If I could, I’d hop in a time machine and hire Ray Troll to draw me a text book about paleontology in 1994  so that my middle school science classes could have truly been–ahem– rockin’.

As the author of She Blinded Me With Science here on Geek, the Academy of Natural Sciences knows all about my ever-lasting love affair with the systematic study of the structure/behavior of the physical and natural world. You probably just call it science. I recently took a stroll through a sweet exhibit that any Ammonite or quirky illustration enthusiast can enjoy: I went Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway with Artist Ray Troll and Paleontologist Kirk Johnson.

In what sounds like a challenge that the Amazing Race writers only wish they dreamed up, two friends –one an artist, the other a paleontologist– took a series of road trips through out the American west and documented their findings in beautiful, intricate maps and  illustrations.

[ Click Here for the Full Size Image, Makes a Great Desktop Wallpaper ]

That’s right, boys and girls– this exhibit is not the stuff you pretended to memorize in 7th grade natural science. Along with being factual, it’s fun and imaginative… and there’s a painting called Saber-toothed Everything that not only includes a saber-toothed salmon (real, but extinct) drawn in, but somehow has a cheeseburger in it. AND WHO DOESN’T LOVE CHEESEBURGERS?

As the Academy puts it, “A new exhibit… combines art with science to explore evolution, extinction and the treasure trove of fossil finds in the American West. Rarely seen specimens from the museum’s vast fossil collection enhance the discovery experience. The exhibit, on view through Jan. 2, 2011, combines art with science to take visitors on a 5,000- mile adventure into the world of fossils. ”

Action-packed illustrations bursting with color recount what Ray Troll calls “the ultimate paleo road trip” that he and Kirk Johnson navigated through the expansive western states a few years ago. The exhibit features full-color prints, large-scale murals, and an entertaining video in which Troll and Kirk describe the collaborative process. Another video takes visitors on the road with acclaimed Academy paleontologist Dr. Ted Daeschler as he hunts for ancient life in rock formations in north-central Pennsylvania where he has made numerous important fossil discoveries along roadsides.”

And it was absolutely awesome. Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway is free with museum admission and open until January 2nd, 2011.

Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 299-1009
www.ansp.org

Methink’st thou art a general offense and every man should beat thee. –All’s Well That Ends Well

I love me a good Shakespearean insult. And nothing drops a creep at a bar like that line, ladies. Trust me, I know. I can really wear a sweater.

Has an overwhelming desire to recite a soliloquy ever washed over you? Have your friends repeatedly told you to sit down, and that’s not cool to do in a movie theater/Wawa/taxicab, anyway? Thanks to the excellent imagination and talent of Philly based visual artist Michael Rogalski, a solution is possibly at your finger tips.

Masterpuppet Theatre! It’s every bit as awesome as it sounds, and I was fortunate enough to chat with Michael about how he put good ol’ Billy and the Globe Theater in a box set.

Check out the interview after the jump! Want to win a copy of Masterpuppet Theatre for yourself? Leave a comment about your favorite Shakespearean play. I’ll pick one of you at random at the end of the week, and send you a copy. Enjoy!

(more…)

“Since its founding, Philadelphia has been at the center of science and technology innovation,” said Mayor Michael Nutter.

It’s true–Philly really does have a reputation of geeking out from the start. Ben Franklin, our favorite spectacle wearing homeboy, was shaking things up in the 18th century, long before a city-state of 19th century museums popped up in Fairmont and a second Indy Hall hit the scene in Old City.

“In an effort to raise awareness and engage its citizens in the science that makes this city great, Philadelphia’s museums, cultural institutions, universities, and corporations are joining forces to launch the Philadelphia Science Festival.”

The folks over at The Franklin Institute are spearheading this exciting, ambitious 2-week initiative to showcase the region’s strengths in science and technology. The city-wide event includes ‘an extensive line-up of programs and exhibitions with a single goal– to make science programming exciting AND accessible.’

And how! Among others, local favorites like the The Academy of Natural Sciences, The Mütter Museum, The Please Touch Museum, The Free Library and Philadelphia Zoo are participating. Hundreds of events will take place in Philadelphia,the bulk of which are free and open to the public, including:

-A kick-off science carnival on The Parkway, open to the public
-Neighborhood Science outreach programs will take place across the city
-School-wide science experiments for kids
-A series of “Science Conversations” featuring lecture events, panel discussions, etc.
-Phillies “Day of Science”
-And the slightly uncomfortable promise of ‘award-winning scientists in unexpected places’

For more updates, stay tuned on Twitter, Facebook, and of course, Geekadelphia. Mark your calendars and get your goggles out– I will be seeing you all in April!

Beep blip boop! All aboard the chiptune express.

I remember the very first 8static so many moons ago, when it was just a handful of geeks blasting blips through two amps, projecting neon flashes onto a sheet in Liberty Lands park. The neighbors called the cops, unsure of what was happening. How far it has come!

