Tag: Hot Topic

Sciblogging: they blinded me with science

This week sees the launch of the next big thing in science communication down under – Sciblogs, the new science blogging platform from the NZ Science Media Centre. Sciblogs is hosting 25 blogs, from scientists in Crown Research Institutes, universities and private research companies, with two dozen PhDs involved. I’m letting the side down on that score… but Hot Topic is very pleased to be on the Sciblogs blogroll as one of the founding participants. There are some established bloggers on the platform, including Ken Perrott’s Open Parachute and Jim McVeagh’s MacDoctor, and there many others that deserve a wider audience. New bloggers include Andy Reisinger, a senior climate researcher from VUW, and there’s my new favourite blog with kakapo pictures: Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings (title explanation).

All Hot Topic‘s posts are being syndicated to Sciblogs, and will appear there under our own banner, but this site will continue as before. All discussion will take place here, unless and until we can work out a way of syncing comments between the to two platforms. Sciblogs looks set to be a one-stop shop for great science coverage from New Zealand, and I wish it (and all who sail in her) well.

Spot the blogger!

Race for the prize

The rather good 3 Quarks Daily has launched a new series of blog prizes, beginning with an award for the best science post. Ken at Open Parachute tipped me off, and so you’ll find I’ve taken the opportunity for a bit of self-promotion and nominated the first(*) Monckton tale — Monckton & The Case Of The Missing Curry. There’s a week of public voting (nominees here, voting here — ends on June 8th NY time), and then a shortlist will be handed over to the estimable Steven Pinker for judging. First prize (the “top quark”) is US$1,000, which is a lot more than it looks when converted to NZ dollars… Votes are therefore solicited. But if you prefer to support Ken’s entries, that’s fine by me.

* – A second Monckton tale, tentatively titled Monckton Flies West, is in preparation. But don’t hold your breath.

[Gratuitous Theremin abuse]

Bird on the wires

bellbird.jpg Another week, another step forward in the relentless march of progress. Hot Topic now has its very own Twitter account: hottopicnz. Why? Is it simply born of the insufferable self-importance of your blogger, or does it have a purpose? Probably both, but I’ll only deal with the latter. In the process of keeping up-to-date with climate issues, I read a lot of stuff that would be nice to blog. There isn’t enough time to do a proper post about everything, so the Hot Topic tweets are little text messages pointing to stuff that I think is interesting (or in the case of goats and windfarms, amusing — if you’re not a goat-owning windfarmer). New blog posts are tweeted automatically, so followers can keep right up to date. An alternative to HT’s RSS feed, using the latest micro-blogging platform. The most recent tweets will appear in the left sidebar, and you can get to the twitter feed by clicking on the timestamps there. Feel free to retweet at will…

[Definitely not Leonard Cohen]

You can’t always get what you want

The Awa Book of New Zealand ScienceHot Topic didn’t win the Royal Society of New Zealand’s first Science Book Prize: the cheque went to Rebecca Priestley, who compiled and edited The Awa Book of New Zealand Science — a very worthy winner. I had a glass of wine with Rebecca before the event, and we were both picking other books to win. We were both wrong… The judges said some very nice things about HT, which I’ll stick up in the sidebar when I can remember what they were, but the real honour was in being shortlisted.

Apart from the excitement of the presentation, the evening’s highlight was an amiable Sean Plunket pressing Richard Dawkins on which religion he’d choose if his life absolutely depended on it. After no more than moment’s thought Dawkins revealed himself to be a Pastafarian: a devotee of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The author of The God Delusion prefers a delusional god…

[Update 18/5: Kathyrn Ryan interviewed Rebecca Priestley on Nine To Noon this morning: audio here.]

[Stones (not obscure at all, StephenR)]

McKibben in Wanaka

mckibben.jpg American environmentalist, writer, educator and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben is in New Zealand this month, and will be speaking at Wanaka’s Festival of Colour on Wednesday 29th April. Bill will be on stage for two sessions at the Infinity Crystal Palace, the first of which — at 10-30am on the impacts of global warming — will also feature me: Bill’s covering the big picture, and I’m providing the local colour. It’s an honour to share the stage with Bill, and I’ll be in the audience for his afternoon gig (2-30pm), where he’s going to address how we can deal with the problem. I hope I’ve finished Deep Economy by then…