The winner of Australia’s National Science Week Big Blog Theory science blogging competition was announced yesterday, and the prize, via popular vote, went to Bec Crew from the wonderful blog Save Your Breath For Running Ponies.
SYBFRP (pronounced: s-eye-b f-er-p – it’s much easier than saying “Running Ponies”, trust me) is a consistently funny and excellently-written blog about zoology. I’ve only been reading it for a little while, but I can easily say that it deserved to be named Australia’s best science blog and, by extension, Bec Australia’s best science blogger.
Ms Crew, who is based in Sydney and has been blogging for about 10 months on fascinating, left-field animal discoveries, takes out The Big Blog Theory national title for the best blogger contributing to the communication and understanding of science online.
Ms Crew, 26, was chosen as one of 10 national finalists by a panel of four judges. Running Ponies then attracted the most online votes of the finalist’s blogs.
“I’m so excited and more than a little stunned that my little blog could win this competition. I look up to all of the other finalists as exceptional science communicators and I’m happy just to be considered in the same league as them,’’ Ms Crew said today.
Inspired to write about bizarre animal, insect and dinosaur discoveries, Ms Crew was determined to show the public that it was important to challenge themselves with science and have fun with it.
“It’s become a sort of Running Ponies mission to get people excited about the fascinating, often left-field discoveries that are being made every day, and to perhaps send a message that science doesn’t always have to be about climate change, oil spills and outbreaks,’’ she said.
“It’s also about Tyrannosaurus with feathers, vegetarian spiders, and newts using their rib bones as weapons.’’
Here are some of my hand-picked selections to start you on your way to loving SYBFRP:
Congratulations are also in order for Corri Baker (@cbsquared_), the winner of the microblogging category in the Big Blog Theory competition. If you have a Twitter account, and you love science (which I hope you do, if you’re reading this blog), then you should definitely follow her.
Dinosaur Comics has a strange blend of characteristics. At once it is both surreal and grounded in reality, detached yet ever-present, and often the lessons taught and the experiences noted of the green, clip-art main character resonate with its audience. But what makes the same six panels of artwork so engaging week in, week out? We may never know.
What we do know, however, is that dinosaurs are endlessly entertaining.
I think we all learnt something pretty special just now. Cherish it.
Intelligent design news from the 20th of July to the 27th of July, 2010.
Another week of slow news from the world of intelligent design, with much cross-posting from the Discovery Institute amongst its many blogs, probably to make it seem like they had more things to talk about than they did. A useful tactic, I’m sure. Perhaps we skeptics should try it some time? Let’s all just re-blog the same post for a few days and see if anyone notices. I bet they won’t.
So, this week I’ll be laying into a few meaty blog posts like usual, but I’ll also add on at the end some quick links to less important posts that don’t require quite so much attention. It’ll make the experience more… comprehensive and fulfilling. Probably.
What’s this? Science blogging on Pharyngula? I never thought I’d see the day when PZ Myers blogged about science!
…
I’m kidding, but it is true that most of his posts aren’t strictly about science, and when they are they’re usually not educational on any meaningful level. This is probably due to the sheer volume of posts he churns out – he can’t write educational pieces about science for every post – however, when he does get around to clarifying a scientific issue, usually biological in nature, he always writes fantastically, which this most recent example about the evolutionary process demonstrates.
In summary, PZ explains why the basic concept of evolutionary change, “random mutation plus natural selection”, is fundamentally correct but doesn’t always apply in the way you would first think. Evolution proceeds by altering systems and networks of genes, all of which contribute to the Darwinian fitness of organisms within populations. Change is fluid and functional alteration is layered, relying on the shuffling of allele combinations as well as the addition of new alleles and genes through mutation.
Here’s a taste:
Stop thinking of mutations as unitary events that either get swiftly culled, because they’re deleterious, or get swiftly hauled into prominence by the uplifting crane of natural selection. Mutations are usually negligible changes that get tossed into the stewpot of the gene pool, where they simmer mostly unnoticed and invisible to selection. Look at human faces, for instance: they’re all different, and unless you’re looking at the extremes of beauty or ugliness, the variations simply don’t make much difference. Yet all those different faces really are the result of subtly different combinations of mutant forms of genes.
