As a newcomer to the blogosphere in recent months, I’ve stumbled on a few really innovative sites. One of the first was “Framing Science,” a blog at scienceblogs.com authored by Matthew Nisbet. Nisbet is a communications professor at American University, and he’s churning out some incredibly helpful ideas. I love the blog — and Nisbet’s [...]
I’ll probably never forget that hour in my living room, in the middle of the night in Cullman, Alabama (population about 10,000). The rain drops were so big they sounded like hail on the roof and windows (and might have been), and a city-wide siren was going off — a martial-law type sound accompanied by strobe [...]
On the very day a deadly earthquake struck Italy, new research was unveiled that could help people survive such tragedies. Civil engineer Darcey Donovan, a graduate of the University of Nevada at Reno, has been building straw bale homes since 2006 in the foothills of the Himalayas — where 100,000 people died in a 2005 quake. [...]
Well, I tried to take an evening off! After checking out the Great Moonbuggy Race at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville yesterday, I drove just out of town to Monte Sano State Park. The website advertised trails and primitive camp spots — all I needed, I thought, to stop thinking and writing [...]
The weather cooperated swimmingly for the Great Moonbuggy Race in Huntsville, Alabama on Saturday. The moonbuggies, not always. It’s challenging, after all, to model a craft after lunar rovers — combining featherweight gear with the durability to withstand craters, gravel pits and undulating erosional features called rills. Teams from high schools and colleges across the [...]
