Another List of Power

In this next installment of self-aggrandizement, I'll share some of my favorite web sites.  From science and social-science blogs to my favorite webcomix, the list below is what occupies my internet time when I'm not watching the YouTube vids I shared last week.

This week:  Best of the Web.

The Best (IMO) of the Web

Blogs
Besides for our favorite blog friends (Streak, Mrs. Furious, Mr. Furious, us), here's a couple blogs I enjoy in no particular order:

What If?
From the cartoonist of XKCD (see below) comes his blog whereby he answers wild and weird questions from whomever emails him.  He picks the most fun or intriguing, and using a combination of good science and wild-assed guesses, he does his best to answer.  This site is so fun.  My favorite:  the first one that kicked-off this site.  Relativistic Baseball.

It's Okay to be Smart
This is the Tumblr that started the YouTube Channel I shared last week.  Joe got his start blogging his thoughts, linking to cool and engaging science, and generally celebrating what we know and can know about the universe.

The Drunken Moogle
The blend of Geek culture and adult beverages.  This guy makes up mixed drinks based on popular video game and geek culture.  He also links to interesting nerd-related drinking apparati (pint glasses with superhero capes, shot glasses etched with Game of Thrones sigils, etc).  I might or might not have some of the glassware listed there...

Skepchick
One of my favorites, second only to What If, above.  It's a blog run by women, whereby they discuss feminism, atheism, secularism, science, pseudoscience, and skepticism.  Their commentary on feminism is especially thoughtful and engaging and makes me think really hard about my privilege and how I might come across, and my own latent sexism that I don't even recognize.  Challenging stuff.  I love their takedown of internet trolls.  They have a daily "Skepchick Quickies" post that always links to fun, angering, enlightening bits, beautiful of teh interwebz.  They've created some spin-off sites as well; one of them is Mad Art Lab.  Beautiful art based on scientific principles.

Sci-Fi in Six
Quite simply: science fiction stories told in 6 paragraphs or less.  Fun! Little tastes of much bigger stories.  Concepts come to fruition in just a few sentences.  Worlds revealed that make you curious for more.  Love this kind of stuff.

Tiny Little Love Stories
Whoever runs this blog is sick.  A sick, sick bastard with a sick sense of humor.  And I love it.

WebComix
What I really enjoy about webcomix is that they can be examinations and critiques of our world presented in a way that finally makes sense.  Humor blasts through things that make us so mad or concerned.  Laughter in recognition of our own faults is wonderful medicine.  Here's some of my faves.

Questionable Content
It's hard to describe why I like this comic so much, but I'm hooked.  It takes place in an alternate Earth, where much is the same as ours but there are other advancements that are much different.  It allows Jeph Jacques, the author, to introduce interesting concepts, characters, and technology without it being a big deal why.  Other than that, it's a "slice of life" comic with characters I like a lot.

Atland
The comic is over now, or at least for now.  It's storyline has been resolved, but left open if Nate Piekos, the author, ever comes back to it.  I hope he does.  But it's worth going to the beginning and reading through.  Fantasy comic, funny, subtly picks fun of typical fantasy tropes while being an engaging comic.

Wondermark
Smart-assed, snarky humor mixed with old hand-drawn comics in the Victorian style.  Bizarre and hilarious comic.

XKCD
Do I really need to describe XKCD?  If you're not reading it, you're not a nerd.  And you don't care.  This is the grand-daddy of webcomix.  Sometimes, to get the math or computer programmer humor, I have to use Google, but that's not often with this one.  Brilliant.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Sometimes updated multiple times a day, this comic is hilarious, twisted, sick, poignant, and everything in between.  I love how the author plays on common concepts.

The Oatmeal
Another funny, insightful comic.  One of the best, actually.

Enjoy all this as much as I do!

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ATK List of Power

It takes a ton of work to be as nerdy as possible.  From SCIENCE to fantasy/sci-fi to video games to the best of nerd tv, I figured it's finally high-time to come out of the basement (closets are reserved for other comings-out; nerds seem to be basement-based), engage in some self-aggrandizement, and share with anyone who cares (which is really no one) the various ways I find to entertain myself and stay on top of being the biggest nerd.

