Environment on TV & New Media

I'm heading over to London early next week to be on the jury for the EuroPAWS Environment in TV and New Media Festival 2008.

It's running at the Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place on Monday, 3 November and Tuesday, 4 November. There are going to be a lot of really interesting screenings from all over Europe - and if you're going to be there too do say hi to me!

McCain on Ireland

Senator John McCain's views on Irish taxation and the US approach to Ireland's "agile" innovation policy were just some of the topics discussed at the international Atlantic Corridor conference on science education this week.

I'm just back from the event and it really struck me that it was an excellent forum for people from different backgrounds and organisations with an interest in science education to share their views. (I should of course declare my link to the event in that I produced the video message from An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD that was shown at the event).

Chaired by Leo Enright and with the keynote address from Robert Winston, the variety of presentations helped provoke some passionate discussions and there was a real sense of the need to do be active in this area given the current global financial crisis.

The presentations will be available on-line soon and in the meantime the PDF programme of speakers can be downloaded.

Were you at the event? What do you think needs to happen with science education? What role does the media have to play? Let me know your thoughts by e-mailing me at diarmaid.mac@agtel.ie or commenting on this post.

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New web address

It turns out that some organisations in Ireland are bizarrely blocking access to sites that have the word "blog" in their address - so to make sure everyone who wants to can read this blog I've just set up a new web address for it. And I've imaginatively called it (drum roll, please): sciencecommunicationreview.com

The old address (sciencecommunication.blogspot.com) will still work but feel free to use the new one too and to spread the word...

And this new address is so long that it might even win a prize for worldslongestdomainname!

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Amazing science videos

A great collection of Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos has been put together by Wired.

My favourite only scrapes in at Number 10 - it's an incredible "musical Tesla coil" which has to be seen and heard to be believed. Have a look at it here:



Some of the others are interesting but not great - and I don't think everyone would agree that the Number 1 should go to the CERN rappers. It's a quirky little video and fun to watch if you're into your physics but I think the Tesla coil is better!

At least the Wired team welcomes people submitting their own favourite videos - and you can let me know if you've come across any good ones yourself by commenting on this post...

By the way, I first heard about this Wired special in the Science@Culture Bulletin - which is Mary Mulvihill's always fascinating "eclectic and personal guide to popular science and related events." It's recently evolved into blog format which will hopefully bring it to an even wider audience.

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