403 - T-shirts

1. WearScience Jeremy Kalgreen is an artist, photographer and t-shirt designer.

2. UFO Pyramid he's been offering these awesome shirts that promote science and poke fun at "creation science".

3. I've Had a Few His regular t-shirt shop offers some great non-sciencey designs as well.

4. Dark Energy But it seems like Jeremey must be a true geek cause he keeps coming back to stuff like this.

5. Artsfest All this t-shirt talk reminds me: If you are in the south Chicago area, you should come tho Governor State University's artfest. There are tons of arty events going on all day. I'll be helping visitors design and print their own shirts.

372 - Contests

1. Digital Build a one of a kind clock using this electronics kit from furni and if it is good, it might make it into their next commercial collection.

2. Scratch You always hear about how winning the lottery is unlucky. In most cases that idea is totally bunk. However, for this girl, winning only $500 actually did cause a couple of problems.

3. Veggie Win $20 by entering your best, easy to prepare, vegetarian recipe. The deadline is June 30th, only three days from now, so hurry up hippies!

4. Dogs I think there is something fishy going on with Nathan's Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest. In May, Takeru Kobayashi's record was broken by American Joey Chestnut, who ate 59.5 hot dogs in just 12 minutes. A couple of weeks later, it was reported that Kobayashi would probably be taking a sabbatical due to the death of his mother. Then, we hear that he will not be competing at all due to sudden arthritis of the jaw. Maybe I'm a cynic, but to me, these excuses sound phony.

5. A Moment of Science Rebecca of Skepchick, in honor of the death of Don Herbert, has posted an interesting youtube challenge. The point is to film yourself doing a Mr. Wizard-esque science experiment and post it for the world to see. P.S. the last frame of the video freezes on a pretty funny face. I've included it for you here.

370 - Science!

1. Dr. Heard Dr. Heard may have lacked some of the showmanship of a Bill Nye but he amazes nevertheless. Notice that none of the audience members is anywhere near his demonstrations. That's for a good reason.

2. Steve Spangler It would seem that Steve Spangler's appeal would be broader than appearances on some local affiliate's morning show and the occasional (expensive) gig at a school or museum. I'd watch his show if he had one! Maybe he's doing well enough with his online store that he doesn't need the hassle of producing a weekly program.

3. Robert Krampf I did this demonstration with my students. The tension in the room as the kids wait for the water balloon to pop is palpable! When there's no big explosion of water and latex, I think the kids are a bit disappointed, but their curiosity is piqued nonetheless.

4. Bill Nye the Sci-Fi Geek What science day would be complete without Bill Nye...re-enacting one of his favorite scenes from what could be his favorite movie (for all I know.)

5. Unemployed Where did that carboy (big glass jug) go!?

359 - Interview: Amy Boling

1. Tell Us About Yourself Name is Amy Boling and I'm married with two dogs. That's not TO two dogs mind you, but to one wonderful human. I live in the dirty sweaty bayouey part of southern Louisiana, and I love it. On etsy I am AmyBoling for artworks and Bellaroo for more craftsy type things. I have an M.F.A. in painting and drawing.

2. What Is Your Work About? My work is about potential and hope and relationships. Connections. I use lots of shapes over and over like eggs, pods, boats, eyes. Those shapes are similar to seeds, and seeds are these amazing little things that contain everything in the universe.

3. From Where Does Your Inspiration Come? Lately inspiration has come from my environment and big bad thoughts, which have been inextricably linked for most of us down here the past year and a half. I get ideas from sitting down and getting my surface dirty. I rarely make preliminary sketches, and I have to get rid of that blank white surface in order for anything to happen. So the first thing I do is to put some mark or blob or something down. I know it will get painted over sooner or later, usually right away. I count on painting over lots of things in order for the work to be finished. I cut lots of things out of newspapers. I have piles of tiny newspaper image bits.

4. Outside of Art and Crafts, What Are Your Interests? I am interested in truly everything. I have seriously wanted to be a hundred different things based on some fascinating book I read or some trip I've taken. Main things that catch my attention right now are all kinds of science, world cultures, history, reading anything, gardening, cooking, sewing, floating on my back, old movies, new movies, and watching bugs, especially ants. I desperately want a dissecting microscope.

5. Anything Else You'd Like Us to Know About? I have a flickr account with all of my etsy related images on it: And a blog which I neglect called Feeding the Bobbin.