This post: YouTube Channels.

The Best (IMO) of YouTube

Geek & Sundry

Founded by nerd icon Wil Wheaton and his equally nerdy friend Felicia Day (of The Guild fame), Geek and Sundry is kind of an uber-collection of various contributors.  My personal favorites on the channel are Wil Wheaton's TableTop, in which he plays wonderful board games with his friends (tv and movie stars, fellow YouTube-rs, etc), and Felicia Day's 5-minute-episodes of The Guild, a fun bit of fic that follows a group of MUD users who are online "friends" in a world much like World of Warcraft.  

TableTop has introduced me to many of the board- and card-games I own; it is actually a great way to see how some games work in a crowd; kind of a risk-free play test.

Minute Physics

Using stop-animation whiteboard illustrations, physics concepts, chemistry, and science in general is explained in 1- or 2-minute clips.  Never have Relativity and other complicated concepts been explained so simply and elegantly.  Bonus:  my kids watch it with me, and are able to "get it."

Smarter Every Day

Join Destin and his various underwater and high-speed cameras as he demonstrates and explains physics stuff.  This usually involves guns, bullets, explosions, and breaking things.

Veritasium

Another "use short vids to explain awesome science" site, but well-edited, well-done, and engaging.  Kind of Myth Busters-like in editing and use of science (just without the prove/disprove aspect).

Minute Earth

Minute Physics, but this time:  biology!

VSauce

These guys find a fun or a my-mind-just-got-blown fact, and explain it.  Sometimes deep, always well and simply explained.

ASAP Science

VSauce with an animated whiteboard.

CrashCourse

A few teachers offer "crash courses" in higher-level concepts - including biology, US History, economics, world history, ecology, and chem. "Reconstruction and 1876;" "Westward Expansion;" and "Equilibrium Equations" are just a handful of the many vids on this channel.

It's Okay to be Smart

PhD Biologist Joe Hansen's YouTube channel, based on material from his very popular Tumblr of the same name.  He won a big grant from PBS to make his Tumblr content available in vid format.  I like his videos quite a bit, and he's got a decent online presentation style.  His Tumblr site sometimes waxes a tad philosophical - drippy sometimes - but I'm almost always guilty of the same. 

A couple more that I watch on occasion:

These couple of sites are less accessible than the ones above, so I watch them less often, but they are no less fascinating when I'm in the mood:

Seven Seven Seven

Sixty Symbols

My kids have responded well to Minute Physics, ASAP Science, Minute Earth, and Smarter Every Day.

There you have it.  These channels are what I call church on a Sunday morning.  A hot cup of coffee, kids playing quietly as the house wakes up, and these vids.  Thought-provoking, fun, fascinating, funny, and celebratory of geek culture.  I hope you like them.

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The Scale of the Universe.

We interupt this broadcast of insults, flamewars and name calling to post an important link of nerdly goodness. You may have seen this view of the universe, but this one is new and improved and otherwise awesome. See the scale and hugeness of the universe here.

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I Love that the President is a Nerd.

As Smitty knows, the White House has a policy that says that any policy proposal placed on the White House website that receives the support of 25,000 people, will receive consideration and a response from the White House.  This summer the White House released the recipe for its Honey Porter and Honey Ale after beer brewers petitioned the White House for its release.

Recently a bunch of nerds gathered the support of over 34,000 people in asking the federal government to begin the construction of our very own Death Star.

The White House did not disappoint.  Well, they might have disappointed people by shooting down the death star concept, but at least the denial was a very creative Star Wars-laden response.

Read it here.

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Political Nerdly Goodness

Here at ATK we haven’t been posting much election stuff this year, which is a shame because during Presidential elections we typically have great traffic and a good time ridiculing conservatives.

It’s also a shame because of the target-rich environment this election offers. Between various nutty rape-obsessed freaks on the right, to the asshole, sociopathic, blue-blooded liar that IS Mitt Romney, it would have been such a great summer to mock and laugh at their expense.

