Lab Out Loud®

Scientists and Engineers for America

The Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) put together a few questions for our Congressional and Presidential candidates. Senator Barack Obama has submitted his responses.

Senator McCain has yet to answer. You can urge him to answer.

SEA also has a comparison of the candidates’ positions.

First a Lab Out Loud guest, then president of James Randi Educational Foundation and now he joins the MythBusters! It’s a great time to be the Bad Astronomer. (sorry PZ, but this round goes to Phil)

Catch skeptic Phil Plait help the MythBusters battle those pesky moon landing “hoaxes” on Wednesday August 27th.

This December The Weather Channel is hosting the Forecast Earth Summit:

The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth Summit is a conference for select future environmental leaders held in Washington D.C., December 5-7, 2008. The Weather Channel will provide free trips to D.C. for 20 high school students who are passionate about the environment.

Here is some information about last year’s event.

The Weather Channel also encourages you to share this widget to let students know about this opportunity while raising daily environmental awareness.

Here’s what the widget looks like:

Bill Nye is back on TV in his new show title Stuff Happens. The show airs Tuesday nights on Planet Green- a new channel from Discovery Communications dedicated to presenting programs about green, eco-friendly living.

Bill Nye explains to viewers what happens when we use stuff, where it goes when we're through with it, and what impact it all has on the environment and the entire planet.

Bill gave us a preview of the show back in episode 14 of Lab Out Loud when he talked about the unintended consequences that occur when we buy bacon. Here’s what he told us:

There’s an old supply chain from the South American Western Coast to North American farmers. And what is supplied is fish feed made from anchovies. So, American bacon pigs are fed fish from South American oceans. And so many fish are fished so aggressively that penguins are going out of business. The penguin ecosystem has been devastated, and penguin populations have been decimated by this practice. So we encourage you – the listener, the viewer – to buy…organic, grain-fed bacon. That’s what we want you to do to reduce the market for this anchovy feed. And it’s just something that humans are kind of doing by accident, but on such an enormous scale that’s it’s screwing up an entire ecosystem in the south western Pacific.

Bill will discuss this issue and others on the first episode of Stuff Happens. Airing on August 26th, this episode will be all about breakfast.

Future episodes will be about: bathrooms, kitchens, dinner, offices and more.