via Nature by Numbers on Vimeo.

Beautiful music, video, and math.

I’ve heard people say “we need to make science cool” – a lot of that talk was at ScienceOnline 2010 – and that would be nice, but I don’t think that’s really the answer. “Science” isn’t really going to beat out American Idol or the NFL or whatever.

Cool is important, but I think we need to make science relevant. There’s a difference. For example, I think every scientist should listen to Robert Krulwich’s 2008 Commencement Address to graduates of Cal Tech:

“When a cousin, or an uncle, or a buddy comes up and asks you, “so what are you working on?” even if it’s hard to explain, even if you know they don’t really want to hear it – not really – I urge you to give it a try. Because talking about science, telling stories to regular folks is not a trivial thing. Scientists need to tell stories to non-scientists because science stories – and you know this – have to compete with other stories about how the universe works and how the universe came to be. And some of those other stories – Bible stories, movie stories, myths – can be very beautiful and very compelling. But to protect science, and scientists – this is not a gentle competition – you’ve got to get in there and tell yours, your version of how things are and why things came to be.”

Yes, we should celebrate science and scientists in our pop culture. But it’s not enough. Science has to be accessible and relevant. Those who do it must be able to talk about it – not “media trained” but able to explain, in simple terms, what it is, why it’s important to them, and why could be important to everyone else.

via It’s Not a Lecture: Science Has a Serious PR Problem.

Jessica Lin and three other female Harvard University students—Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar—created sOccket to produce a soccer ball that generates cheap, clean, off-grid electricity when rolled. The sOccket ball captures the energy from impact that is normally lost to the environment when the soccer ball is kicked, dribbled, or thrown and stores this energy for later use.

Their project started as a team project for an engineering sciences class at Harvard. They were inspired by dance floors that capture the energy of dancers jumping and moving around.

The ball uses inductive coil technology–similar to flashlights that power up when shaken. Each 15 minutes of play with the ball generates enough power to light up an LED lamp for 3 hours, so a soccer game could easily provide light for a day.

In most African countries, 95 percent of the population is living off-grid with no access to electricity. With sOccket, people in developing nations will no longer need to walk 3 hours simply to charge their cell phones. The power will—quite literally—be in their hands. The sOccket ball can be used to light an LED lamp, or charge a cellphone or battery.

via Jessica Lin is a Changemaker | Changemakers.

With input from people around the world … an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Now their conclusions are revealed on this website.

From urban centers to remote corners of Earth, the depths of the oceans to space, humanity has always sought to transcend barriers, overcome challenges, and create opportunities that improve life in our part of the universe.

In the last century alone, many great engineering achievements became so commonplace that we now take them mostly for granted. Technology allows an abundant supply of food and safe drinking water for much of the world. We rely on electricity for many of our daily activities. We can travel the globe with relative ease, and bring goods and services wherever they are needed. Growing computer and communications technologies are opening up vast stores of knowledge and entertainment.

As remarkable as these engineering achievements are, certainly just as many more great challenges and opportunities remain to be realized. While some seem clear, many others are indistinct and many more surely lie beyond most of our imaginations. Today, we begin engineering a path to the future.

via Grand Challenges for Engineering.

The top two vote getters were my top two as well – make solar energy affordable and reverse-engineer the human brain.  While I’m a do-gooder at heart, the reality of the world is that the best way to help the poor in the world is to increase their economic opportunity, and I think that a wholesale shift in energy sources and the ability to create artificial thinking machines are the greatest potential sources of growth in the future.

Which ones do you think are most important?

…I’d like to lay down two rules everyone should try and follow:

#1: TCGs are for fun, not pain. Throw elbows at will and play to win, but remember this is a community. This is not the place to make yourself feel better at someone else’s expense.

#2: If someone falls down, you pick them back up. Is there a new guy at your local hobby store who came with a starter deck, quietly sitting by himself, and he doesn’t know anyone? Introduce yourself, and make him feel welcome. Did you just beat an inexperienced player with a bad deck? Shake his hand, and be friendly. Offer up some deck tips, or even strike up a conversation unrelated to Marvel Superstars. Let’s make sure every player has a great experience, even if they don’t win a game all day.

