Science Cheerleader

Joanne gives a beautiful review of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes. Joanne’s Top Model doll is wearing a dress representing something a woman would wear in the mid 1840s.

Hot diggity-DOG! After years in the making, my partner, Michael Gold, and I–with generous support from Science House–have officially unveiled the beta version (that means this is still a work-in-progress) of ScienceForCitizens.net . Science journalist, Carl Zimmer, who frequently writes for Discover and Time Magazine, said “It’s like Amazon.com for all sorts of possibilities for doing cool citizen science”. We’ll take that!

We’re seeking your feedback on ways we can make the site a phenomenal resource for all who use it. And, consider registering as a new member you can can explore the many citizen science projects out there, add your own project, create a personalized blog, or just meet up online with folks who share your interests.

I had the opportunity to unveil the site during the increasingly popular Science Online 2010 conference in Durham, N.C., this past weekend where I was invited to speak about citizen science, adult science literacy, and science in the media to a captive audience of science writers and bloggers. [I think my family and local friends were relieved to finally catch a break from me yapping about these topics every chance I get. Break's over folks, sorry ]

Here’s more about the Citizen Science session and the launch of ScienceForCitizens.net . Soon, I’ll post a report here on some of the most interesting issues sifted from some of the other sessions at Science Online 2010,  including: Adult Science Literacy, Science in the Media, Blogging 102, and more. For now, here’s a picture taken at the conference, of me (left) with uber science communicators: Dr. Kiki Sanford, Rebecca Skloot, and Joanne Manaster.

From our lovely Joanne Manaster:
In excitement of the start up and successful proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Joanne reviews Paul Halpern’s book Collider:The Search for the World’s Smallest Particles and Voyage to the Heart of Matter : The Atlas Experiment at CERN by Anton Radevsky and Emma Sanders.
If you know nothing about these projects, this is a good place to start!