make an exit.

Laura the midwife with her beloved Bunny.

Here’s one of the first glimpses of Giacomo Benny (Benny for short), [...]

Light and sporadic blogging ahead

Not only do we have the big music/speech arts festival coming next week, with lots of last-minute rehearsing, fine tuning, and costume assembling, but this morning at 11 my husband gave me a whopping 20 minutes’ notice that the bedroom remodel was about to commence. This after our 40 roosters had been dspatched to [...]

The Archimedes Project

From the article, “The Ancient Mechanics and How They Thought” by Guy Gugliotta, in today’s New York Times, combining several of our favorite subjects:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Consider the galley slave, clad in rags, chained to a hardwood bench and clinging to an oar as long as a three-story flagpole. A burly man with a whip [...]

A man and his wolf

There’s a new BBC2 documentary, part of the “Natural World” series, about Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) and his wolf Lobo, one of the subjects of Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known. The new documentary isn’t to be confused with the 1962 Disney live action movie, “The Legend of Lobo”.
In The Telegraph, Steve Gooder, director [...]

Science shopping

Even with no plans to attend a home school conference or convention this Spring (the big one next month conflicts with a. calving, b. Arts Festival, c. previously scheduled 4H activity, and d. calving), something in the air has compelled me to start making shopping lists of educational resources and waving my credit card around.
Today [...]

Canadian science sale

Just until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26, at midnight.
Boreal Northwest is celebrating its new website redesign by offering free shipping on all orders of at least $25.
Fine print: Use “Promo Code BM25 during checkout. (Applies to standard ground shipments only – excludes air freight and overweight items. Offer expires at midnight, March 26, 2008.”

Encyclopedia of Life

Another something I meant to post about earlier:
The Encyclopedia of Life is online.
Science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer wrote about the EoL in last week’s The New York Times:
Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. [...]

Learning in the Great Outdoors

Terrell at Alone on a Limb is celebrating his 61st birthday with the 10th edition of the Learning in the Great Outdoors carnival, marked by 62 terrific posts (one for each year and one to grow on).
Many thanks, Terrell, for hosting such a splending carnival and many happy returns!
By the way, the Great Outdoors home [...]

Links

The February Carnival of Children’s Literature is up, and Anastasia Suen at Picture Book of the Day is hosting.
I missed last week’s Poetry Friday, which was hosted by Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating.
The February edition of the online children’s literature monthly, The Edge of the Forest, is up, and includes reviews as well as [...]

Your inner fish

Busy around the house yesterday, we were listening to CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” science show, and I was delighted to hear the engaging Dr. Neil Shubin (whom I quoted here*, from Natalie Angier’s recent book, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science).  You can listen to the interview here.
Dr. Shubin, [...]

Reviews here and there

David Elzey at the excelsior file has a review of What To Do about Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy, by Barbara Kerley, with illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham. David calls it “a great book” and “a tidy biography of a colorful, spunky girl who [...]

Big Birthday Bash week: February 12

Many happy returns to Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).
Dawn at By Sun and By Candlelight has a lovely list of Lincoln links.
Big bicentennial bashes are underway for Lincoln, too. Here’s the link for the Lincoln Bicentennial, 1809-2009: Live the Legacy. The “Learning about Lincoln” section, under the “Teachers” category, [...]

Funny, you don’t look a day over 198

(I’ve moved this up for the big day, so no, you’re not seeing double)
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
Charles Darwin

A very happy 199th birthday, and a [...]

Life in Cold Blood

Sir David Attenborough, hale and hearty, and still very very busy at age 81, was recently interviewed by The Guardian in conjunction with his new BBC/Animal Planet program, “Life in Cold Blood“, which begins February 4th. It’s the final installment in his series of programs which have included “Life On Earth”, “The Private Life [...]

Basic concepts in science

John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts, part of the ScienceBlogs group, is putting together a handy dandy list of blog posts on basic science concepts, including mathematics, philosophy, logic, and computer science. You can suggest posts, too. Stay tuned for the possibility of a dedicated wiki or blog.
Via GeekDad

The Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival is up

The New Year’s edition of the Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival is up, hosted by Terrell at Alone on a Limb. Terrell writes,
Learning in the Great Outdoors is intended as a trading center for those who use, or want to use, the environment as an integrating context for learning. If you are a teacher, [...]