The taint of city lights
Look up at the sky tonight. What will you see? If you live in a rural area, you'll probably see a the glittering of stars as faint as pinpricks. Maybe even the arch of the Milky Way. If you live in a city, however, the night sky will look very different. You'll probably see the moon. Some stars. Maybe. The reason for this major difference in the night sky is because of something called light pollution.
Light pollution is problematic for anyone interested in the night sky. Apart from the brightest objects in the heavens, nothing is a match for the sheer illuminative power of a city at night.
7 Science Fiction Podcasts
While finishing up my PhD, I spent a lot of time in the lab doing what I called 'robot work': pipetting tiny droplets of liquid, moving tubes, centrifuging, pipetting. In those days I got into podcasts. In particular I listened to speculative fiction podcasts. Stumbling across podcasts like PodCastle, Drabblecast, and LightSpeed Magazine was eye opening. I hadn't read a lot of short fiction and to discover that whole worlds could be constructed in less than 10,000 words was wondrous. Day 2 of Writing 101 asks that I compile a list so here is a list of some of my favourite short science fiction podcasts.
Dr. Ash's Science Mix Tape
I'm taking part in Blogging 101 in an effort to get my site up to snuff. One of my assignments was to take a Daily Post prompt and make it my own. Today's prompt was: You make a new friend. Make them a mix tape (or playlist, for the younger folks) that tells them who you are through song. So today, I will share with you my favourite educational and science-based songs. Teaching through songs is not a new idea. Teaching through science-based songs is not new either. Someone did her entire PhD Thesis on the idea. Whether or not is spreads remains to be seen. Below are some of my favourite 'educational' songs. I've broken them into two groups: Facts and Concepts.
Poeticizing Science
A couple of weeks ago I went to a poetry reading, completely on the fly. A friend invited me and I’m not one to turn down good poetry. This was the IFOA McClellan & Stewart Poetry Night. It was a release party for the collections of four poets: Dr. Madhur Anand, Lorna Crozier, Liz Howard, and Cassidy McFadzean. Everyone aside from Crozier (who has produced 16 other collections) presented work from their debut collection. The poetry was lovely and afterwards we got onto a discussion of the nature of poetry: language and meaning and sound.
Why don't more people use solar panels? Because of reasons.
From macro to micro, what a wonderful world.
It’s Earth Day, I figured I should talk about Earth stuff. How about, sustainable energy.
A few weeks ago, I was teaching one of my science classes about energy. The focus was on kinetic and potential energy because it meant that the kids got an excuse to launch pingpong balls around the room with elastic band-powered catapults. But while I was giving the pre-activity talk I mentioned solar energy and solar panels. One of the kids asked, with understandable frustration, why people don’t more people use solar power. The sun’s right there, all the time.