Polar Light This Weekend

Since I have been required to work the past week (boo hiss to actual work!), I haven't been able to provide updates this week. My apologies. But in the spirit of this crazy snow storm that we're having right now, I thought I would quickly point you to an exhibition with a frosty theme. Check out the Polar Light series by photographer Zaria Forman at the North Look gallery. It's sure to make you appreciate the stainless beauty of the cold instead of focusing on the weird gray slush that we're used to around here.

Sick Celebrities and Photographs

Unfortunately, my job has gotten really busy the last couple of days which makes blog-writing move to the wayside. Here's a look at two events tonight:

When The Famous Get Sick and The Sick Get Famous
Ever notice how diseases don't get much publicity until some celebrity gets it? A lot of people tonight will weigh in on the phenomenom.

Art/Sci Collision: Nest and Egg
Rosamond Purcell just published a terrific photography book that captures (surprise!) birds' nests and their eggs. She will be talking about the book tonight at AMNH.

Stay dry tonight!

My favorite blog right now

belongs to Carl Zimmer, who spoke last week to the NY Skeptics Society. He even has an entire section dedicated to science-inspired tattoos. Since my subject of choice is evolution, Old Four Lobes is my favorite so far.

Monday Madness!

It's so frigid outside that it may be tough to motivate New Yorkers to leave their cozy apartments tonight. For those of you who are less wimpy in the harsh winter elements, here are four great options:

The Immortality Pill
Professor Brent Stockwell will be the speaker for Columbia's last Cafe Science of the season in a session intriguingly titled "The Immortality Pill." Stockwell studies cell death pathways and will be talking about how learning about cell death can help cure cancer and Huntington's Disease.

Role of Clouds in Earth's Climate
Remember when you first found out that clouds weren't soft and fluffy but were actually cold and wet? I was highly disappointed. Even if they aren't what we imagined, they are still amazing in the ways that they contribute to climate and weather. CUNY professors will be on hand to explain.

The Moveable Feast
Speaking about a topic dear to my heart, UVA professor Kath Weston will be addressing sex/gender issues and other contributors to income disparity. This event will have a free dinner reception beforehand, so I highly recommend it to people who want to learn and save a few bucks too.

Why Return to the Moon?
Since I was talking about this very topic to my roommate a few weeks ago, I will be attending this event at AMNH. I always thought that we basically figured out the Moon's importance, its geology and its history thirty-five years ago (Let's just forget about the people who think the whole moon-landing was a hoax). MIT professor Maria Zuber will be trying to convince me and other attendees that going back to the Moon is vital to our space program.

Under The Microscope

There's nothing really going on tonight, but I thought I would casually mention my shout out on UnderTheMicroscope.com. Apparently, I'm officially a writer. Under The Microscope is a great resource and forum for women in science and it's funded by IBM and the NSF so it's legit, yo.

Tonight

Tonight there are no less than three awesome science events happening on this tiny island. If only I could clone myself! But then I would inevitably end up on a rooftop somewhere and my mother or husband of 25 years would have to decide between me and the clone. She or he would probably pick the wrong one and that would be the end for me. So I suppose I'll just have to settle with going to one lecture tonight...

Here's a look at tonight's talks:

Giants Of Science: The Social Networks of Insects
I've been fascinated by ants and bees since I was a young girl on my ranch in Texas. I used to take sticks and excavate ant hills, looking at the extensive network of tunnels that the little guys built. Then I learned that the societies of ants and bees are ruled by women. How cool is that? Tonight Pulitzer Prize winners Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hoelldoebler will be discussing the crazy world of insects. They will talk about how these societies communicate and cooperate in order to thrive, and they will touch on how this relates to primate societies.

Communicating Science
When I taught 7th grade science, what I told my students wasn't necessarily what they heard or remembered. One time I taught them the mnemonic "Infants Poop More And Teethe" for the stages of mitosis. Instead of remembering the actual phases, they just talked about babies and their bowels a lot more often. So it's important to know how to communicate knowledge in an efficient and effective way. Tonight at NYAS, Dr. Matthew Nisbet will be giving pointers on how to accurately teach science to the public.

