The Open Laboratory 2009 - The best science blog posts of the past year

The Open Laboratory 2009, the best writing on science blogs throughout the past year, has now been published. You can buy the book online in PDF or soft-cover format.

I was pretty chuffed to have one of my articles, A sorry saga - the crumbling cookie, make the final list. This was an article that looked into the misreporting (actually, simply horrible reporting) of science in the UK media, and the notion that apparently biscuit-eating is an extreme sport in the UK. It examined what was a very good example of how not to report science in the newspaper.

The 2009 anthology was edited by SciCurious and you can browse the full list of articles that made the final cut, or if you are up for some heavy reading, have a look at the long list of nominated articles.

This is the second year I've been in Open Labs - in The Open Laboratory 2008, my post for Plus Magazine called United Kingdom - Nil Points about the maths of the Eurovision Song Contest made the cut. Eurovision is such a wonderful mix of maths, pop culture, politics and bad 80s music. I love it!

You can buy previous versions from lulu - 2006, 2007 and 2008.

The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2009 - Nominations Open

Nominations for the 2009 anthology of the best writing on science blogs, The Open Laboratory 2009, are now open. Last year there were around 830 submissions narrowed down to 50 essays, one poem and one cartoon. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com.

If you would like to nominate blogs for this year's edition (and please feel free to nominate posts from this blog, please.....), use this submission form to submit original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays and blog posts.

Last year I was lucky enough to make the cut with a post I wrote for Plus Magazine called United Kingdom - Nil Points about the maths of the Eurovision Song Contest. Amusingly, as the title is a bit of an in-joke for Eurovision fans, the name of the article was changed to Political Music for US audiences!

And please remember to only nominate articles that would look good in a book - don't nominate podcasts, posts with embedded video etc. There are other awards for these types of things. Follow A Blog Around the Clock for more.

Mr Science over at the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast

A little while back in our 99th episode, we discussed the 6 unknown mysteries of our solar system. This show has recently been played in the 365 days of astronomy podcast, which is a project that publishes one astronomy-themed podcast per day for all 365 days of 2009. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, which is described as a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.

The Open Laboratory 2008

The 2008 anthology of the best 50 science blog-posts from the year, The Open Laboratory 2008, is now available.

It is the 3rd annual anthology of science blogs with this year's considerably better as it includes one by me! This was quite a nice surprise - I heard about Open Labs at the London Science Blogging Conference and quite a few of the bloggers in attendance were hoping to get in, so I'm quite chuffed - thanks!

There were around 830 submissions narrowed down to 50 essays, one poem and one cartoon. If you missed them first time around, you can still buy the 2006 and the 2007 anthologies. Both of those, as well as the new one, are available in paperback or as a PDF download at lulu.

You can buy the book from lulu - no profits come to me, but go to funding the Science Online science blogging conference.

For what it's worth, my post that made it was one I wrote for Plus Magazine called United Kingdom - Nil Points about the maths of the Eurovision Song Contest. Amusingly, as the title is a bit of an in-joke for Eurovision fans, the name of the article was changed to Political Music for the mainly US audience this book will attract!

The article starts:

It is one of my favourite times of year, and I'm not even European.

The Eurovision Song Contest to Australians is a strange mix of bad 80s music, songs about "joy", "love" and "unity", amazingly good-looking hosts, scantily dressed Eastern Europeans and reality TV winners from Western Europe.

But another reason I love it is because it is about politics and maths. For the first time in my life, living in the UK, I get a chance to vote for the winner and watch it live instead of having to ignore radio reports (of course it's all over the news) till the Sydney Sunday evening replay.

I guess this year I'll be avoiding the news all day so as not to ruin the delayed Sydney SBS coverage! Get over to Plus and read the original article, or even better, buy the book as a PDF or paperback from lulu.

The words of 2008

I recently stumbled across this wonderful visualisation tool called Wordle.

Using Wordle, I have created this image of the most popular words on The Mr Science Show blog throughout 2008 (not including common words like "the" and "and".)



