Government Shutdown(?) Round-Up

Cartoon credit: Tom Toles

No one's sure whether the federal government is going to have a last minute save or shutdown tonight; but whether you're headed to work on Monday or not, we've got some good reads for you this weekend.

Is the next Einstein a 12 year-old from Indiana? It doesn't look like he's tipping the balance for Indiana, but you may be interested to see where your state ranks in a new study about education standards; is your state smarter than a fifth grader?

And speaking of young people, Neil Degrasse Tyson has some advice for young science communicators.

Developing a scientific worldview is important whether you work at a lab bench of have moved on to, say, representing New Jersey's 12th district and taking on IBM's Watson in a Jeopardy! challenge.

If you're interested in science communication/journalism theory, Alice has an interesting post on taking science journalism upstream.


Finally, here are two great examples of translating research publications for public consumption by two terrific bloggers:

1. Tara Smith of Aetiology reviews Michael Willrich's Pox: An American History.
2. Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science looks at a study on the origins of life started in 1958.

Happy reading everyone!