Carl Zimmer: The Darwin Beat
Author Carl Zimmer will be talking to the New York Skeptics Society tonight in a lecture titled The Darwin Beat: Reporting from the Frontiers of Evolution. As I've mentioned before, evolution is a topic that continues to draw heated opinions from all kinds of people. Zimmer is an author who has written for Discover, Scientific American, The New York Times, and others, so I am confident that he'll have an interesting take on the controversy.

Tonight

Tonight there are two events of note happening in the city:

CUNY will be hosting The Role of Fashion in Mathematics, featuring a lecture by mathematician Harold Edwards. This made me wonder, If math can be affected by trends, am I going to start thinking, "I was just beginning to like integrals, and now I'm being told that Reimann sums are the hip, new thing?" I'm already slow on the uptake with clothes; I don't think I could handle my taste in math being uncool.

Also, the Secret Science Club will be holding its monthly meeting at Union Hall in Park Slope. The speaker tonight will be Columbia neuroscientist Carl Hart who will speak about methamphetamine, the preferred drug of, well, just about anyone living in a rural setting. The people at Union Hall are so thrilled about this theme that they even invented their own cocktail of sorts: the Synapse Sling. I'll be there tossing a few back and appreciating that I'm not addicted to a drug that makes my teeth fall out.

Don't Blame the Turkeys

Well, it's time to suck in our stomachs as we head back to work. Isn't Thanksgiving a wonderful holiday? A holiday dedicated to food and football. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to fall asleep after the big meal and miss the big game.

People have blamed the poor turkeys for their post-meal sleepiness for as long as I can remember. There was even an entire Seinfeld episode dedicated to tryptophan, an amino acid that turkeys make. Now, I have abstained from turkey eating for the past 10 years - it gives me more room for the stuffing and candied yams - but I noticed that I was just as sleepy as my turkey-eating relatives. So I looked into the myth of tryptophan to see if it really was the culprit.

Turns out, turkey has been getting a bad rap this whole time. There are a lot of reasons why Thanksgiving meals make us tired. First of all, when we eat a ton of food, some blood leaves the brain to help the small intestine absorb nutrients. Less blood flow to the brain makes us more sluggish. Also, our bodies naturally slow down after eating to conserve energy; our heart rates and blood pressures drop, making us sleepy. Finally, when consuming the typical Thanksgiving fare, many of us tend to pair beer and wine with the meal. Past the initial buzz, alcohol tends to put people to sleep.

So next Thanksgiving, don't blame the turkey. As for me, I'm still going to load up on my high-carb favorites and enjoy my post-meal nap.

Review - The Science of Touch

Tonight, the New York Academy of Sciences will be presenting the second event in its Five Senses Series. Scientists Leslie Vosshall and Avery Gilbert will discuss our most stimuli-specific sense of all - the sense of smell.

I had the good fortune of attending the first NYAS event which focused on our sense of touch. NYAS is located across from Ground Zero in a modern space-age building that glows blue. Its elevator reminded me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey because it was aware that I needed to stop at the fortieth floor even though I didn't press a button. Completely creepy.

Scientist Ranulfo Romo and filmmaker Kun Chang were on hand to talk about the sense of touch. Chang showed clips of his movie, Touch, and Romo (with his sexy Antonio Banderas accent) explained the science behind the clips. Chang's movie focused on a woman who had lost her sense of touch. She went to bed with a mild flu and woke up the next morning unable to feel anything from her nose down. I have never thought about how often I depend on my sense of touch, but seeing this story made me realize that it enables us to do so much. This woman couldn't even walk because she couldn't feel herself in relation to the ground. She even had to relearn how to swallow food.

Every movement we make requires proprioreception, that unconscious information that tells us know where we are in relation to the world. Throwing a baseball, walking down the stairs, holding a pencil - all of that would be almost impossible without a sense of touch. Maybe tonight's talk about smell will impress me, but if I had to choose, I would rather lose my nose than my feelings.

Hooray for Vacay

Well, I'm jetting out of here today and heading for Texas country. Because of the holiday, science events seem to have been put on hold for a while. I'll leave you with these pretty pictures that won the Olympus Bioscapes competition. Have a great Turkey Day, everyone.

Pleasurable Kingdom

Anyone who has access to a computer has probably received forwards from friends and family that highlight Internet's favorite horse, Patches. I think all of us have witnessed emotion in animals, whether it is a dog's love or a cat's disdain (Sorry, cat lovers - I'm a dog person myself).