It's nice to see that science is number one on the list! The image is quite a nice reflection of my interests in 2008, with maths and mathematical words such as distribution, stats and one featuring. We have sporting words such as cricket, league and sport, a few words artistic words such as music and dance, and some that need no explanation - sex and condoms....

I've started to become a little addicted to Wordle, so here is our DSTO Operations Research Code of Best Practice document - looks like a new funky ad campaign for studying mathematics!

Marc on science and cricket over at the Brains Matter podcast

If you like your science podcasts and love your cricket, then get over to Brains Matter to hear me on the other end of an interview talking about science, psychology and cricket - Ep 84: The Science and Psychology of Cricket - Part 1.

This interview arose from two articles I wrote on science and cricket - the first for All Out Cricket in 2007 (posted on Mr Science as Science, Psychology and Cricket), and the second for Plus Magazine (posted on Mr Science as The curse of the duck).

To listen to the experts consulted for the first story - Dr Rob Duffield from the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University, and Dr Alistair McRobert from Liverpool John Moores University - check out the story and podcast I put out in 2007.

New Scientist Relaunch

Last night I attended a function for the 2009 relaunch of science magazine giant New Scientist. These types of events are always nice - free food and drink, a chance to mingle with interesting people and the opportunity to play 10-pin bowling on their Wii. A few big names in Australian science communication were there - for example Karl Kruszelnicki, Wilson da Silva, Leigh Dayton and Bianca Nogrady - and in general I thought it was a good night. The things I learnt were:

1. The new New Scientist looks quite a lot like the old New Scientist. In fact, with regard to the print edition, I probably wouldn't have known it was any different if I hadn't been told. However, their new website looks very nice and seems to be much easier to navigate - I found their old website quite difficult to get around and would often not be able to find articles that I knew were there;
2. Much of the content in the Australian version of New Scientist is written in the UK. The employees of New Scientist who I met were generally in advertising or marketing. This meant I couldn't really smooze them into publishing any articles by me;
   
3. The Australian Museum, where the event was held, has a magnificent view out to St. Mary's Cathedral and down to Woolloomooloo. Looks like a good venue for my 30th, if only I could afford it... I didn't bring my camera, but I had my phone for low-res photos;
4. Not all science communicators wear loud flowery shirts - although a distinct fraction do. The wearing of such a shirt does not correlate with your ability as a science communicator, nor your ability to play Wii.

Going mobile and QR codes

For those of you who need your content on-the-go, we've mobilised Mr Science. You can now see the Mr Science Show in a mobile phone compatible format at m.mrscienceshow.com. And for those of you with an iphone, we have made a site especially for you here. To create these sites, we used MoFuse.

Mobile sites deliberately cut back on data rich content, so pictures are smaller and many of the other widgets, which are easy to download on your desktop but add up on expensive mobile data plans, are disabled. At the moment, as mp3s are disabled, if you wish to download the podcast, you need to do it through the normal desktop version of this site (which you can see on your mobile, but contains all the data-rich stuff). I would like to make it such that if you visit Mr Science on your mobile, your phone immediately redirects you to the mobile site, but alas there is no way yet to do that (well not in blogger, there is for wordpress blogs).


QR Codes

QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) are two-dimensional bar codes (like the one on the left) originally developed by Japanese company Denso-Wave. Having just been to Japan, I can assure you they are very popular there. They are similar to normal bar codes, but are more easily customised and allow you to access internet sites and download content to your mobile without having to type in a URL or go searching through Google.

We created a QR code for the Mr Science mobile site - it's that black and white bar-code looking thing on the left.

To use a QR code, you need a camera in your phone - they all do these days - and you need QR software - grab it from i-nigma if you don't already have it. Open up the i-nigma application and hold your camera near the code. Your mobile then reads and analyses the code and takes you to the page it is encoding. Try it on our QR code - it works on a computer screen.

