Scale of the Universe – very cool visualization!

http://htwins.net/scale/index.html

I’ve recently been drinking Kombucha in my quest for living healthy and getting back in shape after baby.  What in the world is this stuff?!  It makes me feel awake and alive and I tend to laugh like a giddy school girl when I drink it.  I’m guessing it’s just a healthy balance of microbes and bacteria…but really, what is this?

I actually had a great year due to the birth of my son, but 2010 was pretty depressing on the world stage.  I love these JibJab year in reviews, so here you go!  Pretty accurate! 

Entertaining. Shocking. Amazing. Crazy. 

Just watch.  Found via Fit Bottomed Girls.

I seriously hate ear buds.  They hurt my ears and they make everything sound like the in-flight radio stations.  Not to mention, everyone around you can hear what you are listening to.  I bought a pair of Monster Beats by Dr. Dre last fall and they are still going strong.  Granted, they are pretty much falling apart at this point, but they still work.  I’ve had to get a replacement cord and the new one has duct tape all over it, but I’ll take the unsightlyness over the pain of ear buds anyday.

These headphones make everything sound so great — you don’t realize it until you have to wear ear buds because you forgot your headphones one day…:(

Do you have a favorite pair of headphones?

I love love love love science!  In another lifetime (one in which I am very good at math), I imagine myself a biologist or physicist.  I’ve always loved science – the first thing I can remember actually wanting to be was a Marine Biologist.  Now that we are having a baby, I have high hopes for him so that I can live vicariously through him (ha!)  The next Carl Sagan, perhaps?  Who knows, but he already has more onesies and baby gear with stars, spaceships, and marine life on them than you can imagine.

Another thing that I love, which should go without saying, is constantly learning and exploring new things.  One way that I do this is through podcasts.  I have the luxury of being able to listen to podcasts at work so I fill the day with science news and history, lessons in virology and medicine, and tons of physics and astronomy.  Below are some of my favorite science podcasts that I highly recommend if you are interested in these subjects.  Are there any I am missing?

Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour

Futures in Biotech

NPR: On Science

NPR: Science Friday

Originz (great music included!)

Science Times

Scientific American

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe

StarDate

Star Stuff with Stuart Gary

Stuff from the Science Lab

This Week in Science

This Week in Virology

My half-brother Bill passed away on November 14th of a massive heart attack.  He was only 26.  This is my tribute to him.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Thank you to all the veterans that have served and are serving our wonderful country.  Last year I posted the lyrics to Billy Joel’s Goodnight Saigon, and that song still reminds me of all that has been lost and gained through the sacrifices of service men and women of the USA.  Life as we know it would not be the same without you! 

THANK YOU!!!

The Symphony of Science has done it again with “We Are All Connected” – keep ‘em coming, and of course, happy B-day Carl!

Lyrics:

[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

[Feynman]
I think nature’s imagination
Is so much greater than man’s
She’s never going to let us relax

[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature

[Nye]
I’m this guy standing on a planet
Really I’m just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There’s billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks

[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned

I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we

[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)

[Feynman]
There’s this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other

And it’s all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it’s all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature

I can’t get enough of this mashup of Carl Sagan featuring Stephen Hawking by Melodysheep.  It is so cool and a really good song!!  We ARE lucky to live in this time!

Lyrics:

[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it’s own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan}
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting