Ladies and gentlemen:  Ada Lovelace — The Origin!  By Sydney Padua.  Excellent stuff!  I wish i’d had a secret cabal teaching me advanced calculus at a ridiculously young age.

Interested in doing a little science in your spare time?

• Volunteer meteorologist not just for a rainy day {Seattle Times, 4 june 2008}. Set up a backyard rain gauge and join the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network!
• UW, volunteers join forces trying to save Washington’s imperiled plants {Seattle Times, 20 november 2008}. Join the Washington Rare Plant Care and Conservation (or Rare Care) program at the UW and help with “collecting and storing seeds, research on rare plants and monitoring Washington’s rare plant populations.”
• Climate researchers seek citizen scientists {Seattle Times, 11 march 2009}. Join the USA National Phenology Network to help “measur[e] the pulse of the natural system and how it’s responding to climate change.”

A Young Mad Scientist’s First Alphabet Blocks.

Heck, i think i want these for myself.

FAIL.  I wanted it to be cool, but then, BAM!, element — excuse me, “Awesoment” #13: Boobs.  Of course.  Because it’s not SCIENCE or GEEKY unless we’re objectifying women.

On the other hand:  SO TOTALLY WIN.  A wooden table, designed as a working periodic table.  “Working” here means this:

This website documents, in great depth, a large collection of chemical elements and examples of their applications, common and uncommon. Click any element tile above and you will find probably more than you ever wanted to know about that element. All these samples (well, at least the ones that fit) are stored in a wooden periodic table, by which I mean a physical table you can actually sit at[...].

December 31st always seems like the longest day to me because i’m so anxious to get out of the office. Today feels no different from any other last day of the year.

Except that today, literally, IS the longest day of the year. Because we’re getting a leap second.