Are you aware of Dana Hunter’s current project? The author of En Tequila es Verdad, the blog that always makes me want to take a shot, is writing detailed essays that track events connected to the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. She’s writing them as part of her blogging over at Scientific American, but she just posted an update on Freethoughtblogs that serves as an index to all of the stories so far, so you should click here to get oriented and then click through to the stories.

Even though we know how the story turns out, Dana’s posts make for an edge of your seat thriller. Also, you probably don’t really know or remember exactly how it turns out because it was a while ago. The main thing I remember about it was hearing news from my sister who lived pretty close and got pretty heavily dumped on, and my other sister who lived a little farther away but mostly upwind, but who’s travel plans got messed up for a long time.

I hope Dana turns her story into something people visiting the region can carry along and learn stuff. There is a lot of interest these days in the Yellowstone Caldera and related magma movements and earthquake. This story, about Mt. Saint Helens is in many ways more interesting and more immediate.

I hear things are pretty busy in the Upper Upper Midwest of Alberta, Canada, and I suppose because of that, Skeptically Speaking has two off-air productions, one with the podcast just out, the other, this week’s show, coming out next week. Both are really interesting to me, and I’m sure to you as well. Here are the details:

#169 Play Reality

… we’re looking at the intersection between science and play time. Guest host Julieta Delos Santos talks to Dr. Jayne Gackenbach and Teace Snyder, about their book Play Reality: How Videogames are Changing Everything. And we’ll listen back to “The Petri Dish,” a panel discussion by kids for kids (and parents), about getting kids interested in science, recorded live at LogiCON 2012.

The podcast is available now, here.

#170 Infrastructure and You

This week, we’re taking a break from live recording. Guest host Marie-Claire Shanahan spends the hour looking at the infrastructure that makes our modern, increasingly urbanized lives possible. She’s joined by journalist Scott Huler, author of the book On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work. And she’ll speak to environmental journalist and urban design critic Tim De Chant, about his population density blog Per Square Mile.

The podcast of this episode will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, July 29.

Details, and eventually, the podcast, HERE.

CERN isn’t just the LHC. It’s also rusty windows and post war big science. Interesting video:

Within a few days of the completion of the on-line draft of Sungudogo: A Novel, scientists have published the key data describing a killer H5N1 virus.

Coincidence? I would assume so. But still….