A few weeks ago, I was notified that if I wished to continue blogging at Scienceblogs/National Geographic, I’d have to agree to new terms. After considering these terms, as well as the decision to ban pseudonymous blogging, I don’t feel that the new management and I are on the same page. I have therefore decided to leave Scienceblogs. I’ve had to put...

A few months ago I got an email from Zachtronics, creators of the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, about the new indie game called SpaceChem. It was billed as “an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science.” What’s not to love? Here’s a preview. . . Science! Game reviewer Quintin...

Check out this great slideshow of fascinating advertising novelties from 1911, over at Scientific American.

Recently, Scienceblogs/National Geographic decided it would no longer host pseudonymous science bloggers. As a result, many of my former colleagues have left. I think this decision was wrong. Read on for my reasons. One: simple fairness. Several well-established pseudonymous bloggers had been active here for years. While it’s perfectly reasonable to...

This video from Xperia Studio very effectively conveys how data visualization can both leverage and challenge our conceptions of “reality.” The night sky we’ve seen since childhood, like everything else we see, is just a tiny slice of the spectrum – only what we can perceive with our limited physiology. An app that lets us “see” otherwise invisible...

Entangled, 2010 handbuilt porcelain, cone 6 glaze Kate MacDowell sculpts partially dissected frogs, decaying bodies with exposed skeletons, and viscera invaded by tentacles or ants. It’s the imagery of nightmares, death metal music videos, or that tunnel scene in the original Willy Wonka (not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing....