As I search the Net on freelance writing assignments, I bookmark science and technology news, tools and toys that extend my attention-span into wondering. Paying scientific attention is a distinct daily practice for me.

Scientific attention blends scientific literacy, organized skepticism, and open-ended questioning into a fun method of continuing self-education. Telling fringes from cutting edges is an ongoing process, and I allow myself to go on a tangent, opening new browser tabs, then sorting information by how recently updated it is, the affiliations of the producers and a splash of intuition. 

Every hour, I break from the project at hand and spend three or five minutes scanning the news or searching the web in scientific-attention mode. I like to go back later and zoom in on topics.

Meet the Secretary Bird, (Sagittarius serpentarius), a large, mostly terrestrial, sub-Saharan African reptile-eating bird of prey. This fringy, edgy raptor is one model for the scientific re-construction of possible feeding mechanisms of the dinosaur-like "terror birds" that stalked, grabbed and crushed prey on earth five million years ago, according to Keven Law, who posted the photo at Flickr.com.

Recently, I noticed, also:

• A treatment in pill form for Fragile X syndrome shows promise.
• An unusual "Who owns this meteorite?" legal debate is unfolding over a chunk of space that plummeted into rental space.
• Here is an entertaining video about how to id stony (chondrite)  meteorites.
• SciTopics is a science reference of research summaries written by peer-reviewed, published authors to help scientists and students keep up with many fields of research
• Chromoscope is a toy for simulating observation of the Milky Way and beyond at different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.
• News that a 125-million-year-old dinosaur named Sinosauropteryx had spiky, ginger-colored feathers.
• Bones bundled in silk at Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany may belong to the 10th-century English Princess Eadgyth.
• NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers complete a demographic census of galaxy types of 116 local galaxies and 148 distant galaxies, creating a Hubble sequence for six billion years ago that shows many more "peculiar shaped" galaxies than expected, suggesting that mergers and collisions form spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.

Attending scientifically leads to wondering on purpose. These are deliberate mental exercises that balance and merge with imagining at the frontiers of wonder.

What science and technology stuff captures your attention? Do tell!