What if you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider?  It isn't the craziest question in the world, since birds are dropping bread in various parts and breaking things.   But the University of Nottingham, and their Sixty Symbols project, is on the case.  Sort of.  Turns out that even for LHC experts, the effects on human skin of 300,000,000,000,000 protons moving near the speed of light is unclear.

Are you a New York City Science 2.0 readers?    If so, join American Museum of Natural History Curator Mike Shara of the
Department of Astrophysics as he jumps 50 years into the future to
a world where suborbital tourism is a popular holiday option, a research colony
exists on the Moon, we’ve surveyed and possibly even docked with an asteroid, and
ships have landed on the moons of Mars in preparation for an actual Mars
landing, to list just a few exciting and attainable targets.

In Newfoundland waiting for Hurrican Igor and need some quick hurricane self-defense?  Go here for wise hurricane tips like (5) don't turn on the propane grill to cook because the electricity went out.   Or (7), take shelter in that mobile home nearby.

Poor Thomas Friedman.  The NY Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, who only knows the science that is framed for him through progressive politics and kooky economics, thinks the Chinese are onto something with climate change.  He fawns over:“There is really no debate about climate change in China,” said Peggy Liu, chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, a nonprofit group working to accelerate the greening of China. “China’s leaders are mostly engineers and scientists, so they don’t waste time questioning scientific data.” 

Biological messiness relates to infidelity, heterogeneity, stochastic noise and variation—both genetic and phenotypic—at all levels, from single proteins to organisms. Messiness comes from the complexity and evolutionary history of biological systems and from the high cost of accuracy. For better or for worse, messiness is inherent to biology. It also provides the raw material for physiological and evolutionary adaptations to new challenges.

Excerpt from Washington Times:On Sept. 7, David Berlinski and Christopher Hitchens met for a debate in Birmingham, Alabama. Hosted by the Fixed Point Foundation, the debate premise was "Atheism Poisons Everything," a spin off of the subtitle of Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".

David Kroll at Terra Sigillata notes that CENtral Science has 9 women contributors and only 4 men, the opposite of the usual sausage-fest in science blogging at most sites and somewhere in the magical realm of social sciences in its overwhelming XX dominance.It isn't that chemistry is more female friendly than something like biology, which has majority representation of female PhDs almost directly matching American society, it may be an example (at least in chemistry) that they do other things than research after they get a degree:

As I have said too many times in too many places to count, of the four pillars of Science 2.0 I originally envisioned - communication, collaboration, publication and participation - collaboration was always going to be the hardest.Basically, it doesn't exist.   Here, an advocate outlines why he doesn't use one of the available tools, Mendeley, which is not so much science 2.0 as a reference organizer but perhaps has a kernel that could be used in the future.

"Borat" star Sacha Baron Cohen is set to play flamboyant rocker Freddie Mercury in a dramatic feature focusing on his glory days as the frontman of Queen, its producers said on Thursday.Aside from the fact that Cohen can pull off almost anything - well, that "Bruno" movie was crap but he set out to push some boundaries.  When he makes his "Ali G" movie it will be crazy successful.Until then, take a look at them side-by-side.   I expect Cohen will nail it.

Scientific American has basically fired all of its online columnists and seems to want to emulate Scienceblogs.com (without the pesky ethical angst - they are part of a multi-billion dollar company) so this sort of controversy-for-its-own sake is what their audience can look forward to - legitimizing superstitious, irrational nonsense and claiming it is a discussion point.   In reality, it is whoring-for-pageviews, though it will certainly work.Does your son like musicals?   Daughter a tomboy?   And, curiously enough, the age-old homophobic fears of parents seem to have some genuine predictive currency.