Science Cheerleader

John-the-Tourist writes:

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas“.  Not quite true – my intrepid Science Cheerleader squad member John Ohab nabbed a snazzy Einstein T-shirt while he was recently in Las Vegas and presumably got the shirt outside the city limits.

Now, if you REALLY want to do something that you don’t want your mother to find out about, you need to be in the vicinity of a black hole, in which (as far as we know) nothing can escape.  My friend Matt (who works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) quipped “What happens in the event horizon stays in the event horizon”.  Matt’s son Owen told the joke on “CBS Sunday Morning” and Matt’s wife Robin (who is a graphical designer) turned the quip into a T-shirt (modeled by their daughter Lindsay) that you can purchase from Cafe Press. There is also a light-background version of the design.

So, be bold!  Show the universe that secrets can be kept – as long as you are within the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole.

P.S. – Don’t forget our own nifty Science Cheerleader T-shirts!  Make a fashion statement and fill up your closet!

Image source:  Matt Crawford

From John-the-Tourist:

Looking for that perfect holiday gift for the science cheerleader in your life?  Having a hard time finding it? I had that problem a couple of years ago, then I saw a blurb in the print version of Discover magazine titled “Micrograph Chic” which showed a pair of absolutely stunning earrings – the colors were vibrant and the pattern was beautifully abstract. The reason for the cool colors and impressive pattern was that the earrings were a photomicrograph of crystallized brain chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, etc), which was photographed through polarized light and then magnified about 600 times. Unfortunately, the Discover article didn’t include a URL, and my Google Search at the time didn’t come up with anything.  Sadly, I had to buy my wife some lame present like a frying pan.

Since I’m a cool science guy (and don’t want to get smacked on the head with another frying pan), I tried another Google search this year and I hit the jackpot!  (more…)

What if the media covered baseball like it covers science?

Larry Husten, founder of CardioBrief.org , poses this question and presents some interesting scenarios following this line of thought. For example, the World Series would receive one article in each major paper– after the series ended–set in no context at all (a la the Nobel Prize).

Check out Husten’s piece.

You’ll see this sweet intro where he has this to say about Science Cheerleader’s Brain Makeover effort to increase adult science literacy and bring science to the public:

“Beneath the highly attractive surface here there’s something important going on. I don’t know if the Science Cheerleader can single-handedly reverse the course of scientific illiteracy, but she deserves all the cheers we can give her for at least giving it the old college try. (Thanks to USA Today reporter Rita Rubin for tweeting about this.)”