“Combinations” is the magic word. A single mutation rarely has a significant effect on a feature, but the combination of multiple mutations may have a detectable or even novel effect that can be seen by natural selection. And that’s what’s going on all the time: the population is a huge reservoir of genetic variation, and what we do when we reproduce is sort and mix and generate new combinations that are then tested in the environment.
Over at the Young Australian Skeptics, Hanster7705 has written a post about their recent experience with creationism at their semi-private high school, where young-earth creationist Mark Harwood (from Creation Ministries) gave a talk during a regular chapel service. Because, you know, his Ph.D in satellite engineering qualifies him to speak to school children about evolutionary biology. Of course.
Oh yes, creationism is alive and well in Australia, and even though it’s not as widespread as in the US, it’s still a serious problem. The solution? Better science education! Schools need to promote science more, to engage children with the wonders of evolutionary theory. Most people think that it’s a dry science that at best is boring and at worst conflicts with their religious views. This is unacceptable, and the public’s understanding and appreciation of the science of evolution needs to radically improve.
If ever there was a motivating force for young science enthusiasts to study and work in science communication, this is it. Australia needs science communication – and so does everywhere else. Get cracking!
It’s arrived, the sequel to my favourite Internet musical of all time – A Very Potter Musical! Not familiar with the brilliance that is everyone’s favourite Harry Potter fan parody musical? Check out this video (and all subsequent videos), then report back.
But AVPM’s sequel, A Very Potter Sequel, is finally here! And it’s great! So great! Watch! Watch!
In this episode, Elliot and Richard discuss the recent news about the Australian Vaccination Network’s HCCC complaint and the new Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, while Jason asks the people of Melbourne for their thoughts on our new PM’s atheism in On the Street.
What are you waiting for? Pull out your computer’s media player, and start downloading.
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As some of you may know, Season 2 of the Pseudo Scientists podcast is currently on hiatus. What you might not know is that it’s primarily due to a lack of quality audio equipment that we need to do the full podcast, and this stems from a lack of funding. So, if you love the Pseudo Scientists and want to help it out, everyone at the Young Australian Skeptics would be very grateful if you would consider donating a few dollars towards the cost of new podcasting equipment.
Mmm, Grizzly Bear, one of my favourite bands. Their music defies labels (as does most of the music I like, because I might be an indie music snob, just maybe) and it’s wonderful to listen to. Here are a couple of their live performances on TV.
The recent PepsiGate scandal, which I haven’t blogged about because, well, it doesn’t really concern me, has claimed another well known ScienceBlogs blogger. Bora Zivkovic, from A Blog Around The Clock, has just announced that he’s leaving the influential science blogging website.
The fact that he’s leaving is sad, and it may spell the beginning of the end for ScienceBlogs’s empire, but in and of itself it’s not especially interesting: after all, people have been leaving ScienceBlogs for weeks now. No, the thing that is interesting about Bora’s case is what he left the science blogging community as a parting gift – an epic blog post about the history of ScienceBlogs and science blogging in general.
It’s, wow, it’s truly incredible. I highly recommend that you read it.
I’ve finally made another YouTube video! This one directly targets a video that the Discovery Institute recently released featuring Stephen C. Meyer going on and on about the scientific nature of intelligent design (or what he calls the “design hypothesis”). I hope you find it educational – if you do, consider passing it on to others that you know online, if you feel that they would benefit from watching it.
(Apparently my Australian accent would be considered attractive by most American heterosexual females, according to some sources. I’m not sure whether I should be surprised by this or not.)
You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here. Feel free to check out some of my other videos!
Homologous Legs is the blog of Naon Tiotami (aka. Jack Scanlan), an Australian undergraduate biology student who has a serious problem with creationists and intelligent-design proponents.
Here you can find rebuttals to articles found on various high-profile creationist and intelligent-design websites, news about the creation/evolution "war", and mostly coherent thoughts from an 18 year-old music-loving student.
he winner of Australia’s National Science Week Big Blog Theory science blogging competition was announced yesterday, and the prize, via popular vote, went to Bec Crew from the wonderful blog Save Your Breath For Running Ponies.
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