Five Fandom Friday: 5 SciArt Shops You Should Know

It's been a while since I've been up for a 5 Fandom Friday, but this one was right in my wheelhouse! ....almost.

So, like I brought up in my last Talky Tuesday post, I'm not much of a shopper. I don't have five favorite anything shops, let alone geeky shops, to buy from because I keep my pursestrings closed and also I buy books more than anything else oop. Even when I do shop, I'm not much of a fandom shopper. But I do have five favorite sciart shops you should know! I have more than five, really, but these are a good start.

What is sciart?

Sciart is the intersection of science and art. STEM and the humanities, despite popular belief, are not mutually exclusive. The goal of sciart is to highlight how the arts propel the sciences, and how the sciences enrich the arts.

1. ArtAtomic

Kristin Henry uses her coding knowledge and programming experience to create really cool generative geometrical art. Do you need a modern geometric print to hang up in your living space? Or a coloring book? Maybe a new scarf?

Abstract Art Particle Flower by ArtAtomic

2. ChrissySparksArt

Do you love astronomy? Did you have childhood dreams of going to space camp? Do you have opinions about Pluto? Then you will love the art and jewelry from ChrissySparksArt. I think my favorite thing in her shop are the leaf paintings. They are something out of William Blake:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
 And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
  And eternity in an hour.

Bubble Nebula Cosmic Leaf Art by ChrissySparksArt

3. The Occasional Bat

It is no secret that I love bats, and The Occasional Bat has the most adorable bat plushies imaginable.

Gray Victorian Bat by The Occasional Bat

But The Occasional Bat is about more than just cuteness—they do bat outreach as well. A portion of their proceeds on every sale go to the Florida Bat Conservancy and to the Bat World bat sanctuary in Mineral Wells, TX. We're still a long way from curing White Nose Syndrome (though progress has been made), so these little guys need all the help they can get. They also do custom bats for (as the name implies) any occasion!


4. The Vexed Muddler

Peggy of The Vexed Muddler is just all around really cool. I follow her on Twitter and her tweets make my day. So Peggy would be cool even if she didn't make sciart ceramics and cool t-shirt and temporary tattoo designs, but she does, so she's just even cooler.

Box and whisker graph bracelet by The Vexed Muddler

And if you wanted a beaded or chainmaille thingummy to go with one of her pendants, I could help you out. Jus' sayin'.


5. ESeas

For those who prefer that their sciart be a little more functional, Elizabeth Sargent of ESeas sculpts fantastic dishes out of polymer clay. If you have an absent-minded science professor in your life, one of Elizabeth's trinket dishes might make them a little more organized.

Sea turtle trinket dish by ESeas

If none of these are to your style (and I have a hard time believing that), then all you have to do is browse the sciart hashtag on Twitter to find lots of great designs and art. I swear, every time I check up on that hashtag I find two or three awesome new designers/bloggers/scientists to follow. It is an embarrassment of riches, y'all.

The Science Tarot

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a sucker for a good sciart project. What you may not know is that I'm also a Tarot and all-around esoteric enthusiast.

This isn't something I discuss a whole lot, as people are usually ready to jump down my throat or ascribe certain beliefs/character faults to me that are, frankly, untrue. They assume I'm like William Shatner or that old guy in that Twilight Zone episode—no, not Terror at 28,000 Feet, I mean Nick of Time—which really could not be further from the truth.

I like the symbolism of the cards, I like how people interpret them in new and creative ways, I like using them for stories and writing, and once in a while they're even a useful tool for clarifying your own thinking on a topic. Personally, I think the art of reading meaning into a bunch of randomly-generated symbols is a useful life skill to have, whether it's Tarot or runes or I Ching or tea leaves or whatever. It can help you look at a problem or an issue from a completely wack-a-doo angle that nonetheless gives you the perspective you need.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered The Science Tarot. I think it may have originated on Etsy, but now you can purchase the deck via their standalone website. (Good for them!)

If you don't already know, a Tarot deck consists of 3 groups of cards: the Major Arcana, or Trumps, which are probably what you think of when you think of Tarot;

The Magician (Pamela Colman-Smith/Alfred Waite)

 the Minor Arcana, or pips, which have four different suits numbered from Ace to 10;

3 of Swords, ibid.

and the court cards, most of whom you probably would recognize in a contemporary playing card deck (same as the pips).

King of Wands, ibid.