Animal emotion goes further than that. They enjoy pleasure, including sex and chemical imbalances from time to time. The "documentary" Animals are Beautiful People has a specific segment on mammals eating fermented fruit for a buzz. They can even have anti-evolutionary motherly instincts.

Tonight, the author of Pleasurable Kingdom will be at the New York Bird Club to talk about human-like animal behaviors and the need to treat animals more ethically. Maybe we won't move to a Patches-based relationship with all of Earth's creatures, but we could definitely move toward a more ethical standard of living.

The Hipster in All of Us

Tonight there are a lot of science-fueled festivities going on around town. Interested in getting your groove on? Then head over to AMNH for their monthly One Step Beyond party. DJs and live bands will be pumping out the beats at the Rose Center. Or maybe you want to tap into the freegan spirit? Check out ScrapCycle, a musical/artsy homage to junk, in Bushwick tonight.

Shout out to the late Michael Crichton

Not much has been happening on the science in NYC front the past couple of days, but I did chance by this article and thought it was cool. Pleistocene Park, anyone?

Science Cafe Tonight

The idea of sipping coffee (or another kind of beverage) and talking about science really appeals to me. Warm drink, good conversation, casual atmosphere. Science cafes are often the epitome of these ideals - they offer up one of their own professors to talk about his or her research with anyone who shows up. Tonight, CUNY will be hosting a science cafe on the Upper West Side. Chat with CUNY professor Kenneth Olden about cancer. Olden will be specifically discussing the causes of cancer, both genetic and environmental.

Tonight's Highlights

Happy Monday! It's that time of the week where I wonder how my weekend got sucked into a black hole. Luckily, there are two promising events tonight that will help keep me grounded:

Saving Darwin
Being from the Bible Belt, it was always really hard to explain my college studies in evolution. I remember one woman with high bangs saying to me, "Can YOU beliEVE that there are some people in this world who believe in evolution? There are SO many miracles in the world!" I have never been able to provide a good answer in defense of my major because I was afraid that I would transform into that stomach-busting creature from Aliens and destroy everyone around me. I suppose that I get a little defensive about evolution when I feel cornered.

Tonight, two people who have been more successful at explaining why evolution is the real deal will be at The Harvard Club. Skeptic founder Michael Shermer and author Karl W. Giberson will be discussing how a person can have faith in God and science at the same time without exploding. Maybe next time I'm in Texas I will have a better time explaining myself and my major.

Drill, Baby, Drill?
Geologists have found a mother lode of natural gas that is scarily close to our city's water supply. Should we drill there just for the heck of it? Tonight at Solar One, NRDC attorney Kate Sinding and conservation guru Joe Levine will be talking about the pros and cons.

Margaret Mead: American Icon

Many people talk about traveling to exotic places and getting to know the locals, but few people actually follow through with it. Margaret Mead, however, was true to her words. Though her academic advisor at Barnard encouraged her to stay and study Native American culture, Mead hopped over to Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Bali and a few more islands in the Pacific. Her primary research focus was the nature vs. nurture question; specifically, she wanted to know if Polynesian gender roles were similar to American gender roles and to determine if adolescent experiences were shared across the Pacific.

During her entire life, Mead spoke about our interdependence in the world and about finding ways to foster cooperation and peace. Perhaps the most famous female scientist to live, she has inspired thousands of women to pursue their dreams. The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is a testament to her legacy. It is the longest-running film festival (30+ years) dedicated to showing documentaries from around the world that celebrate different cultures.

To kick off this year's festival, AMNH is hosting a kind of memorial in honor of the renowned anthropologist. Anthropology professor and Mead biographer Nancy Lutkehaus will be there as well as Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, and granddaughter, Sevanne Kassarjian. They will be sharing their memories about the woman who brought modern psychology to anthropology. Life Magazine photographer Ken Hyman will also be there to show images taken from Mead's illustrious life.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."
--Margaret Mead

Wednesday Night

Tonight there are events for all kinds of science enthusiasts:

Real Forensics Laboratory
Larry Kobilinski, a professor of forensic science, will be at the 92nd St Y tonight to talk about the differences between NYPD forensics work and TV shows like CSI Miami. Who knew there was a difference? If you have any trouble getting in, tell 'em David Caruso sent you.