In Japan, everything from restaurant menus to competitions on train station walls have associated QR codes so you can enter the competition or order from the menu on-the-go. You could use a QR code as a business card if you liked. Various places around the world are starting to use QR codes. The Brooklyn Public Library uses the codes to identity each of their branches, which they then add to flyers and posters. The Powerhouse Museum used QR codes for Sydney Design 08.

For more information, see bibliothekia and ReadWriteWeb.

We're now on Twitter

For those of you who use Twitter, we are now there and embracing it, so come along and become a follower.

We've blogged quite a bit about Web 2.0 applications (most recently on data-mining and Last.fm). Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are posts up to 140 characters. When you 'follow' someone, you can see their updates, and it has become quite popular. Even politicians are getting on board, with Australian Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull opening an account (whether he has time to continually update his Twitter status, or it's one of his staffers, is another question).

Twitter has become a surprisingly powerful platform, breaking the news of the Sichuan earthquake in China with SMS messages well before the conventional media arrived. This was also the case in the Virginia Tech shootings.

So if you would like to follow me on Twitter, I am @westius. You can use this site's email address to find me. See you there.

Reflections on the London Science Blogging Conference

With the London Science Blogging Conference finished up, it was time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly of science blogging.

I chatted to Lisa Bailey, who blogs about science at Bridge 8, about what we learnt at the conference, how blogging can be used effectively to communicate science, the challenges laid down at the conference - including the challenge to get senior scientists to blog - and where science blogging might be going from here.

For more from the conference, check out the Mr Science podcast from our evening in London science pubs.

This is my last post and podcast for a couple of weeks as I travel home to Sydney after an absolutely wonderful 18 months in London. I will miss all the new friends I have made, and all the old friends I have met again. London, it's been emotional. See y'all in Sydney and if any one wants to sponsor a visa for me to come back, just get in contact!

Listen in to my conversation with Lisa here:

Crawl of London Science Pubs

Last night I attended the most interestingly themed pub-crawl I have ever been on. It was a science crawl of London pubs.

The pub crawl was held in association with the inaugural science blogging conference, Science Blogging 2008: London, hosted by Nature Network, in collaboration with the Royal Institution. The aim of the conference is to bring together science bloggers from around the world to discuss the pressing issues in science, science communication, publishing and education. What role does blogging play? I am going tomorrow, so come and say hi!

We went to four different pubs, starting with the Jeremy Bentham, then moving to the Museum Tavern, the Ben Crouch Tavern and the John Snow.

Our tour guide for the evening was Londonphile and editor of the Nature Network, Matt Brown. On this week's podcast, I chatted to Matt about the four pubs we attended. A few other science bloggers also pop up in the podcast, and they are:

• The Questionable Authority,
• Frank Norman,
• Deep thoughts and sillyness,
• Grrl Scientist.
  

Listen here:

Science Podcasters

I am happy to announce that The Mr Science Show has joined up with sciencepodcasters.org, a fledgling organisation for supporting and promoting science podcasts. It was started by Ginger Campbell, MD host of the Brain Science Podcast. The purpose of this website is to create a site where people can find high quality science podcasts about a wide variety of fields. It offers science podcasters a place to post announcements, show notes and links back to their websites and content. This is not a directory or hosting site. Our main motivation is a spirit of mutual support. We all believe in the importance of using podcasting as a tool to communicate science to a broader audience. We have chosen the blog format in recognition of the fact that sites with content that is constantly updated is also more attractive to search engines. The more content we post on this site, the more we will help all the shows on the site to get the recognition they deserve.

So get over and check out sciencepodcasters.org

We've gone Gold

The Mr Science Show Podcast has clicked over 35000 downloads, which according to the Australian Record Industry, makes for a Gold Record. Now, this is clearly not the same as selling music singles and albums, as I spend money more on web hosting and equipment than I get back from Google ads and my family buying the merchandise, but its not a bad achievement for a part-time hobby.

I fully expect Molly Meldrum (or for international readers, an Australian cross between Simon Cowell, Michael Parkinson and Elton John) to present me with the award soon.

The most downloaded episode is either the story on Stephan Hawking or the Farewell to Movember video depending on which statistics you believe. Downloads increased fairly quickly when we were featured on itunes and The Pod Lounge, and have been pretty steady since.