(A big thanks to Wikipedia editor Fuzzypeg for dutifully scanning and uploading the images from the original, public domain 1909 Colman-Smith/Waite deck!)

Put together by a team of artists, scientists, and artists/scientists, The Science Tarot has reimagined each group of cards while attempting to retain their original meaning. The Major Arcana are now "science stories," such as Mendel and his peas or Schrödinger's Cat. The court cards are, intuitively, famous scientists. categorized based on Helen Fisher's work in personality and attraction. The Minor Arcana are illustrated scientific concepts, like chaos theory, cocoon, fusion, or catastrophe. For example, here is The Science Tarot's 2 of Swords:

2 of Swords from The Science Tarot, art by Shari Arai DeBoer.

Sitting under the apple tree, we contemplate a choice to be made. The tree branch lifts an apple high in the air, and gravity continuously pulls it toward the ground. These equal and opposite forces hold the apple in place. But soon the balance may shift and the apple may fall, releasing the branch from its burden and shaking the leaves as they swing upwards.

Isaac Newton observed that every action caused an equal and opposite reaction and so reasoned that every reaction could be predicted from the action that triggered it. Like a game of billiards, Newton's world is a predictable knocking around of objects: the force of the impact equals the mass of the moving object times its acceleration. To send an apple flying in a specific direction, we only need to know where to hit it and how hard. To move a gigantic apple, we'll need to hit it with a great deal of mass, or we will need a running start.

A decision is hanging over your head. You can choose to leave the apple suspended in the tree, or you can apply enough force to bring it down. Either decision may bring good results, but if you wait too long, the apple may fall on your head.

Hero's Journey, Step 2: Refusal of the call. The hero is reluctant to use this new power.

The suits of the Minor Arcana (swords, wands, pentacles, cups) are also given their own particular theme: Wands as creation, the nuclear fusion burning in each star; then Pentacles as exchange, elements forged in the star now coalescing into matter; Swords as scientific observation, the higher thinking of conscious life and the beginning of abstract, scientific fields like mathematics, chaos theory, and physics; and finally Cups as the integration of the scientific consciousness into a more holistic picture of life and the return of the scientific observer to a participant in the system. The deck creators also employed Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey to tell the "story" of the Minor Arcana suits, for that extra layer of meaning.

There is obviously just so much thought and attention to detail in this deck—but then, would you expect anything less from a science-themed Tarot deck?—and I am just in love.

Five Fandom Friday on Sunday: 5 Nerdiest Things I've Ever Done

I am one of those pedantic assholes who imposes very clear boundaries around "nerd," "geek," and "dork," even if I value all three. Liz Green nails it. I've fallen in the "nerd" circle of that Venn diagram more often than anything else, so my life has basically been one big nerd alert after another. Picking only five moments, then, might be tough, but I'll try to restrain myself. In chronological order:


1. I taught myself to read.

Courtesy Alejandro Escamilla

Sorry for this humble brag, but it is kind of a major nerdy accomplishment. I couldn't have done it without Lawyer Mom, either, who read to me and my brother every night when we were young. She also (very patiently) read all  of the cards in the Uncle Wiggly game out loud to me every time we played, even though as an adult she admitted it was the most tedious thing ever. If that laser-like focus on words and letters isn't nerdy, I don't know what is.

That said, I wasn't a total super genius. I could read okay but I had problems with writing that persisted for a little while. I had a tough time spelling my own name until I was 5, mostly because I refused to go by "Kate" or "Katy" or any other nickname.


2. My 64-slide Power Point presentation about stars.

Courtesy Blair Fraser

I just feel bad for all of the other fifth-graders who had to sit through it.


3. My commitment to Reading Olympics.

Reading Olympics is very much a southeastern PA/Philly metro thing. It's too bad, because it's really fun and it's a great way to get students to read books they wouldn't normally read and to read outside of class.

Basically, at the beginning of the school year a list of 50 books comes out at the elementary, middle, and high school level. Teams are encouraged to read all of them and then, in the spring, attend a tournament and answer a bunch of trivia questions about said books. In other words, it was everything I loved, together at last: reading and trivia competitions.

Of course by high school, Reading Olympics was definitely not the cool, fun thing to do anymore; I was one of a handful of students that stuck with the game all the way through their school career.


4. The "power hour" bash script I wrote.

#!/bin/bash 

for ((i=0;i<=59;i+=1)); do

for ((x=1;x<=60;x+=1)); do

sleep 1

echo $x "seconds"

done

xmms --fwd

done

Specifically, it would automatically advance to the next song in an XMMS playlist every 60 seconds, so that we could all relax and just enjoy the beers. Better partying through Linux.


