Plugging Public Outreach!

Hmm... by now, I would have expected a retort against my previous string theory post from the knuckle-head over at Background Dominated.  I guess he has seen the error of his ways and realized that I am, as usual, correct.

OK, enough about that!  I want to dedicate this post to plugging public outreach and education for science.  One problem in our society is that most people don't really understand what scientists do and how we do it.  Of course, I can give you many many examples of how science (even in the form of pure basic research) has led to advancements in our health, happiness, and general quality of life.  But it's easy to take these things for granted without understanding how the advancements came to be.

Enter the importance of education and public outreach!  This blog is one of many that attempt to inform the public about science and rational thinking (which is the core of scientific thought!).  Of course, some of my posts may be more focused on politics or hot topics (cause I like these topics!), but the theme is the same - rational thinking.

But beyond tooting my own horn, I want to use up this little piece of the world wide web to plug some other excellent blogs that are even more focused on the really freakin' cool stuff in science, particularly astronomy.

First, I definitely want to plug the various blogs of my good friend, The Noisy Astronomer.  She and I went to grad school together, and she is an EXCELLENT science writer and explainer-er (yes, I know this isn't a real word...).  She blogs for Discovery and a few other online news sources.  You can also recognize her anywhere you go by her bright pink hair!

Of course, there are many other excellent science blogs out there, including The Bad Astronomer (the name does not actually mean that he is bad at astronomy :-P ).  And I suppose you can go to Background Dominated to learn SOME science.  But don't be too fooled by this anti-stringist, as he is often times way off the mark! ;)

So, with that, go out there, read, and learn.  Google is an excellent tool in finding the many many blogs and articles that I didn't have a chance to mention here!  But most importantly in your Google searching, have fun doing it, because science is awesome!  We do really cool stuff!