358 - Mr. Wizard

1. Don Herbert: Dead You probably know him as Mr. Wizard. After a distinguished stint as a bomber pilot during WW2, Mr. Herbert returned to the states where he worked on educational radio programs for children in the late 1940's. During this time he was working on a concept for a show that would promote the wonder of science on the newish television medium. In 1951, this show idea became Watch Mr. Wizard, a program which was eventually broadcast on over 90 stations across the country and spawned a 50,000 member strong childrens' science club.

2. Mr. Wizard's World Watch Mr. Wizard's success lasted until its eventual cancellation in the mid 1960's After this Don Herbert began writing science books and making educational films for schools. In 1984 the burgeoning children's cable channel, Nickelodeon, approached Mr. Herbert to produce a new show based on his previous work. This resulted in Mr. Wizard's World, the incarnation probably most familiar to this site's visitors. The Nickelodeon show continued until 1990 and was still shown in reruns as recently a 2000.

3. Sit Down In 2005, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences conducted an in-depth interview with Don Herbert. It seems his hearing is pretty much shot at this point, which might explain why his show ended when it did.

4. Sit Down Still it is pretty interesting to hear about his early days and the multiple shows and other science programs he worked on.

5. Legacy I'm just going to hope that you have 2 hours to spare so you can watch the whole interview even though, by the end of the interview he seems a bit fed up with the whole thing and even a little bitter about his career. I hope he knew how important he was to generations of young people.

348 - Pinholes

1. Pinhole I've been thinking a lot about pinhole photography lately and came across this incredible photographer on flickr, Imre Becsi, who uses a modified flower pot to make work which reminds me of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth

2. Instamatic My Ass I'm trying to modify a point and shoot camera so that I can have the convenience of using 35mm film and one hour processing. So far my results haven't been perfect. It is really really hard to make pinhole in aluminum only .19mm in diameter. Figuring out exposure times is a real chore as well.

3. Quaker In case you don't know, a pinhole camera is a simple image recording device without a lens. Pinhole photographs usually have infinite depth of field and extremely wide angle views. Recent tradition presumes that pinhole cameras should be made in cardboard boxes or oatmeal containers to produce pictures on large format negatives or sheets of photo paper.

4. Resources If you can get the oatmeal box to work, you might want to move on, experimenting with different containers, learning which hole diameters work best with which focal lengths, and figuring out the concept of reciprocity. Speaking of which, if anyone knows of a good reciprocity chart for different film types and extra long exposures, I'd love to know about it.

5. Wood Eventually you might build a pretty extravagant camera. Or you could just buy one of these awesome teak box cameras from Zero Image. I'd take the Zero 135.

344 - Boats and Ships

1. Treasure Hunt It should be a happy time for investors in the publicly traded treasure seeking company, Odyssey Marine Exploration. Recently granted exclusive rights and permission to salvage payed off big when these adventures started pulling in what is expected to be the largest recovered shipwreck treasury in history, estimated to be worth somewhere around $500 million.

2. Dinner is Served A container ship load of provisions destined for Southern Chinese restaurants was found drifting off the coast of China. Where was the crew? Well, it is suspected thatthey abandoned ship to avoid being caught smuggling in their cargo of over 5000 rare and "critically endangered" animals that wealthy Chinese diners love noshing on despite the legal and environmental ramifications.

3. Ghost Ship Another drifting ship story. This one was a three man yacht found mysteriously with its passengers missing despite the fact that its engines were running, computers were active, and dinner was set on the table ready for eating.

4. Avast If I had to make a guess, I'd say those yachters were probably taken by real life, modern pirates. I suspect, they were killed and probably dumped overboard near whichever one of these pirate activity areas is closest to Australia.

5. You're the One I imagine you've heard this story before since the article is nearly 3 years old, but it is still pretty interesting. It's the story of how oceanographers have used rubber bath toys, which were washed off a cargo ship, to track and study wind patterns and ocean currents. See. I told you you heard it before.

342 - Memories

1. How to Get Photographic Memory in 40 Days Here's a few ways that you can supposedly improve your memory. All of them should be taken with a grain of salt, but maybe its worth it to try a few of them out. For instance, I don't really see how looking at a moving watch hand could do anything, but it couldn't hurt to spend 2 minutes a day testing this theory.