As we all know, 8static has migrated to West Philly and has had quite a successful run. City geeks are thrilled to welcome chiptune legend Neil Voss to deliver new,  hard-hitting Game Boy tunes. If you aren’t familiar– Neil produced, composed, and engineered the whole soundtrack for Tetrisphere.

Other performances will be by Void Vision, Peter Swimm and Da Pantz with visuals by 8static regular, VBLANK.

GOOD MORNING, GEEKADELPHIANS! How I’ve missed you, and I’m sure you’ve missed your science updates. Since we’re all fond of a good experiment around here, let’s try Geek Weekly on a Monday and see if anything explodes!

• Interesting read from New Scientist: Once upon a time, asteroids caused Antarctica to freeze.

• What the what?! I came across a scientific abstract discussing how cows are … magnetic?

• A personal favorite, and I swear it’s not because the seal is adorable: Sea animals sweep for mines when robots go rogue.

• How awesome is this? “Modeled after the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored Solar Decathlon, the European Solar Decathlon is a competition for seventeen teams from different academic institutions to create the most efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly solar-powered house.”

• Dun, dun, dun: 6th great extinction announced.

• Italian scientists possibly being charged with manslaughter for not predicting earthquake? Exsqueeze me? Baking Powder?

• A little depressing, but sure– why not! Relationship failure algorithms. Not to Liz Lemon on your Monday, but somewhere along the line I’ve developed my own set of variables, and I’m certain these folks meant ‘he takes me for granted’ instead of  ‘sentimental equilibrium’…

• Concept car that acts like a plant. Why haven’t we thought if this sooner?

• My bets are still on Titan, but apparently not all water has life.

• Cool read on ”DNA being the backbone for new logic motherboards” (Thanks to reader @flyingjaco for the tip!)

She Blinded Me With Science is a weekly column for Geekadelphia.com, brought to you by The Letter B. To submit a science tip, email bianca@geekadelphia.com

OK guys– I know it’s Memorial Day Weekend eve, I’m going to ask you to please tear yourself off of those LOST forums arguing about the finale and giggling over the Catroulette blog at your desk to give this week’s roundup some serious attention.

Why the harsh tone? Well, if you truly live under a rock, British Petroleum (BP) had a massive accident a few weeks back and currently, millions of gallons of oil are seeping into the Gulf of Mexico and permanently damaging our oceanic ecosystem as we speak. Gross, right?

I have my personal opinions on the truckload of political  controversy swamping the news, but  figured it would be more appropriate to give you some science on the spill this week, and some resources to learn more about the ‘top kill’ method that’s being implemented (which, by the way, may or may not be working):

• Bill Nye explains ‘top kill’ on CNN (see clip below) and discusses with The Washington Post.
• PopSci’s coverage of Top Kill: http://bit.ly/ajd4hq
• Wired’s coverage on the Environmental Protection Agency and BP: http://bit.ly/94UVsC
• New Scientist’s interview with a senior scientist from the National Wildlife Federation on the current state of the gulf’s ecosystem: http://bit.ly/9LXTjW

Image courtesy of Wired Science

‘Sup geeks?! How was your week? Did you have fun at Geekadelphia’s free concert at The Piazza?

So, local news first:

• Philly wins a sustainability award! So, we sort of have a bad rep with other large cities in America because we have wild sports fans and fat locals, apparently… but hey, we are on our way with technology initiatives for long-term sustainability, and that’s really cool.

In other news…

• As a young, attractive, charming, funny (modest…) gal, this study merely confirms my long-term suspicions after swimming in the Philadelphia dating pool: Neanderthals are among us. This Wired Science article gives a great breakdown of the latest news in evolutionary studies…

• What the what?! All life on Earth shares a single common ancestor, a new statistical analysis confirms. Microbiologist chatter has been secured that we don’t have a ‘tree’ of life, so much as a ‘web’… and that’s good to know, considering the study also noted that one universal common ancestor is at least 102,860 times more probable than having multiple ancestors. So get your Enya on, Geekadelphians, because we’re technically all one.

• Um, James Cameron develops camera for new Mars rover. Yes, you read that right. Despite all scientific knowledge to this point, Mars may actually be filled with blue people.

• I got a press release from the National Green Energy Council detailing the Cape Wind project — an offshore sustainable wind farm in New England. Hallelujah! The USA is finally working with the world’s elements, not against them.

• Quick! Add ‘genomic manipulation’ to your vocabulary because we’re a few short steps away from the first Cylon war with the creation of mostly synthetic cells. Kidding! Sort of… This NPR article is a bit more thorough.

That’s all, party people. Have a great weekend, and I hope to see you at Brave New Worlds for the Movement and Motion showing!