American Waters: A Unique Photography Show
Have you ever heard that we know more about the surface of the moon than our own planet's ocean environments? One couple is trying to help us understand what's below the surface. Photographer Alex Kirkbride and producer Hazel Todd spent three years traveling over 100,000 miles to capture underwater areas in every state in the nation. They just released a book of the best photographs from the endeavor, and Kirkbride will be at the Audobon Society tonight to talk about his experience and to show off his pictures.

Screening: The Greening of Southie
And finally, GreenHomeNYC will be hosting a screening at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. The movie is The Greening of Southie, which is about the construction of the environmentally-friendly Macallen Building in South Boston.

Fearful Brains in an Anxious World

Tornadoes. Ever since I saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time as an impressionable toddler, I have been irrationally freaked out by tornadoes. There's something in the chaotic and unpredictable motion that makes me hide in the bathtub whenever there's a tornado watch.

Everyone has their fears - whether they are about losing the house or about giant man-eating spiders. Tonight The New York Academy of Sciences is hosting a meeting about how our brains react to fear. NYU professor and researcher Joseph LeDoux will be leading the discussion as well as presenting his research. His band, aptly named The Amygdaloids, will be playing at the reception.

The Birthday Paradox

It's my birthday today (25 is SO last season), which made me start thinking about the age-old Birthday Paradox. The question is, If you are in a room with 30 people, what's the probability that 2 people share the same birthday? I'm sure a lot of reasonable people will assume the chances are pretty low, say 10%. In reality, there is a 70% likelihood that there will be two people in that group of forty that have the same birthday.

How is this mathematically possible? Well, you have to remember that you are looking for the probability that ANY two people have the same birthday, not that two people share a specific birthday. It starts by figuring out the probability that everyone in the room has a different birthday. The first person can have any 365 days of the year. The second person can have any birthday except the first person's birthday - 364 out of 365 days. The third person can have any birthday besides the first two - 363 out of 365 - and so on. When you multiply these ratios together - 365/365 x 364/365 x 363/365 ... you will get the probability of people not having the same birthday. Subtract that number from one and voila! the Birthday Paradox comes to light. When we take out those pesky things like leap year babies and seasonal birth rates, the chance that two people will have the same birthday nears 99% for a group of 60.

Computer nerds have known about this little phenomenon for a while and have used it to decrypt codes. I probably won't become a code breaker anytime this year, but maybe I'll be able to impress my friends... or make money off of bets with them.

Monday Madness!

As I've mentioned before, Monday seems to be THE day for science in the city. Here's a sampling of events happening tonight - check out the calendar for more:

Dolphin Mysteries: Unlocking the Secrets of Communication
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, dolphins have superior mental capabilities to humans (as well as being way, way cuter). With their amazing ability to create a mental picture from echolocation and their complex communication skills, it's not an unimaginable premise. Tonight, researchers Kathleen Dudzinski and Toni Frohoff will be talking about progress in understanding dophin communication and their new dolphin dictionary at the Explorer's Club.

Cafe Science: Mending a Broken Heart
He won't help you with your relationship issues, but Warren Sherman will be ready to discuss how stem cells seem to patch up just about anything, including heart muscle cells. Columbia University continues its Cafe Science series tonight at PicNic Cafe.

Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense
Author and physicist Michael Brooks will be at AMNH tonight to promote his new book and discuss unexplained topics like the placebo effect, why we die, dark matter, and life on Mars.

A Perfect Marriage

We depend so much on our sense of sight. But music is something that speaks to all of us; seemingly, it is a kind of universal language. So it's not surprising that we have combined sight and music and have created operas, musicals, and MTV.

The Natural History Museum has joined up with MTV2 and Moby to hypothesize how we actually see music. The result is an amazing soundtrack with David Bowie, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, and others, as well as a swirly, all-encompassing visual landscape.

Now that's music to my eyes.

Post-Election

I've been spending the whole day reading about the election and watching videos of people's reactions. It's a little hard to write today because I am overwhelmed by all of these emotions from this amazing election. As the writer of FiveThirtyEight.com, Sean Quinn, said, "It's a day of happy and exhausted stupor."

I'm probably celebrating tonight (again!) but if you want to celebrate science and probably Obama too, head on over to the Secret Science Club in Brooklyn to hear Tyler Volk talk about carbon and global warming.

Now, back to watching Colin Powell talk about Obama winning...