2. How to Help Your Memory by Using Your Eyes Your eyes are attached directly to your brain, so there could be something to this memory improvement technique, but I'm still pretty skeptical.

3. Five Ways to Improve Your Memory This guy gives five techniques that all seem pretty much generally accepted methods for living healthier. I guess if your body is healthy, your mind might be too. In any event he does provide one specific piece of advice that seems pretty practical; If you have a hard time remembering things, write them down.

4. Magnets May Make the Brain Grow Stronger Anything associate with magnet therapy sets off my quackery warning bells. Yet research with mice suggests that magnetic stimulation might increase growth of memory centers of the brain. Of course I wouldn't run out and get a Miracle Magnet Helmet® just yet.

5. Memry After you've complete all these methods of memory improvement, you can test your new brain skills on the classic game of Concentration using images culled from Flickr. I've conveniently populated this game with images of geek girls dressed in Slave Leia costumes.

320 - Sunday

1. This Oughta be Good Don't forget to watch Kirk Cameron (famous for his role on Growing Pains) and Ray Comfort (famous for suggesting a genetically modified banana proves the existence of god) when they debate the scientific evidence of god with The Rational Response Squad (famous for instigating you-tubers to renounce the holy spirit.) Since none of the participants are actually scientists, I'm sure there will be a lot of incredibly well researched, scientifically valid information presented. Can sarcasm be accurately discerned from the written word without the aid of punctuation based emoticons?

2. Take My Pope...Please The George Bush anti-terrorism scare tactic has been so successful that even the Pope has started using it. After an Italian stand-up comedian, Andrea Rivera, made a few jokes pointing out what he believes to be hypocrisy in the Roman Catholic Church, the vatican issued a newspaper article in which they called Rivera "dangerous" and claim his routine is "terrorism." The thing that surprises me the most about this story is that Italy has its own stand-up comedians.

3. Toasted and Shredded The Creation Museum in Kentucky makes a lot of claims that are one hundred percent contrary to everything modern science knows about paleontology. For instance: Dinosaurs and humans frolicked together happily less than six thousand years ago; Noah's flood was real and his arc was filled with baby dinosaurs to maximize its storage space; When Adam and Eve ate an apple, dinosaurs turned carnivorous; Before that T-Rex used his razor sharp, serrated teeth for breaking open the tough husks of delicious coconuts.

4. Republican Repression Did anyone watch the republican presidential debates last week? It was more boring than the democrats the week before. All the online polls (which we know are not accurate) are claiming Ron Paul came out on top. All the mainstream news shows (which we know are not "fair and balanced") are claiming that victory for either McCain, Giuliani, or Romney. Thankfully, none of the "winners" were among the candidates that raised their hands when asked "Who here doesn't believe in evolution?" that dubious honor goes to Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo.

5. Holy Water, Holy #@&!!! It might be serious, and I hope Cardinal Francis George didn't hurt himself too badly, but even he might have to admit the comedic potential of a priest slipping and falling in a puddle of his own holy water. At least it wasn't a banana peel. Perhaps the first rule of public swimming pools should apply to church services as well: No Splashing.

319 - Genre Pictures

1. Drive-In Another invite to my outdoor double feature. I'm pushing the boundaries next Friday with The Tenant and Suspiria. I haven't seen either one, but I think they should both be pretty safe, without much nudity or swearing. Probably some gore, though. Anyway, everyone reading this is invited, though I imagine only a couple of people that know me will show up.

2. Grindhousery Boing Boing beat me to it but I here it is anyway, a collection of mainstream film posters redesigned into the style of genre, and exploitation pictures. It should be noted that six months ago virtually no one knew the term "grindhouse."

3. It Came From the Lab Scary stories of scientific research straight out of a horror or sci-fi movie. Reviving long dead viruses, human limb regeneration, vicious genetically altered carnivores, the solar shield, and merciless robot soldiers.

4. Sci-Fi Spectacular This is where I'll be tomorrow, numbing my ass with over 12 straight hours of classic and modern science fiction films at The Music Box Theatre in Chicago. From Metropolis to Starship Troopers.

5. Barbarella "In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Duran-Duran. Along the way she encounters various unusual people." If there's one Hollywood star I want to see play that role it is Kate Beckinsale. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to feel the same way. Plus, look at this awesome photoshopery I did over here.