The History of Science Blogging, and More

Good stuff:

Physics World has a free PDF of their July issue, on physics and sport.

Carl Sagan's reading list from 1954, when he was 19 or 20 years old. Lots of science, plus Shakespeare, Plato, Readings in Philosophy, sci-fi novels, the Bible, literature, and more. It really is true that scientists are the most well-rounded people in civilization, and it will stay that way as long as many nonscientists are satisfied (and tolerated) with remaining ignorant of vast areas of scientific knowledge (and sometimes even boast about it).

Quote:
"Until the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, meaning flowed from ourselves into the world; afterward, meaning flowed from the world to us."
-- Chet Raymo, Skeptics and True Believers

Bora Zivkovic has an interesting, long post about the history and evolution of science blogging. Looking back I found that I started blogging on December 29, 2001. At the time I was just coding it by hand, with no blogging software. I moved to my own domain in March 2003 and used Greymatter, and then here to Blogger in May 2006. I've never been what I would call popular, but I'm OK with that -- most times when I try to be a good blogger and post lots of up-to-the-minute posts about the the most topical subjects, I start to feel uneasy after a few days, like I'm doing too much reacting and not enough thinking. Day-to-day coverage just isn't my thing.

Geophysical Research Letters: "Ice mass loss continues at a high rate among the large glacier tributaries of the Larsen B Ice Shelf following its disintegration in 2002." And yet, overall Antarctic sea ice is growing (though total (i.e. Arctic + Antarctic) sea ice is shrinking; down 2.6% decade-over-decade.

GISS: 4th-warmest June.