Since we are pretty uncreative this year, I offer some great political nerdiness. Below you will find three great election prediction websites to indulge those political geeks, who also love science and mathematics. The following statisticians, neuroscientists and Poly Sci Professors will make you wonder why the hell we are spending $2 billion on an election when they predicted the likely outcome in June.

Take a look:

Nate Silver is the most well-known election predictor, having appear on the Daily Show and NPR. Silver is a former baseball statistician and FiveThirtyEight.com creator, who last year imported his blog over to the New York Times.

     Check out FiveThirtyEight.

Prof. Sam Wang's academic specialties are biophysics and neuroscience. The Princeton University Professor has been predicting elections longer than Silver, and with equal accuracy.

     Check out the Princeton Election Consortium.

Drew Linzer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Emory University. His site, called Votamatic is less frequently updated, but interesting nonetheless.

     Take a look at Votamatic.

Utah Valley State University’s Political Science and History department have their own model.

     Check out Jay DeSart at the DeSart and Holbrook Election Forecast.

UPDATE 1:

Here is a fifth source:
Wesley N. Colley is a senior research scientist at the Center for Modeling, Simulation and Analysis at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who has joined with J. Richard Gott, III, a professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.  The run various sports and election predictions.

     Go to Gott and Colley's Median Poll Statistics.

UPDATE 2:

For those pissing their pants over this single poll or that single poll, I recommend you look at these sites, which better look at various soruces of data.  Some rely on state-wide polls only (Wang and Linzer); weight and agregate national polls with state polls, along with econmic data (Silver); or weitake the median of the state polls (Colley).

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Mars or Alderaan?

While we have been discussing the 2nd Amendment here at ATK, the Curisoity rover has been blasting away on Mars with a gun - of sorts - of its own.

As you will see below, Curiosity has been zapping holes into rocks with a laser to examine their make-up.  See the before and after below.

So I wonder if the 2nd Amendment applies on Mars.  Does the 2nd Amendment apply to laser weapons?  If there are Martians there, could Curiosity defend itself?

Read more here.

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We're Tall

If you missed it last night, here's the vid of the Entry, Descent and Landing portions of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars.

Mars.

I think at about 28:00, touchdown is confirmed.  NASA JPL...erupts.  It's just awesome.




Video streaming by Ustream

Look what we can do when we put our minds to it!

Here are the first 2 shots from Curiosity, confirming not only that it landed in a series of really complicated maneuvers (including a parachute, retro-rockets and a crane), but that it works.  I'm all misty.

rear-facing "hazard cam;" lens a bit dusty, clear shadow of
Curiosity on the surface of...oh...ANOTHER PLANET

The surface of Mars, using a slightly higher-res camera.  To the
lower right is one of Curiosity's wheels. 

UPDATE BY BOB:  Even higher res image from same camera:

Higher res, (but not HD) image sent from Mars a couple hours after the above.  This one is double the resolution.



UPDATE 2 BY BOB - A shot of the parchute open above the lander as shot by the orbiter.


Unreal.  There it is.  In another 48 hours, we'll start getting hi-resolution color photos.

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FIRE! M..Meh heh heh...FIRE!

H/T to Beavis and Butthead, of course.

But anyway, ever wonder what 270 solid rocket boosters and 405 main engines look like blasting-off simultaneously?

Yes?

Great!  Since you've always wondered, here it is:  all 135 shuttle launches in the history of the program, launching simultaneously.

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Curiosity

OK Science nerds. on August 5 th a new rover will...hopefully land on Mars. Check out this video, which shows the sci-fi-like gymnastics this thing will undergo to deposit the rover Curiosity on the surface of Mars. Click here.

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We're Tall, O God, We're Tall

As you all have seen in the news, Ray Bradbury passed away a few weeks ago on June 5.  But just today, I stumbled across the video embedded below (H/T to It's Okay To Be Smart).  This video, taken with yesterday's news that Voyager 1 is now in the "heliosheath," just about to break through into interstellar space, make a powerful statement to me about the value of human imagination and education.