5. The entire Kokoba jewelry line.

Kokoba display at the Da Vinci Science Center

DNA double helix maille bracelets

I don't think it gets much nerdier than STEM jewelry?

Science Saturday: The Intersection of Anthropology and Science

The great thing about having a Facebook page (for Kokoba, I mean; in addition to the private personal account I have) is that it's a great way to store links and stories I find interesting but don't have the time to immediately blog about.

One such story is this article from NPR about constructing a giant telescope in Hawaii. The peak of Mauna Kea is considered sacred ground to a number of people; astronomers also say that it's the best possible location for this new telescope. A clash ensues.

The Twin Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. 

If you look at this as an isolated incident, it's easy to brush away Hawaiian concerns as silly superstition. However, if you posit this conflict as part of America's longer history in Hawaii, the waters get muddied. Land grabbing, arguably including land used to build the other telescopes in the islands, has been a pervasive issue in this history; I don't think it's too much of a stretch to make a connection between repeated land grabs and the resistance this telescope is facing. As this piece in Nature points out,

The Mauna Kea debate reflects larger issues of Hawaiian history, including past abuses such as using one of the islands as a practice bombing range, says Robert McLaren, associate director of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “There’s more to this than just a telescope on Mauna Kea,” he says.

Maxwell emphasizes that many of the protestors are not anti-science. “It’s just that enough is enough,” he says. “The land is an extension of you, so any destruction is hard inside.”

The telescope would be the largest so far on the Mauna Kea site, commonly referred to as the TMT—Thirty Meter Telescope. It's a joint project between two California universities as well as the governments of Canada, China, India, and Japan.Because of its location and isolation, Hawaii is a great place to build telescopes and observatories. There are already more than a dozen observatories on Mauna Kea for that very reason (including the ones pictured above). Some of them—maybe even most or all of them?—have faced similar objections. Can one of them be updated instead of building a new one? One of the pre-existing Mauna Kea observatories is actually slated for deconstruction and the land will be left untouched, allowed to be reclaimed by nature.

There is a lot more on this topic that deserves to be written, and I didn't have the time to write as much as I would, but I wanted to at least float the topic. It's a problem that speaks to two things I hold near to my heart: social justice/decolonization and the stars. This is more than just a simple religion versus science issue. This is a conflict that has its roots in political decisions going back two hundred years and beyond. How do you heal that rift? How can both sides win? Any thoughts, readers?

The Failure of Mars One

I missed out on Pi Day and St. Patrick's Day on the blog, but it warmed my hear to see so many other blogs observing some math nerdiness! The truth is that I am still a little busy at the moment, so I couldn't really give Pi Day its proper due. And St. Patrick's Day? Living in neither the US nor Ireland, I can assure you that the only place that was a "thing" was in Stockholm's Irish pubs.But I'm taking half a minute out of my life to talk a bit about Mars One.

This is a project that has been getting a lot of hype, and it's not hard to see why: most sane people are concerned about the potentially irreversible changes we're triggering in our planet (or they at least agree that it will eventually be a problem for someone to deal with). If we've unequivocally ruined Earth, expanding out into other space and other planets is our only hope for long-term survival. Even if we manage to salvage Earth's climate so that it remains more or less hospitable for humanity, there's nothing we can do about the Sun's inevitable life cycle—either way, space travel is part of our future, if humans are going to play the really long game. Space colonization and extraterrestrial life is the premise of so much science fiction, from the classic (Star Trek) to the obscure (Henry Martinson's Aniaria), that the appeal is no surprise.

It seems like the Mars One project has taken that appeal and turned it into a poorly-organized cash grab. This Medium.com article has a great run-down on it. That's really all you need to read on the topic.

I really hope that I can live to see a successful mission to Mars. I think it's entirely possible, but maybe it isn't.

Birthstones: Peridot (August)

This is another instance where the updated Kansas City list differs from the original Tiffany & Co. poems. The original Kansas City list in 1912 included the sardonyx from the Tiffany & Co. poem, but also peridot; the updated list dropped sardonyx entirely. Reasons for this elude me but I'm sure they have to do with selling things.

After a brief foray into corundums (corunda?), beryls, and chrysoberyls, with peridot we're back in the realm of silicates: minerals composed primiarily of SiO₄.

