Blogs / The Loom

I just loved this speech John Hodgman made at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner yesterday. Hodgman spoke for all us nerds, perhaps even including the president himself. And best of all, while talking about that fine nerd novel Dune, he showed the president a painting of a giant sand worm from Dune by John Schoenherr. (It shows up at 11:20.)

I grew up a couple miles from Schoenherr and spent much of my nerdy youth with his son Ian, hanging out in his fabulous old barn-slash-studio, filled with his classic science fiction art, new paintings of bears and geese, assorted Japanese swords, many cameras, a complete collection of National Geographic, and lots of bones and stuffed animal heads. I’m grateful to Hodgman for bringing back  those times, and for showing off the work of a wonderful artist. I return Hodgman the final words of his speech: I extend that most American of greetings–I have been and always shall be your friend. Live long and prosper.

I’m delighted to report that I’ve been appointed the first Visiting Scholar at the Science, Health, and Environment Reporting Program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. I’ve felt like an informal visiting scholar there for a while now, having given talks and spoken with classes of journalism students a number of times. But I was particularly impressed on a recent visit when I could see how they’re grappling head-on with the changing nature of journalism. Nobody gets out of there without knowing how to shoot and edit video, for example. So while I’ll be offering my thoughts on how to thrive (not just survive) in science journalism in years to come, I’m hoping to learn a few new tricks myself.

[Image: Wikipedia]

Florida Citizens for Science asked me and my fellow Discoverite Phil Plait to be among the judges for their “Stick Science Cartoon” contest, in which entrants used stick figure cartoons to explain a misunderstanding about science with humor and brevity. You can now see the winners here. Congratulations to all. Next time I’m bogged down with an explanation that’s just too long and too dull, I’ll bear you folks in mind and start cutting.

3 Quarks Daily has finished gathering nominations for its science blog prize, and you can now vote for your favorite. From the top 20 vote-getters, the editors of 3QD will then select six finalists, from which the winners will be chosen by Steven Pinker. The public voting closes at midnight, June 8 EST.

If you don’t already know about 3 Quarks Daily, check it out. It’s an elegant group blog that links to all sorts of interesting stuff on science, art, literature, politics, and philosophy. They also put “gossip” in the list of topics in their banner, but I don’t recall anything on Angelina Jolie or Mel Gibson. This morning, for example, they’ve posted stuff on the evolution of house cats and the leader of the defeated Tamil rebels on Sri Lanka.

Yesterday, the folks at 3QD made an announcement:

We have decided to start awarding four prizes every year in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields.

First up is the prize for blogs on science. Readers are invited to nominate posts from May 24, 2008 to May 24, 2009, posting the url in the comment section of the announcement post. The editors of 3 Quarks Daily will winnow down the nominations, and then Harvard linguist Steven Pinker will select the first, second, and third prize winners. (The top prize comes with a $1000 award.) The deadline is June 1.

Now, if, on the outside chance, you wanted to nominate a blog post from the Loom, who am I to interfere with my wise readers? In fact, let me help you out a little. Here’s a list of posts from the past year that I’m particularly pleased with, in reverse chronological order.

Life On Earth: A Losing Game of Whack-A-Mole?

Darwinius: It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens, and it finds that slipper that’s been at large under the chaise lounge for several weeks…

In The Prebiotic Kitchen

How To Be A Bat [Life in Motion]

Unchecked Ice: A Saga in Five Chapters

Live Blogging The Mars Methane Mystery: Aliens At Last?

The Island of Fossil Viruses

The Puppet Master’s Medicine Chest

The Evolution of the Face: A Letter to Some Readers in Tennessee

A Catastrophic Career

Going Green

You Want A Piece of This? (Please Please Please Don’t Take a Piece of This!)

The Clock That Breeds

Even Blood Flukes Get Divorced

The Allure of Big Antlers

The Bird That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Festooning The Tree Of Life

Missing The Wrist

Dawn of the Picasso Fish

A New Step In Evolution

What a week–I’m going to get this monkey off my back and enjoy a beautiful Memorial Day. As my holiday gift to all Loom readers everwhere, let me leave you with the sort of science show they just don’t make any more.

Please resume the conversation.

Somethings awry. I’ve sent out a cry for help. I’ll let you know when comments work again.

Should I take it as a compliment that somebody took the time to hack my online archive of articles? It’s still pretty irritating. Whatever the twisted motivations of the hacker, my web guardians and I are now figuring out how to repair the mess. My apologies to anyone seeking an article.

This Saturday I’ll be joining fellow Discover bloggers Chris Mooney and  Sheril Kirshenbaum, Discover editor-in-chief Corey Powell, along with luminaires like E.O. Wilson and Lawrence Krauss for “The Two Cultures In the 21st Century,” a daylong meeting at the New York Academy of Sciences (7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St., 40th floor). Chris and Sheril say the meeting is close to sold out, so if you want to join us, please register now.

It’s a weird time to have a meeting about science in the public sphere–a week, for example, in which Jenny McCarthy, doyenne of vaccination misinformation, gets her own Oprah-backed talk show. But I have to say I’ll be in high spirits at the meeting, because this past Saturday I had a great time in New York at an award gala hosted by SUNY Downstate Medical Center. I got to meet fellow award-winners, virologist Anthony Fauci and cardiologist Jeffrey Borer. And I also got to meet some very interesting guests, including some of the actors from the best television show ever made, the Sopranos. I was not going to leave the ballroom without shamelessly begging for photos, but I was startled to find that these guys wanted to take pictures with us. Here’s a shot of Fauci and me with Steven Schirripa, who played Bobbie Baccalieri.

Later in the evening, John Ventimiglia, who was marvelously tragic as Artie Bucco, came up to me and told me how he loves to read about science and asked me (me?) if he could take a picture of us. I suppose I shouldn’t say that it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. But here we are.

And if you two-cultures-mindset is not completely demolished by now, let me show you a picture you may not have ever expected to see: Anthony Fauci mugging with Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) and Johnny Sack (Vince Curatola). Now I can believe anything’s possible.

The folks at The Reef Tank interviewed me about my writing–in particular, about my writing on the creatures of the deep. Check it out.

It looks like the outbreak among the bonobos I blogged about last week is over. From an update from Vanessa Woods:

…the flu is over. Semendwa’s baby died, making it 7 bonobos that we’ve lost in the last month, 4 definitely from the flu, maybe 5.

I want to take the time to thank everyone who donated. we raised over $8,000 which will all go to bonobo food and medicine. We still have a $25,000 shortfall for bonobo food which we will try to make by the end of the year. I’ll make sure Sheryl thanks everyone individually, but they might come up on later posts. We haven’t forgotten you.

Everyone here is absolutely exhausted. but the staff have just worked so hard to save everyone, and they were saving bonobos left and right.

there will be more posts, some from the vet to talk about the exact nature of the illness, soem in response to people who think it’s some kind of ebola, it’s not, it’s a 24 hour bug that is harmless in humans, but apparently sometimes fatal to bonobos. and all the bonobos who will be released are in QUARANTINE and have been for six months so none of them was touched.

Vanessa is posting updates at the Friends of Bonobos site when she can get a good connection or when she can relay emails to people stateside. You can keep up with the news here.