A ship of our creation, directly in communication with us, an extension of us, breaking through the "barrier" of our solar system, our sun, our home. We are tall today.

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This, I Believe

A blog I frequent, Skepchick, is one of my favorite skeptic/science blogs sites on the interwebs, and it has really quality writing from honest-to-goodness scientists on topics from their field of study to feminism to pop culture.  Skepchick is part of a network (the lead site in the network).  One of the other sites in this network is Mad Art Lab, a skeptics-meets-artists bog.

That's an "around the ass to scratch my elbow" way of getting us to Zen Pencils.  Zen Pencils is the work of an Asian-Autrialian named Gavin Aung Than who illustrates quotes and parts of speeches of famous and interesting people.  I really dig his work, and am always inspired by TR's "Man in the Arena" speech, illustrated here.

Two of Than's illustrations really jumped out at me.

This one, an excerpt from Carl Sagan, when used in conjunction with the last 5 paragraphs of Pale Blue Dot (animated here), sums up pretty much my entire belief system.  Than's illustration to Sagan's words that mean so much to what I hold true - somehow, "cartoony" lends a certain innocent simplicity and credibility to those words - that I get a little throat-lumpy and am pleased to share.

Finally, this illustration is one I am having Smitty Jr read, and one I'll share with the Wonder Twins.  This is how excited I want them to be when it comes to uncovering - in a real way - their world.  I want them to embrace science and learning and questioning and searching.  The cartoon, based on Phil Plait's (Bad Astronomy, another favorite blog) speech to a science fair, I think is built perfectly to reach a smart kid.

I like where Than is headed with Zen Pencils.  Not only did I not want to monkey with putting jpgs of his illustrations on here, I really want you to go to his site, hunt around, get inspired, and maybe even support him.

Happy Friday!

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SQUEE!!!

GASP...

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod...

It's real.  It's really real...

Cosmos - that Cosmos - is...

 ...wait for it...

getting a sequel!

Carl Sagan's widow and original Cosmos producer, Ann Druyan, is teaming-up with Seth McFarlane (yes...that Seth McFarlane) to air a 13-episode sequel to Cosmos.

And who's the host?

Oh god, I might pee...it's...NeildeGrasseTyson.

Dream.  Come.  TRUE.

Anyway, from the article:

The bad — or at least, potentially bad — news is that, because of MacFarlane’s involvement, the series will air in prime time, and on Fox.

Now, in one way I’m all for showing it in prime time on a major network, because it’ll be that much more likely that people who routinely ignore the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel and, yes, PBS will actually see it. 

I’m less thrilled, though, that it will have to compete with other, more mainstream prime-time shows — and it’ll be on Fox, which doesn’t have the greatest track record for giving shows a chance to pull their ratings up once they go down.

I agree with the middle paragraph.  I think it's fine to run on mainstream TV, because that's who we're trying to reach.  That's the intent of Cosmos. And I think it does help that it's Seth McFarlane, whom Fox has made gazillions off of.  If it tanks just a little, McFarlane might have the juice to kep it going rather than having it pulled.

It apparently airs "some time in 2013."  I'm checking my DVR schedule every night starting in December.

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Transit of Venus - It's Not Too Late!

Smitty:  "Speaking of geeked...gonna make a Transit of Venus viewer?"


Bob:  "Too late. Its tomorrow. I will hold off until 2117."


No!  It's not too late!

Smitty's guide to a field-expedient Transit of Venus viewer:

Method 1:

1. Buy 2 of those triangular post office picture shipping tubes
2. Tape them together to make a 6' tube
3. On one short end, cut a hole a few inches big; this will the the "top" you'll point at the sun 
4. Tape some tin foil over that hole
5. Pick the tin foil in the middle with a push-pin
6. down near the bottom, but not on the bottom, like along the side near the bottom, cut open a window about as wide as one of the sides of the triangle shipper, and several inches long up the length.
7. put a piece of blank white paper in the window and flat on the bottom 
8. Point the viewer at the sun
9. Observe through the window!