Peridot is rich with magnesium (sometimes iron): (Mg, Fe)₂SiO₄. One a microscopic level, the whole thing looks like this:

Peridot, then, exhibits the same characteristics we've come to expect of silicates. What makes peridot unique is that it is always and only an olive yellow-green color. In fact, properly speaking, its full name is peridot olivine—olivine is the larger class of Mg- and/or Fe-rich silicates; peridot is the name given to gem-quality samples.

Where the name comes from is unclear. The first written record of it in English is a 1705 translation of Latin church records from 1245. It might come from the Arabic faridat, meaning only "gem," or it might be a corruption of the Anglo–Norman word pedoretés. The Gemological Institute of America favors the former; the OED favors the latter. Historically, high-quality peridot olivine was often confused with emerald, or sometimes topaz; this is probably why the stone didn't come away with its own name right off the bat. This confusion was rampant in all places and ages, but especially in the treasure stores of European churches. Much like the Black Prince's red spinel (thought to be a ruby at the time), the stones in the Dreikönigsschrein in Köln, Germany were long thought to be emeralds—in fact, they are peridots.

Cleopatra's fabled emerald collection might also have been peridot, but obviously there's no way for us to go back and check.

Needless to say, this green silicate has been around for a while, even if it's operated under many names. While olivine forms deeper in the mantle than most other stones (except diamonds), it is still made of silicate, the most common material in the Earth's crust. One good volcanic eruption can bring a whole host of rough peridot to the surface. Peridot can also form in outer space, on other planets or protoplanets; occasionally they make their way to Earth via a nickel–iron meteorite (called a pallasite). The result is stunning:

The Egyptians mined quite a significant amount of peridot, and used it as a ward against evil and "terrors of the night." It was also thought to treat asthma and reduce the thirst of a fevered person. The stone's power was thought to be enhanced by setting it in gold, stringing it through the hair of a donkey, and wearing it on your left arm.

While it doesn't actually help with asthma, peridot olivine does have other, practical purposes. Right now it is being seriously investigated as a tool in the fight against global climate change, specifically as an agent for sequestering CO2. It's also used in blast furnaces in steel production. On a more frivolous note, olivine is also often used in Finnish saunas as it's fairly dense and also resistant to weathering.

Peridot, while lovely, is not as rare as some of the other stones we've recently looked at and does not typically command jaw-dropping prices. It is also not synthesized either; the only imitation on the market is green glass. 

Science Saturday: The Science of Shakespeare

Interview with Dan Falk, science writer and the author of "The Science of Shakespeare."

Appropriate, as this year is the 450th anniversary of the Bard's birth. (By the way, Shakespeare fans: the RSC is taking Hamlet on tour to every country in the world this year and next to celebrate, so check their website to see if they're coming to a theater near you.)

Literary giant that Shakespeare was, he left little behind in terms of personal correspondence. Much of what we assume to be true about his personality and beliefs and so on comes to us either from other people's accounts or from interpretations of his plays. Falk's book examines Shakespeare through the lens of science at the time in order to better illuminate the man from Stratford's own understanding of, and relationship with, science. What references to contemporary scientific ideas can we find in his works? Which characters are making those references? What about settings, names, or more oblique references?

The interview talks in particular about my favorite Shakespeare play, the aforementioned Hamlet. Falk and others knowledgeable on the subject find Hamlet to be absolutely rife with references to scientific personages and ideas of the time, perhaps more so than any of his other plays. Did you know that Elsinore was where Tycho Brahe had his observatory?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Astronomy and Public Art

Today I learned that the largest to-scale model of the solar system in the world is here in Sweden: the Sweden Solar System. A very dull name for a very creative project.

The Sweden Solar System isn't something in a museum, or a park. It spans the nearly the entire country, and includes comets, dwarf planets, and other night sky wanderers, in addition to the usual planets:

I live within walking distance of the sun.

The Sweden Solar System is the brainchild of physicist Nils Brenning and  astronomer Gösta Gahm. Numerous artists have contributed to the project. Here is a rundown of all the current members of the Sweden Solar System, if you want to read more about them (in English). I love the level to which the artists and others involved committed themselves to "properly" representing the planet. Mercury, for example, is heated, a nod to its high temperature (second-highest of all the planets) and proximity to the sun.

I think I might make it a goal to visit all of the planets—this should come as no surprise if you've been following along for any stretch of time. My love of astronomy is pretty self-evident.