Less self-promotional posts to come...

Apple stole my image...

Just check out their ad for the iPhone - bares a striking resemblance to the Mr Science logo, albeit a little bit cuter...

vs

If someone makes a movie of my life, I hope they can track down that little kid - I think he would be much better than Haley Joel Osment or other such child actors. Is he some long lost 7 year old brother? If so, Dad and Mum, you have some explaining to do....

[UPDATE]

A few years back, the Discovery Science Radio Show received a cease and desist notice from the Discovery Channel regarding its name, despite the fact that it had probably been in existence for longer, was non-profit and clearly not a threat - now its called the Diffusion Science Radio Show.

So, in the spirit of the little guy hitting back at the big guy, but with my tongue in my cheek, here is what my lawyer friend has provided me with - thanks Ben. Apple, looking forward to hearing from you...

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

I am Mr Science (aka Marc West)

I am a leading promulgator of lite science video and audio content worldwide.

I own and control the worldwide copyright in the Mr Science logo (attached).

I write to you in relation to files that infringe my copyright which are being made available and distributed via the website http://www.apple.com/iphone/ (the Website), which you are identified as controlling or operating.

I hereby formally notify you of the following circumstances and require the removal of certain infringing files:

• The Website hosts files that make available and distribute infringing copies of the Mr Science logo. I have captured evidence of pages on the Website from which the files can be obtained.
• These files are an infringement of the copyright owned by me.
• The copies of the infringing files described above, and their distribution through http://www.apple.com/iphone/, is not authorised by the copyright owner (me), my agent, or the law. Please immediately remove or disable all access to the infringing files.

Please confirm by return that you have complied with the above.
Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the email address indicated above.

Blog of the Day Award

This was pretty cool.
The Mr Science Show was Blog of the Day on Sunday 25th Feb.
Thanks guys!!

Blogs and Awards

Happy 2007 to all!

The kind people at First Science have asked me to be a blogger on their site, so to check out some extra Marc-opinions which are hosted on one of the best science resources on the net, check out www.firstscience.com - Your first stop for science online

First Science features news, articles, perspectives, science facts, games, scientific photographs as well as being one of the first innovative sites to offer TV to download. They have recently renovated their site, and it is very impressive looking now.

I have also been nominated in the 2007 Australian blog awards, so feel free to get over there, nominate this site in various categories and vote often when voting opens!

A couple of promotions

This is a message of thanks for a couple of companies.

First off, a big thanks to The Podlounge for featuring the Mr Science Podcast on their homepage. You can see this feature here. Lots of love back to you, podlounge.

And also a thanks to itunes, who recently rated the Mr Science Podcast top of their Natural Sciences section in the Australian store, after recently featuring it on their podcast homepage. Lots of love back to you also, itunes.

Thanks again to those who subscribe to the show.

Thanks to someone at itunes....

I was browsing around itunes the other day, and discovered to my pleasure that they had featured my podcast on the front page of their podcast section. But not only am I grateful for that, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had done some graphic design on my logo. Usually my podcast logo is the goofy photo of me at the Summer Palace in Beijing, however someone at itunes had added my name in a rather funky manner and the podcast title. You can imagine my surprise when I saw my ugly mug staring back at me with my name in rather large letters! So thanks itunes, the number of downloads and subscribers has increased because of it - the vast majority of my subscribers subscribe through itunes.



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Mr Science Featured in itunes

Mr Science Featured in itunes, originally uploaded by westius.

This was a pleasant surprise. The Mr Science Show Podcast has risen to Number 10 in the itunes list of Science and Medicine Podcasts. Lets see if we can keep it there, and maybe crack the overall 100 - we can't be too far off!

So a big thanks to my Podcast subscribers - I'm really stoked at this popularity and I'm hoping to further improve the podcast over the next few months. I had an offer of a Mr Science theme song, that should be interesting....

Thanks again for subscribing either through the podcast, web feed or email, and your support, emails and comments.