If you are in the Washington, D.C. and only have 48 hours to kill, I have bad news - the USA Science&Engineering Festival has likely packed an entire month of good stuff into this weekend, so you will need Solomon-like wisdom to choose what you want to see.

Larry Bock, head visionary of the event, is a master of logistics, planning and science enthusiasm and we've gushed over his achievements before - but just being able to get an event on the National Mall is more work than most of us would do and adding 1500 activities and 75 stage shows is downright amazing.

I get quite a lot of press releases, as you can imagine.  Dozens or hundreds depending on the day.

I don't know who decides this "week" stuff - generally, I assume people who do the marketing make the rules so if I decide I want a Science 2.0 Week I get a few people to promote it and that's that, I have a Science 2.0 Week.

I don't have a Kindle or any other e-reader.  It isn't that I am a Luddite, and it isn't that I wouldn't prefer something easier to hold than a large, hundred-year old print copy I don't want to ruin - it's mostly that online books are costly, I only get a 'license' to read them, the resolution is far lower than what eyes can see and, most of all, there is no enhanced value to compensate for any of the other shortcomings.

The HRP-4C from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan, a descendant of the HRP-4 humanoid robot that sent normal people into uncanny valley creepiness territory last year, can sing now.

Clearly catering toward Japanese men, this new fembot is a waif-like 5'2", looks really, really young and likely will have lasers or at least Vulcan cannons that come out of her arms in future models - you know, for fighting off the vampires who will be resurrected after an atomic apocalypse in the future that happens in every Japanese story these days.  

Courtesy of GrrrlScientist at Guardian Blogs (who I found courtesy of the venerable yet still awesome ScienceURLs), I got a chance to view an interview of Richard Dawkins conducted by Matt Ridley.   Dawkins is a polarizing figure and maybe not a great public face for people who just want to do positive science outreach but when he stays on message there's really no one better.