There are other games where you can be out for yourself, crush everyone in your path without regard, and get rewarded for it. And for some people, this is what they’re looking for: a stressful, hypercompetitive environment.

But Marvel Superstars will be different. It’s about putting down the mouse or console controller, and getting out of the house to make new friends at your local hobby store. It’s about having fun playing a game with people face-to-face, in a positive environment, and encouraging as many people as you can to join in the experience. It’s about building the kind of community that picks people up when they fall, instead of stomping on their bodies until they learn the hard way or leave.

That’s what this is about, and that’s what we’re going to build together.

via Marvel Trading Card Game News Archive.

Science is best viewed the way we view democracy: Democracy is the best way for societies to organize themselves and make decisions in ways that respect and protect individual rights and freedoms. Science is the best way for society to understand the world around us and ourselves. Science and democracy serve each other and neither can long survive without the other.

If society comes to distrust science—and many do—then where will we turn for answers? What other system does our public discourse have for finding out about the world? Our democratic institutions depend on science being healthy and trusted. Democracy is no substitute. It’s a great system for making decisions, but a rotten system for finding the truth. Science is the best societal tool at our disposal for knowing thing about our world…

…I do think more of us need to speak out in defense of science and what it represents for our society. Unless we do so, we will find our society adrift without any means of getting the good, trustworthy information that democracy needs to make good decisions.

via Phil Windley’s Technometria | On Science, Society, and Democracy.

Intelligence is a process, not a fixed, gene-determined, thing. This process begins very early on, before we can even really see it, and we therefore often confuse these early, invisible stages with some sort of innate giftedness. Then we test kids and report the results as innate differences — this one is gifted, this one is not. This one has extra promise; that one does not. We send the “gifted” ones to good schools with small class sizes, better-trained teachers, better infrastructure, better relationships with parents, and higher expectations. We send the apparently-unpromising kids to under-funded, teach-to-test schools with minimal expectations.

And then we tell ourselves that we live in a meritocracy. Jennifer Senior’s piece helps expose that fallacy.

via The Myth of the Meritocracy – David Shenk.

Magic is no doubt the granddaddy of trading card games, and many of the other trading card games are designed and developed by Magic Pro Tour alums.  Trading card game mechanics are hopelessly wide open (probably Turing Complete but I need to do some homework there), so each game is built on a few key assumptions.  This article from the Marvel Superstars site describes what’s great about its gameplay in contrast to some things people don’t like about Magic.  It’s worth reading the whole article (and all of the Marvel news) if you’re interested in trading card game design.

We know that people love a whole slew of different things about trading card games. You might enjoy creating original decks the most, while your buddy digs TCGs for the community. One of the things that I find the most appealing is the simple fun of playing the cards. I mean, actually playing the cards. Not saying “Draw, go,” not having my cards fizzle, and not watching my opponent drag out a combo that requires him to search his deck four times while I wonder if I’ll get to play my first turn. I like to make plays, and see what tactic my opponent will come back with.For all the people out there that came to play, take a look at how Marvel Superstars brings more action to your tabletop than your typical TCG experience.

via Marvel Trading Card Game News Archive.

• you know the sponsors without even thinking Thank You @DNAMail, @Ustream, @WebSpy, @PowerVPS, @Bing.
• Jason has mentioned your name in show more than once.
• you remember the Deadpool.
• you’ve listened to more than one episode in a day.
• you knew Jason was joking about the iPad.
• you have written a review.
• you have multiple comments on this blog.
• you can finish “Like a wheelchair at _________”.
• you know the full version of “Insights from Tyler”.
• you’ve clipped and posted a TWiST video.
• you have called in to “Ask Jason” or “Jason’s Shark Tank”.
• you have been RT by @Jason.
• you have seen all the episodes.

13 total – I’d say we qualify!

via You Know You’re a TWiST Superfan if… | This Week in Startups TWiST.