Citing a lack of revenue, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California has shut down the Allen Telescope Array of radio dishes that have been scanning the skies for signals from extraterrestrial life for decades.

And that's the problem, isn't it?   As optimistic as it sounds to laypeople, the success metric was that a civilization more than 400 years away - because we know there are none closer - would have to have sent low-tech radio signals to a planet that lacked the technology to receive radio signals when they sent them.   The aliens basically would have needed to know the future, which means they didn't need radio waves.

Rumor has it that Scienceblogs.com, the blogging network owned by SEED Media, has finally been sold.   I told people here in 2009 that it was in play and anyone would want to acquire Prof. P.Z. Myers on their network so certainly people would have talked to Adam Bly about it, but it doesn't take long to figure out you could instead hand Myers a suitcase full of money and some equity and save the millions Bly felt like the entire thing deserved.  

Not many plumbers become known worldwide for significant fossil discoveries but self-taught paleontologist and archaeologist Harley Garbani did just that, finding skulls of the youngest-known Tyrannosaurus rex and the youngest-known Triceratops in a distinguished citizen science career.

His finds are on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the University of California Museum of Paleontology and other places.   Garbani was citizen science before it needed a name - a time when scientists were not primarily academics.    Mostly he liked to hunt  for fossils in the Badlands and his knowledge was based on experience.

What happens when you subsidize technology and then have a deficit in government?  You tax the people you just paid.

In Washington state, after years and millions of dollars in tax breaks to purchase electric (and hybrid) vehicles to make it at least close to economically feasible for mainstream drivers, the government has realized something horrible - those drivers aren't using enough gasoline, which means they aren't paying enough in gasoline taxes and, with a $5 billion deficit, that is bad.

Plus, if you're an electric vehicle owner, you can't really object when a politician - especially one you voted for - says you still aren't doing your fair share for the environment.