Election Day Mania

It's a very big day in our history, and with a high voter turnout comes long lines to exercise our right to vote. Luckily, I skipped the lines and mailed in my no-count vote to the voter's office in Dallas, Texas.

The electoral college is kind of like our appendix - we don't really know what it's for, but we keep it anyway. A really good chart in the New York Times shows how much our vote is actually worth. I'm curious to find out if we ever remove this vestigial part of us.

Monday Monday

Happy Monday, everyone! Tonight there are three main events taking place around the city. If you like geobiology, you will be happy with the picks:

Hooked on a Feeling: The Science of Touch
Science in the City is back! This public-aimed organization is a great resource for science people and they are kicking off the new season with the first of five lectures about our senses. Tonight scientist Ranulfo Romo and filmmaker Kun Chang will discuss our sense of touch. I guess it's hard to imagine not having any of our senses, but for me this one would be the biggest. Not being able to feel pain sounds like a great superhero power to have until you get your hand chopped off without realizing it. The event begins at 6:30pm and ends at 9:00pm.

Post-Pleistocene
The Explorer's Club will be hosting a discussion of primal art with Jeff Whetstone. Whetstone has just published a book about post-Civil War cave paintings in Tennessee and Alabama and he will compare those paintings to those from the Ice Age. Deep down, how much have we really changed?

Biogeography of Pantropical Angiosperms
If you are interested in plant evolution, this is the place to be. Andrea Weeks will giving her lecture titled "Historical Biogeography of Pantropical Angiosperms: A Case Study Using 'Terebinthaceae.'" As I said before, it will be a thrill for people interested in exactly that. The talk will start at 6:30pm at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

Tonight

In the 92nd Street Y's Giants of Science series, Irene Pepperberg will be addressing the topic of animal communication. Pepperberg is famous for raising Alex, a grey parrot that knew over a hundred fifty individual words and whose emotional expression forced scientists to rethink their ideas of bird intelligence. She will be talking about her experience training Alex and other parrots, and the future of animal cognition research.

Happy Halloweeny Weekend!

There are SO many science-y events to look forward to this weekend. Lucky that we have that extra "fall back" hour. Here's a look at Saturday's events:

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST
Canoeing and Birding at Constitution Marsh
Get out your paddles and binoculars! The NYC Audobon Society is hosting a trip to Constitution Marsh to see nature in action. The event is a little on the pricey side, but what isn't in this city?

A Skeptic's Guide to String Theory
Is there really a unified theory of everything out there? Or are these string theorists kooked up on whippets? At the New York City Skeptics event, George Musser, the author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory" will try to convince you that it's the first one. In addition to explaining the theory itself, he will address how it may be involved in Chinese traditional medicine. Now that's something I'm skeptical of.

Shared Frequencies
A sound installation/performance that I really can't explain. Check out the link to learn more.

My Favorite Website Today

Wondering whether that penny you dropped off the Empire State building actually killed someone? Or whether the gum that you swallowed will now remain wedged in your small intestine for the next 7 years? These questions and more are answered at LiveScience.com.

Physics for Presidents

Last night, Richard Muller addressed science groupies at AMNH. He talked about the physics that a president would need to know and focused on climate change and energy policies. He inserted some weird facts amid the substance (did you know that chocolate chip cookies have more energy per gram than computer batteries?) and surprised me more than once, especially when he began discussing global warming.

Apparently, the world's average temperature hasn't actually gone up in the past ten years; however, this decade HAS been the warmest in human history. Luckily for us, the sun has had decreased activity this decade. He also mentioned that if cloud coverage across the world increases by 2%, the effect would offset global warming. Strange that Al Gore never really mentioned this...

Nonetheless, looking at sea levels and temperatures since the turn of the century, we can say that global warming is real. But even though America has been responsible for 25% of increased CO2 output, our future is going to rely on developing countries - India, China, Russia - to cut back on their CO2 emissions. Convincing these countries to hold back their economy for the environment is something that the US has no right to do. When we were growing economically, we said "Screw Kyoto!" It's a lot of do what I say, not what I do. Muller had a unique but politically unlikely suggestion of giving economic incentives for using cleaner technology. A lot of Americans didn't want to give money to our own businesses; how would we ever approve pouring money into commie-red countries (we'll just forget the fact that they're adopting capitalist practices)?? It's an interesting question that I'm sure we will have to address in our lifetime.

