weird things wrap up, 2009
Hard to believe an entire year just went by but unless my calendar is lying to me, that’s exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow. The last time I did a year end wrap-up, this blog was up and running for only a few months so there wasn’t much to talk about. But now, Weird Things spent a year covering science news, debates and went through a few ups, downs and even a couple of lateral moves. Over the last 519 posts, most of which at least 400 words long, and more than 2,000 comments, Weird Things joined a blog network, then left it, was picked up for syndication by Time Warner and got noted by SEED Magazine, Bad Astronomy, How Stuff Works and the NYT Big Idea blog. And yours truly even got to write guest articles at The Panda’s Thumb and the new Discovery News site as well as do a podcast about UFOs and transhumanism. It’s been a very busy year…
The passing year also saw Weird Things reach out into social media, starting a Twitter feed in February and opening a Facebook page in October to help make this blog a place to exchange big ideas, explore bleeding edge science and have a good debate when we get a chance. As you can probably guess, this trend is going to continue into 2010 as the blog keeps growing and adding new content. While the final quarter of 2008 was a quick dip into the blogosphere, 2009 was an endeavor to establish a solid place in the blogging world and turn Weird Things into a fully fledged science blog with all the features you should expect from a site that’s in it for the long haul. And this means that next year will be all about building on this foundation, experimenting with new ideas and topics, and hopefully, broadening Weird Things’ reach.
You can expect to see more on high tech and computer science topics, more interviews with people who work on communicating science, deal with the incendiary mix of religion and politics to promote skepticism and critical thinking skills, or tackle the many misconceptions about sex and sexuality, as well as a steady flow of scientific discussions about exotic subjects like black holes, warp drives, bizarre stars and cyborgs. And speaking of cyborgs, 2009 saw a series of debates between yours truly and Singularitarians, from a big back and forth with the Singularity Institute’s Michael Vassar, to Michael Anissimov’s critical take on my posts. Since computers are my area of expertise and study, you can safely bet that the Technical Singularity will be a recurring topic for the foreseeable future along with transhumanism and artificial intelligence.
Just as the end of a year brings some things to a close, it also means that new things are on the horizon. So to all my readers, thanks for your views, comments and suggestions, and I invite you to stay tuned to Weird Things in 2010 as it revs up and reaches farther into the world of popular science and skepticism.
Y’know, for a black and white concrete thinking empiricist, you’re not that bad a guy Greg, LOL! ;)
Keep up the fine work and have a Happy New Year to come!
Don’t forget the Bigfeet!
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We’ve got all your bigfoot needs right here. Seriously. It’s a post about studies into bigfoot sightings and potential habitats using ecological modeling.
Now the Chupacabra, that’s a topic that hasn’t been visited yet…
Not so fast, gfish! Here it’s 10/31/2009 and I just saw an AP feed that said the Russians are planning to use a rocket device to “knock” an 880 foot diameter near-earth astroid off a collision course. According to the report ( I am not making this up ) somebody at NASA said, ( honest to God, I am not making this up! ) “Oh it’s going to miss earth by 18,300 miles and does not pose a hazard at this time.
I’m goin’ like, “Gasp! Cough, choke: We’ve got satellites in higher orbits than that!” This is either a total hoax, or somebody is misquoting or there’s a spanking new crop of damn fools at NASA. An passby that’s inside the orbit of the moon (over a quarter million miles) is potentially catastrophic. I can’t think of any way for me to find out. Not in a week anyway. Can you help?
“This is either a total hoax, or somebody is misquoting or there’s a spanking new crop of damn fools at NASA.”
Actually, it’s not a a hoax. The head of RosCosmos really did say he wanted to try and knock Apophis away from Earth. Since I’m from the former USSR, I can tell you that government officials in Russia can be pretty out there.
And yes, as odd as it may seem, letting an asteroid pass 18,300 miles above is not that big of a deal. Massive NEOs pass through a similar altitude on a pretty regular basis. As long as they’re not going to impact, it’s best to just leave them be because if you’re off in your planned intercept, you could end up knocking something that was going to pass by quietly into the populated city.
Gronk!
now I am worried.
That was my first thought. How can you know that “knocking” it into a different path won’t just insure that it will impact on the next pass?
But my next thought is what if it hits the moon? We could be subjected to a rain of debris for the next 200 years; many of which small objects could blow a small city into next Wednesday. Analagous to a 200 year long artillery barrage. Two hundred years might be optimistic.
Thank God for supercomputers. I guess they can feed all the data into a model that will look at all such options, we only need get worried if it looks bad.
And let’s hope the Russians are willing to participate in a joint effort. The report said they were offering to cooperate.
I guess this falls in the catagory of, “What you don’t know will not cause you to loose sleep. Even if it can kill you like you were an ant.”
Happy New Year