Method 2:

1. Take a piece of paper or posterboard and punch a hole in the middle
2. Lay a blank piece of paper on the ground, maybe at an angle depending on the angle of the sun
3. Kneel or stand up.  
4. Hold the hole-punched sheet over the one on the ground so it covers with a shadow, save for a little prick of light (I said "little prick"...I know...)
5. That little prick, if pointed right, is the sun.  Look for a dot.  That's Venus.

Here's my source for methods 1 and 2.

Want a third method?  Here's one with a bathroom hand mirror!

No excuses!  SCIENCE!!

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Found: 2 Hubble-Class Space Telescopes.

"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" 

 - The Movie: Contact

Or three for that matter.

It seems that the National Reconnaissance Organization has just stumbled across a couple Hubble-class Space Telescopes they had laying around. While these were built to look downward instead of toward the heavens, it seems they will work damn well pointing upward.  NASA has plans to use them to seek out dark matter and save the U.S. $250 million over the cost of building a new telescope.

See the great article at the New York Times.

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Role Model

I wish I knew this guy.  I wish I could have him over for dinner and have my kids learn from him.

So for now, I guess just seeing him on Mythbusters and his new show Unchained Reaction will have to suffice. Fortunately, my sons are enthralled by Mythbusters, and Smitty Jr is getting to where he is trying little experiments at home and asking questions - the right questions - about what he is seeing or experiencing.  It forces me to re-research and re-learn a lot of the things I did well "back in the day" (when I took AP Chem and AP Physics in highschool, and took more advanced chem and physics in college for shits and grins).

Anyway, my role model Adam Savage on the newly-launched TED-Ed:

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Hopeless Romantic

I have a man-crush on physicist and Nova host Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Here's why:

My favorite answer is Time's "10 Questions" is #3.  We're made a star guts.  Awesomesauce.

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Results of a Obama Vs. Gingrich general election?

I am just throwing this out there.  It is not real sciencey.

I looked at the 2008 states that were close, but went for McCain, plus added in S. Carolina, where recent polling shows a possible upset.  Yes, it is early, but I love maps and its just fun to speculate.

Electoral College Results: 
Obama: 381
Gingrich: 157

Source:  270towin.

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Made in the USA

I really did not think Obama or his campaign would have the balls to do it, but they are actually “selling” t-shirts making a funny out of the whole birth certificate nonsense.

Openly mocking Trump and the rest of the birther/truther/tenther fanatics is the best way to handle them. The next thing is to openly ridicule all those who made up the death panel and other health care reform lies.

Donate $25 to get your t-shirt here.

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Can't Wait to Smell the Sawdust.

This has nothing to do with beer or politics, but we here at ATK sometimes delve into hobbies and home improvement, and I cannot help but giggle like a school girl at my latest purchase - I new big-ass table saw capable of cutting darn near anything I can throw at it.

Don't let the store brand fool you, this is the same saw sold by several other brands, but Craftsman sells it for hundreds less.  I have rediscovered Sears and have been eyeballing this saw for a few years.  It went on sale this week, so I ordered one up.

Anyone want to help me get it to my basement?  It will arrive in pieces, but in total weighs close to 500 lbs, so takes two guys to move it.  I pay in beer - good beer.

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The Nerdery

I like tabletop games. I like video games. I talk with undue passion about the intricacies of the beer brewing process. I am a nerd.

Some of my nerdly passions also include reading and discussing all things physics; black holes, baby universes, time travel and the like. Thus, I was thrilled when The Discovery Channel advertised that they are running a mini-series by Stephen Hawking. Aptly titled "Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking", the series gives Hawking a free hand to discuss what comes into that big brain of his from the origin of the Universe to alien life.

The show premiered last night. I DVR'ed it on hi-def, so I can't wait to crack into it tonight when I get home from my golf league. I love Hawking, I've read all his books, and I love the subject matter. Nothing stimulates my brain more than thinking about where we've been, where we came from and where we're going. And this, by all accounts, is the series that really delivers.

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