She Blinded Me With Science is a weekly column for Geekadelphia.com, brought to you by The Letter B. To submit a science tip, email bianca@geekadelphia.com

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas… actually, the sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma…

If you know what I’m getting at, you’re reading the right blog. So, on that note we have a soundtrack with our roundup this morning! I got a little warm and fuzzy reading this article from Flavorpill today that gave some geek love: the oh-so appropriate Mixtape for Science Nerds. Enjoy.

This week in science:

• If you’re creeped out by crustaceans, do your self a favor and skip to the next bullet. For the rest of you fine folk, check out the fossilized tracks of a giant, prehistoric, six-legged “sea scorpion.” Not just any ol’ tracks… the Hibbertopterus sandstone tracks are actually the largest known walking trackway of a eurypterid or any invertebrate animal, according to BBC.

• A battery was developed that can run on pee. Seriously.

• Wired Science and PopSci released amazing news supporting a theory that’s been tossed around for years. The headlines? Ice Discovered on Asteroid, Suggests Earth’s Oceans Came From Space. “A thin film of water ice and organic materials coats the space rock named 24 Themis, according to a study  released today. That discovery marks the first-ever direct detection of water ice on an asteroid, and adds evidence to theories about how asteroids could have brought water and organic material to a primordial Earth.“ The summary only reinforces, in my mind, how –to paraphrase Stephen Hawking– we really are just some lucky, advanced apes on a planet near a very average star… trying to understand the universe.

• Um, speaking of space, Japan has so boldly declared that a bi-pedal Japanese robot will walk the moon by 2015. Now this is the type of future I grew up thinking about.  Next up, CYLONS.

• Even dino youth rebelled from Mom and Dad! This Wired Science article is about young, feathered dinosaurs changing their physical apperance, but really just made me sad. Also left me regretting wanting a scientifically-sound dino costume. That illustration leaves them lookin’ pretty creepy, and it’s nothing like Jurassic Park.

• Last but not least, an ancient city was discovered in India and potentially pre-dates the Harappan Civilzation –one of the world’s oldest– by 5,000 years. The site was discovered by chance. An interviewee in BBC notes, “There’s a huge chronological problem in this discovery. It means that the whole model of the origins of civilization with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch…” Updates as they come! Thanks to Brian (@frankenlincoln) for the tip.

This post has been brought to you by The Letter B.

“The Hoba! The Hobaaaaa!” TGIF, Geekadelphians! Sorry I left you hanging about a PopSci update last week… but I found out I got a full-time job (!!) so, you know what that means…

Here’s what’s happening:

• It’s a crazy week for sustainable science, which is pretty awesome news. Lots of little interest pieces about energy-saving initiatives are popping up everywhere! Some favorites being cows walking on treadmills, Danish hotel guests riding bike generators and energy-absorbing sidewalks.

• Neatorama has sweet pics of the Hoba Meteorite in Africa, which is 9 feet long and weighs 60 tons! Oh baby, that’s a large rock.

• Life was found in Trinidad’s Pitch Lake! Pitch Lake is a hot asphalt lake boiling with all kinds of toxic gases and that has little water. Pitch Lake is the closest thing on Earth that resembles the hydrocarbon lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan. It’s been speculated that life could be supported on the gas giant’s moon for some time… but things are looking even more optimistic: “if microbial life can survive in Pitch Lake, it might be able to thrive on Titan’s hostile surface.” Nothing has been found in space yet, but gives us hope!

• If you watch the news at all, you heard about the crazy volcanic eruption in Iceland! After being quiet for nearly 200 years, Volcano Eyjafjallajokull (yes, really) has been having activity for the better part of a month, but only this week had such a crazy plume of ash invade the skies that European flights are being grounded. Not to mention you can see the cloud from space!

• Um, I don’t know how I feel about this… but sheep are tripping balls and being shot with tasers. Why? For testing the Taser x26, which is apparently used in law enforcement. Great.

• Last but not least, PopSci tackles reader questions about sending nuclear waste into the Sun. Sorry guys, anything that resembles a part of Day Break, Part Two gets nixed in my book before scientific explanation even begins.

This post has been brought to you by The Letter B.

HELP! IT'S THE CLOVERFIELD MONSTER!

Good afternoon! I’m so excited for tonight’s Geekadelphia Fiesta party at North Bowl. Mikey and Tim have plenty planned– so I hope I will be seeing you all there. In the mean time, here’s to servin’ up some science:

• THANKS FOR RUINING SEAFOOD FOREVER. I’m not kidding. Have you seen the 2.5 foot-long seabug that popped out of the ocean last week?! I keep scrolling under the image because it’s giving me chills and I live on the 17th floor of a landlocked building! A bit of a thrill-seeker, Crazy Sea Bug (more formally referred to in the article as a previously unstudied, harmless, giant isopod) apparently attached itself to a remotely operated submarine and then scared the team surfacing the ship. Yes, Crazy Sea Bug terrorized robo-sub. You’re welcome.

• Talk about drilling down! PopSci released an article on the world’s deepest drill: “Chikyu research vessel is capable of fetching samples at depths of 2,890 feet below the seabed, two to four times that of any other drill.” It sounds so science fiction, but apparently this is real. Don’t tell the mole men.

• Happy almost anniversary, The Human Genome Project! On June 26, 2000, the head of the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute met in the White House with Craig Venter, founder of Celera Genomics and President Bill Clinton. Almost 10 years ago, the researchers announced that the human genome’s three billion base pairs of DNA had been mapped with an initial draft of their findings. Today the project continues and has made great strides and scientists hope these projects will fill the massive gaps that remain in current genetic explanations for most common diseases.

• Wake up and smell the trash! Beijing Deploys Giant Deodorant Cannons to Freshen Up City Landfill. I’m not going to lie, I was cracking up at the title… especially how there are ‘deodorant guns that shooting fragrance based on Italian and German technology’ (um, whatever that actually means)… but after reading it, some light was shed on the importance of developing/ implementing a waste-management system that can deliver for a city with 17-million people producing more trash then they can handle.

• “A Dose of Embryonic Cells Could Induce Infant-Like ‘Plasticity’ in Brain, Allowing it to Rewire Itself Like New.” According to an awesome PopSci article out earlier this week, a study suggests that ‘it may be possible to transplant immature neurons into the visual cortex/other parts of the brain damaged by stroke, trauma, developmental disorders, psychiatric illness or aging’ –allowing the brain a second chance to wire itself like new.

This post has been brought to you by the letter B.

Happy Friday! Here’s your weekly helping of headlines about evolutionary science, new technology, extinct-things and The Final Frontier:

• So what if I watch an old VHS copy of Jurassic Park before I go to bed, sometimes… OK, fine– all the time. Geekologie enlightened me on the existence of Dinoogle , and search engines will never be the same (…especially for the Chicxulub crater).

• A Wired Science article discusses the social culture of chimps… and how new studies say it’s almost exclusively driven by females. Haaa-aay.

• You’ve heard of dark matter (Cavil wants to smell it!), you’ve heard of dark energy…. but have you heard of ‘dark flow’? Pop Sci continues to make my head hurt with a study on ‘dark flow’ –the gravitational pull of matter  beyond the edge of the known universe. Seriously.

• Triassic-Jurassic extinction explained! “Dinosaurs Rode Volcanic Armageddon to Victory” on Wired Science is about the series of mass extinctions before the rise of the ‘saurs. Read it! It involves Pangea and 610,000 years of volcanism!

• “A new member of the human evolutionary family has been proposed for the first time based on an ancient genetic sequence, not fossil bones… if confirmed, would have lived near Stone Age Neandertals and Homo sapiens.” The most recent discovery was made by studying a mitochondrial sequence… no word if our long lost hominid cousin is actually a Jedi.

This post has been brought to you by the letter B.

Skyscraper of the future? Don’t believe me? See the first bullet for the full-size image.

Happy Friday, fellow Geekadelphians! Did you beware Ides of March? Did you wear green, get rowdy and drink beer? Did you hide from people who were wearing green, getting rowdy and drinking beer? Here comes this week’s edition of Geek Weekly– get excited!

• Wired Science ran an awesome article about an awesome architectural entry submitted to eVolo Magazine’s futuristic skyscraper contest. “Designed by Sarly Adre bin Sarkum of Malaysia, the waterscraper would be about as tall as the Empire State Building, but with only a couple of stories exposed above the surface. The whole building would be a self-sufficient, floating, archeology.” And, as you can see from the sweet picture above, IT HAS TENTACLES!

• In what sounds eerily like the flashback sub-plot of V for Vendetta, a former Pfizer employee is suing the company for contracting an artificial virus created by a colleague.

• Apparently, people build their own jet-powered motorcycles. And atomic clocks… cool!

• Crazy architectural developments are now open for all walks of society, including felons! Check this article out about building a prison in the sky. SRSLY.

• What do The Terminator and an Earth-bound asteroids have in common? A new study is showing that we mere Earthlings aren’t as prepared for planetary collision as we thought. Blowing up something hurdling at us through space  will lessen impact, and likely be the only thing saving us from ending up like T-Rex & Co, right? Um, NOT ANYMORE! PopSci ran an article and said that “new research from Los Alamos National Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that if the asteroid isn’t moving fast enough, or if the nuke isn’t big enough, the asteroid will pull itself back together, T-1000-style, within a matter of hours.” WHAT?! As if that’s not crazy enough, the projected solution get’s a little Superman (1978).

This post has been brought to you by the letter B.