Potpourri CXVI

The week's pile has gotten thick again, so 'twould best if it were done, that it be done quickly...

Another good find from Tracy on outreach. This article suggests that the problem with outreach isn't with audiences connected to the internet, but with the technologically and educationally underserved. Meanwhile, people who already have access to the web or decent education are likely to already be familiar with the state of space exploration, nanotechnology, or other developments. As Darlene the Science Cheerleader puts it, "the rich get richer." The trick seems to be to reach underserved audiences through nontraditional means.

Here's a slight way to participate in your space program...you can go to this site and select the design for a patch to commemorate the final Space Shuttle launch.

None of us is as dumb as all of us: One of my graphics buddies at NASA pointed out some artwork developed by guys who gathered surveys in several different countries, asking what types of art people liked, what subject matters, what colors, etc...and then also what types of art they didn't like. This is as close as one can get to art by polling data.

From my NASA PAO feed, a notice from Glenn Research Center that there's a competition for high school students to put an experiment on a "BalloonSat."

I got on this mailing list awhile back, and occasionally it comes up with useful stuff. Here's a blog on the effective use of Twitter as a communication/outreach/sales tool. Bottom-line question any organization should answer before jumping into this social networking technology is: "What are you trying to accomplish?" If you can't answer the question coherently, you're just following trends without analysis, and that's a Bad Thing.

I saw this posted by one of my technophile English major buddies, Rudy: it's called SIKULI, and it appears to be a graphic user interface (GUI) of sorts. There's a YouTube attached that speaks ins Programmerese, which is completely unintelligible to me. If it makes sense to you, congratulations. It's supposed to make YOUR life easier. For those of us struggling to remember what we named and how we filed a document, it's a little advanced.

From Douglas Mallette: an article on using carbon nanotubes to make batteries from fabrics. Cool!

The internet is now in space--the International Space Station, that is. What's next?

From Regina, an interesting do-it-yourself experiment in tea bag rocketry (political pundits, keep your nasty comments to yourselves).

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• An interesting article from Der Spiegel entitled "The World Bids Farewell to Obama." It's a summary of German perspectives on the Obama administration's future reaction to the Republican taking of the late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. I wouldn't count out Mr. Obama just yet. It's not that I'm rooting for him, it's just that anyone who can take down the Clinton machine is not someone to be taken lightly.
• A Financial Times article on the United Nations waiving the first deadline for meeting carbon emissions.
• The Times of London is reporting that a U.N. official is apologizing for saying Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

The Senate of New York is increasing the amount of legislative information available to the public on the internet.

The OpenNASA folks have a blog about "how little information is available via our agency-wide employee directory." The types of information that interest the writer (Jessy Cowan-Sharp) include "who you are, what you're working on, trades or skills, and side projects." Well, good luck getting anyone over 40 or so to fill in that type of information, my friend. Sometimes it's sensitive/classified, and sometimes the over-55 crowd at NASA doesn't take all that tag cloud stuff seriously, nor do they necessarily want to share the information.

NASA data suggests that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record.

I have some other stuff in my inbox, but I think I'll punt for now. Have a pleasant evening.