Boeing Departure Shakes Wichita’s Identity as Airplane Capital
The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, January 18, 2012

This is unfortunate. However, Boeing should never have won the tanker contract. EADS proposed a better airplane. The jobs aren’t lost to the American economy, as manufacture is simply moving to Seattle.

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airplane · boeing · bombardier · cessna · economy · jobs · kansas · learjet · manufacturing · raytheon · wichita

I got a text message yesterday informing me that my New England Gold Pass was ready for me to pick up at the Sunday River season pass desk. Pretty sweet perk from my employer, Outside Television, eh? I couldn’t just let that thing sit up there unclaimed and unused, could I?

I headed up to Sunday River by myself this morning somewhere just after 6:30. I had to stop at my office to get my new Burton snowboard and attach the bindings. It’s been sitting in my office for months, practically begging me to ride. Burton sent it free of charge under their warranty program, since I cracked my board last season. I stopped at Starbucks at a Turnpike service station to get coffee and calories. Kirsten sent me with a couple Red Bulls. Ain’t she sweet?

I picked up my pass at the desk. The lady who issued it was very nice, and congratulated me on getting my first ever season pass (computers tell all).

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burton · gopro · redbull · season pass · ski resort · snow · snowboarding · sunday river · winter

Last night Kirsten and I drove to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to listen to science journalist Carl Zimmer talk about his new book, “Science Ink.” It was a fascinating talk. Carl covered the history of tattoos all the way back to Ötzi the Iceman. The bulk of the evening was spent sharing the tattoos from the book and their stories. Scientists are deeply passionate about their work, and the tattoos they get tend to be full of meaning and symbol. The science and story of these tattoos was fascinating.

Three people whose tattoos appear in the book were in the audience. Carl invited them to talk about their own tattoos, which they all did. It was very cool.

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carl zimmer · harvard · harvard museum of natural history · hmnh · Science · science ink · tattoo

Readers of this blog know one of the highlights of this year and last has been the PopTech Conference in Camden, Maine. The presenters are always brilliant, interesting, and inspiring. This year I asked my daughter Skye (12) to read the speaker bios and let me know who she would like for me to be sure to meet. One of the two she requested was Sarah Fortune, a microbiologist from the Harvard School of Public Health. The Fortune Lab Sarah runs is dedicating to learning about Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which annually kills two million people.

When Sarah sat beside me in the Green Room at PopTech I told her about Skye and our love of science. Sarah then invited me to bring Skye down to visit her lab at Harvard. She insisted that visiting a “real” science lab would be a better experience even than spending the same time at the Boston Museum of Science. She could not have been more right.

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bacteria · harvard · Harvard School of Public Health · HSPH · microbiology · Sarah Fortune · Science

The low-beam bulb on my 2004 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx burned out a few days ago. The removal and replacement took less than five minutes. This is how it’s done.

Remove the two 10mm bolts that secure the headlight assembly.

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auto · chevrolet · chevy · do it yourself · headlight · hint · how-to · instructions · lightbulb · maintenance · malibu · maxx · removal · replacement · tip · vehicle

Last weekend we finally returned to the New England Aquarium in Boston. We took Skye’s friend Katie, because we dig her.

I think I can speak for the family and say that we love marine ecosystems, and have a special affinity for their biological diversity. While we’ve enjoyed a membership to the Museum of Science for several years, we have not had a membership to the Aquarium. It was about time!

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boston · jelly fish · new england aquarium · Science · sea turtle · subway

A New Chapter for E-Books [subscription required]
Lavish electronic-book projects point toward the pinnacle of the medium.
Technology Review, November/December 2011, page 79.

This is exciting!

Next year, Nature Education will release a more comprehensive attempt to rethink the electronic book, a $49 textbook called Principles of Biology. It results from the vision of Vikram Savkar, senior vice president and publishing director of Nature Publishing Group, who was responsible for launching the company’s education arm in 2007.

Students don’t buy a copy of the book—they buy lifetime access. The plan is for the textbook to serve not only as a reference for the class but as a pointer to further knowledge. Instead of publishing revised editions, Savkar’s team will keep the book up to date.

Principles of Biology is written as a series of more than 200 self-contained modules; the publisher has suggested an order for the modules, but instructors who use the book in their classes can freely drop or shuffle them. Instructors can also choose settings that increase or decrease the difficulty of the material. Principles of Biology connects related modules, and with just a click, students can access journal articles, summaries of those articles, and online resources that weren’t produced by Nature.

To make this possible, Savkar’s team shied away from creating the sort of e-book familiar to users of the Kindle or iPad. Principles of Biology is fundamentally a website, built in part with a developing technology called HTML5 that’s designed for interactivity and can appear on any device with a Web browser. (Principles also uses Flash, so it can be read in browsers that don’t yet support HTML5.) Savkar says that tying the book to the Internet itself, rather than creating specific apps or versions for specific devices, is the only way to keep the development cost down over time while ensuring that students can access the book from anywhere.

Principles of Biology at Nature Education.

book · e-book · technology review · textbook

I love Portland. It’s so gorgeous in the Old Port today.

My panoramas.

360panorama · maine · occipital · panorama

Yesterday I woke up early to go flying with my mom, Jeff and his friend Heidi. We got to the airport at 06:30, but we couldn’t find the airplane. After searching the ramp several time it was finally located in a hangar behind a huge Hawker. By the time we climbed in the plane, the Earth had already rotated enough that the sun was showing above the horizon. We missed our sunrise shots, but were determined to enjoy ourselves anyways.

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flying · jeff olivier · kathy longacre · maine

I took Jenna on a daddy-daughter date Saturday. It wasn’t planned, but it was awesome nonetheless. I wanted to go to the Palace Diner in Biddeford for breakfast, and didn’t want to go alone. Jenna happened to be the only other person awake, so I invited her. She excitedly accepted my offer, and we were off.

I had tentative plans to go flying with my friend Sean, who would be bringing his “little brother” Zach. I hadn’t flown with Jenna in Maine, so invited her to fill the third seat. Again, she was eager to go.

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brunswick · flying · jenna · maine