Language Acquisition and Cosmos

Today is the first day of my 20 hour/week Swedish course. It's not the same kind of demand as a full-time job, obviously, but it does mean I won't have as much time or focus for blog entries as I've recently had. I have a few posts queued up, so even if I get swamped with work I won't disappear entirely. At least, not right away.

More importantly, JV and I watched the first installment in the Cosmos reboot and we were blown away. I've never been a fan of Seth MacFarlane, both as a humorist and as a person, but I am appreciative of the work he, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and others put into making the new Cosmos happen. If you missed the first episode, you can catch up at CosmosOnTV.com. If you're outside the US, I highly recommend the Hola plugin to mitigate any location-related difficulties.

Friday Find: Pinterest Edition

You can always follow me (click that button on the right!), of course, and never miss a single thing I pin ever, but some finds are worth sharing elsewhere! For example, this awesome print from Not On the High Street, showing all of the planets in the solar system to scale:

Continuing the astronomy theme, here's a great photoset from Imgur of a shawl decorated with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. I don't know who you are or where you got this, jeffp07, but it's gorgeous:

And finally, a handy and humorous flowchart to help you figure out what you're looking at in the night sky.

Science Saturday: Stellar, the Astrophysics Video Game

I came across this one by way of STEMinist.com: UCSC Students Design Video Game Aimed at Making Astrophysics Fun. For the link-phobic:

Kate Compton and April Grow, both students at UCSC's Center for Games and Playable Media, hope players will feel like they're "farming" in space as they cultivate star gardens. In doing so, gamers will also learn about nucleosynthesis, the process by which stars forge atoms into the elements that make up the periodic table. But Stellar, which will be soon be available on Google's Chrome Store, is first and foremost a game -- and its programmers hope the approach will help spark children's interest in science.

Players start with one star called Sol, Latin for sun, and a stash of hydrogen atoms. To keep Sol burning, players must feed it hydrogen. When their hydrogen supply runs low, players are free to zoom around the cosmos in search of space dust containing more of the element.

Compton, Grow, and Stellar (Dan Coyro)

As players sprinkle these hydrogen atoms into their star, it fuses them into helium atoms. Players can harvest this helium and use it as another nutrient to feed their star. The stellar foundry can then fuse helium to create heavier atoms, like carbon. Stars can then squeeze these atoms into even heavier iron atoms.

Unfortunately "soon" is the best the article can do when it comes to naming a release date. I can't wait to try it out—stars and astronomy were among my earliest science loves.

Science Saturday: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. But how do we know this? Who do we credit for this insight?

I'll answer that for you: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

In 1925, she was awarded the first Ph.D in astronomy ever. Payne-Gaposchkin was the first to suggest that stars consist primarily of hydrogen—the prevailing theory at the time was that the sun (and therefore all stars) had a chemical composition more or less similar to Earth's. Instead, Pyane-Gaposchkin argued that silicon, carbon, and other metals content was more or less similar, but that helium and hydrogen were far more abundant in the sun than on Earth (for hydrogen, she calculated that it was more prevalent in the sun by a factor of one million). By all rights a discovery as important to science as gravity, special relativity, or evolution, yet it's one that often gets omitted from science curricula.

After a long career of crappy pay and little formal recognition, by 1956 Payne-Gaposchkin was one of the first female professors at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She retired ten years later, at the age of 66, having taught and mentored astronomical luminaries such as Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Drake and Paul W. Hodge.

If you'd like, you can read her paper "On the Physical Condition of the Supernovae" in its entirety at the website for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Friday Finds: Science Jewelry

I'm always on the prowl for neat science-inspired jewelry (besides my own, of course). Here are some of the best I've found recently!

I was totally stunned both with how creative the idea behind this bracelet is and gorgeous it ended up being.

Hydrogen Necklace by MChandraJewelry on Etsy

"Hydrogen? How is this hydrogen? I'm skeptical," you're probably thinking. I was too. Then I read the description:

Hydrogen gas, when excited, emits characteristic colors. The colors of the hydrogen spectrum inspire this necklace - violet amethyst, turquoise and red coral. Hydrogen has a "line spectrum:" the bands of color are very narrow, hence the use of rondelle beads. There are dark regions in between, indicated by hematite beads. 

What an awesome and artistic depiction of an important chemical property!


If you want something a little more flashy, how about this Mars rover statement necklace?