The Saga of Cholera

Cholera - that pleasant disease that makes getting sucked by a man-made black hole look good. Literally meaning "diarrhea" in Greek, cholera can cause such severe diarrhea and vomiting that it has killed within 2-3 hours of the onset of symptoms. The bacterium releases a chemical that increases the production of cAMP, which in turn releases a ton of chlorine ions into the intestinal tract. Water and other ions follow to balance the osmotic and electrical gradients. This causes the major symptom - explosive diarrhea.

There was actually a series of cholera epidemics in our very own city beginning in 1832. More than 3000 people out of the population of 150,000 died. Looking comparatively at NYC's current population, that would equate to about 100,000 deaths today. Poor immigrants and free blacks living in the Five Points area (near Columbus Park) were the most hard hit, due to overshared and overflowing outhouses and a general lack of city sanitation services.

Because cholera thrives in areas with contaminated water, global warming will likely increase the number of outbreaks across the globe through flooding and drought. Tomorrow night, Dr. Rita Colwell will be addressing that very subject in her lecture titled "Climate, Oceans, Infectious Disease, and Human Health: The Saga of Cholera." The event will take place at Columbia's Morningside campus from 6-7pm, and you need to register in order to get in. Here's to clean water and good health!

This Wednesday

What a gross day! I hope everyone is staying dry today.

There are two science events that look particularly interesting tomorrow:

A Natural History of Jamaica Bay
For all of you nature-lovin' people out there, author Betsy McCully will be talking about the estuaries and wetlands around the city, including Jamaica Bay, and our impact on them. It's going to be held at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge visitor center at 7pm. It's a nice surprise that a wildlife refuge in the five boroughs even exists!

Physics for Future Presidents
My favorite pick for the night (sorry, herons) is AMNH's Physics for Future Presidents. Berkeley professor Richard Muller will be talking about what the next president should know to make informed decisions about energy policies, climate change, and the fight against terrorists. Yep, all of the things in school that Bush missed while he was snorting things up his nose. Muller's class at Berkeley was voted "best class" by the students, so I'm expecting greatness. The event starts at 7:30pm at the planetarium.

I have a link on the right to the Science Events Calendar. Check it out if you want to know about events that are happening later this week and into November.

Tonight

Being Fall, the time of getting back to scholarly learning, it's not surprising that there are a lot of events going on this week in the city. Tonight, there are two of note:

Musical Creatures: How Vertebrate Locomotion Shapes Human Music

The Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination (God, please don't make me type that again) is hosting a night centered around the question Where did Music even come from? And What is it that makes most of us love it so much? Violinist Stephanie Chase and Professor/Composer Andrew Warshaw will be there to give their professional opinions. This one looks like a winner if the interplay between science and the arts appeals to you.

Wine and Climate Change

I kind of hate mentioning this one because it's actually sold out, but if you do get your hands on a ticket, don't tell me because I may have to resort to violence to nab them from you. AMNH is hosting a lecture/wine tasting tonight that will feature climatologist Gregory Jones, wine connoussieur and author Tyler Colman, and Evan Springarn, a wine importer. They'll be talking about the changing climate's effect on wine regions and the new biggest thing in the wine world - "eco-wines" that have smaller carbon footprints. Best of all, there will be a wine tasting included! And when is science + booze ever a bad idea?

Lost Without Science

Since I moved to New York, I've met a ton of artists and a lot of schmoozy investment bankers, but I haven't met many scientists. I'm one of those people who went to college thinking I was going to win a Nobel prize in four years and then when I got there, I realized I never wanted to do research. Ever. So I graduated with a degree in geology and biology and then got a job doing reality TV.

I have something that I need to say. Science, I'm sorry. I moved to the big city and was distracted by all of the shiny lights and big buildings. I left you like a pregnant stripper leaves her pole. But you knew I couldn't stay away. And I'm back, ready to do whatever you want me to do to gain your trust. Except I can't kill Sarah Palin for you. Even though you may think it's for the best and she believes that we walked with dinosaurs once, I just don't think it's a nice thing to do. So I am giving you the second best thing - a blog in your name. A blog dedicated to news about you and events that you inspire. No need to thank me, Science. Someday you'll repay me by figuring out how to safely defrost my cryogenically frozen body.