Here’s some links I’ve enjoyed in the last couple of weeks.
Astronomy
This great picture of six mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope primary mirror was featured in a National Geographic photo gallery a few days ago. Twelve more segments to come! (image: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham)
Meanwhile, speculation still abounds over the future of the mission.
ESO are hosting a conference to look back at 10 years of science with the VLT Interferometer, from 24 to 27 October 2011 in sunny Garching, where the organisation has its base.
The SETI Institute has had to shut down the Allen Telescope Array it used to scan the skies for signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life, due to lack of funding. Sadness.
Techy
.Astronomy comrade Alasdair Allan caused a bit of a storm last week after he and fellow hacker Pete Warden presented an application that visualises the location data our iPhones collect and store. While it sounds like many knew about these data being recorded by the iPhone (and transferred to a computer on syncing), it created a storm of discussion on the web about Apple, smartphones and privacy. Here’s a video of Alasdair and Pete Warden talking about and demonstrating their app:
Bottom line: Encrypt your iPhone backups in iTunes!
And speaking of a storm, some users in the US are now suing Apple over the location data collecting, and some countries “have questions”.
In unrelated news, I hear Al is having some technical issues with his MobileMe account.
The Economist have launched a new site called Thinking Spaces, where users can tag maps of locations that inspire them. It certainly looks snazzy and I like the thought, but I’m not sure what sets it apart from apps that let you tag your favourite coffee shop.
Science: Open and Writing/Good and Bad
Quite a bit of chatter over Michael Nielsen‘s TED talk (which I posted here), e.g. a piece in Wired. In The Guardian, blogger GrrlScientist wrote this commentary arguing that Open Science as presented by Nielsen simply won’t work. Cameron Neylon wrote this great response, which I agree with. And they kind of agree with each other too.
National Geographic are taking over operations of the first(?) major science blogging collective, ScienceBlogs, which hosts some major bloggers like PZ Myers, and physics & astronomy folks like Steinn Sigurdsson, Ethan Siegel and Chad Orzel. Retraction Watch has some good updates on these developments, and Martin Robbins is tracking the news on Storify.
In The Guardian today, Martin wrote a good piece on the phenomenon of Churnalism in science, which has produced an excellent discussion in the commentary.
Science writer Elaine Westwick created a database of female science bloggers from the list Martin Robbins created some time ago for his Guardian blog. Nice work! (though I’ll say once again that I’d prefer women’s and men’s scribblings to be toasted based on merit rather than gender)
Women
Speaking of celebrating people on merit not gender, these excerpts from her new book Bossypants
Smithsonian magazine ran an interesting article on the history of girls wearing pink.
Mixed Bag
10 highly enlightening charts about sex, by online dating site OkCupid
After Real Madrid won the Spanish league title last week and went parading through the city on the customary bus tour, Sergio Ramos dropped the cup from the bus, which drove over it. Hilarity.
Cisco announced that they’re discontinuing the Flip cameras, which is a pity (but maybe not unexpected?). The Economist wrote a good analysis here.
The Hoge Venen (Hautes Fagnes/High Fens) are a beautiful part of Belgium. Yesterday a big chunk of it burnt to a crisp after some moron(s) set it on fire. I happened to drive through the area last night soon after the fire started – it wasn’t good.
Surgeon/writer Atul Gawande‘s article in the New Yorker, Letting Go, is an excellent and thoughtful piece on end-of-life care. It’s not new but I just read it the other day. A must read for anyone who will one day die.
Another oldie but goodie from the New Yorker: this profile of Israeli writer David Grossman.
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