Mount Sharp Necklace from MarsBling on Etsy

The image in the middle is a photo of Mount Sharp taken by the Curiosity rover. The copper chain and accent pieces are a perfect fit for the Red Planet.

If paleontology or biology is more your thing, here's a great, understated pendant for you from Zibbet:

Red Fossil Coral Necklace by CindyLouWho2 on Zibbet

In the end, though, I have to come back to astronomy. This solar system bracelet is just too cute.

Solar System Bracelet by TheDopelerEffect on Zibbet

I love how there's even the moon there, dangling off of the Earth!

Merry Christmas

Look at this amazing universe we get to live in.

A star trail image from Phillip Island, Australia.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, I'm away from my family. This marks the  third Thanksgiving in a row I've been away from home for my favorite American holiday. With all due love and respect to my family, though, there's no place I'd rather be than where I am right now. I'm making the most of my time here in South Korea, spending it with friends I may never see again. Friends I would have never met if I hadn't decided to take this oddball route to South Korea, even while juggling my crafting and ultimate expatriation to Sweden. In that spirit of gratitude, awe and wonderment, I offer you this oft-quoted pearl of wisdom from Carl Sagan:

Carl Sagan Relief Print from MercurialCreations

Music Monday: Mars!

Curiosity made a successful touchdown on Mars! Have some David Bowie:

Pinterest Post!

I'm still happily pinning away. Are you? If you need an invite, let me know! Here's some of my favorite recent pins:

Winter is Coming? No, Easter is Coming!

And so is Mom's Basement's Easter Egg contest!

Submit a photo of your geeky Easter egg(s), and the winner (determined by vote) gets a whole grab bag of geeky goodies! Even without the temptation of prizes, I just love the idea of geeky Easter eggs. My friends and I are having an Easter picnic this Sunday, complete with egg-dying and egg-decorating supplies, why not geek it up? So far I'm thinking:

• A Star Wars set
• A Star Trek: The Original Series set
• A Doom Patrol set
• Batman
• Famous scientists and nerds (Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Alan Turing are at the top of my list so far)
• Appropriate use of brown eggs, so prevalent here in Korea: Neil deGrasse Tyson in the scientists set, Lando Calrissian in Star Wars, Ultimate Nick Fury, Joshua Clay in Doom Patrol, Lt. Uhura in Star Trek...

How are you going to decorate your Easter eggs this year?

More information about the contest (and the prizes) can be found here.

Science Saturday: Stargazing With Dara O'Briain and Brian Cox

I watch a lot of QI with the boy, and as such I've become familiar with assorted (mostly British) comedians and celebrities.

This "Stargazing" series has been at the top of DocumentaryHeaven's page for a while now, and at first I ignored it because I didn't know who Dara O'Briain or Brian Cox were.  But once I learned that they were funny (the both) and a science rockstar (Professor Cox), I decided to go back and have a watch.

Stargazing Live is actually a "docu-mini series" of sorts: the are three episodes, each about an hour long. I only had time to watch the first one; the other two are queued up for later.

The good: Everything is very casual and easy to follow along. There's also good instructional bits for how to use a telescope and how to take pictures with your telescope. It also focuses a lot on my favorite planet, Jupiter.

The bad: Sometimes it comes off as a bit too gimmicky and pandering.

One interesting fact: Most of Stargazing Live was filmed at the Lovell telescope in Britain. It's a pretty big deal telescope, and pretty old (as far as space technology goes). It monitored Sputnik in orbit back in the 60s. Scientists at Lovell actually intercepted top secret Soviet photos that Sputknik took of the moon and printed them out on a fax machine!

Would recommend? If you're a stargazing or astronomy nut (like me); if you have a crush on Dara O'Briain or Brian Cox (like me). I suppose for anyone else it might be a bit dull?

Pinterest Post!

I signed up for internet crack Pinterest and it's ruined my life.  (If you're signed up too, follow me! I'm Kokoba!)

Case in point, I started writing this entry about twenty minutes ago.  I headed over to Pinterest to find an example of cool stuff I've found, only to get sucked into repinning things.   And now it's twenty minutes later.

For example, here's a relevant meme:

A BABY HIPPO BABY HIPPO BABY HIPPO~:

                                          Source: tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

                 

Awesome boots:

                                                           Source: tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

And this beautiful image of The Pillars of Creation, gas clouds in the Eagle Nebula:

                                          Source: google.ca via Katherine on Pinterest

Are you on Pinterest?  What have you found?