With most of the first third of the book involving the non-science stories of Henrietta Lacks’ upbringing and personal life, this wonderful book demonstrates how you can reach the broad, non-science loving public by first meeting them on their own turf.

“AROUSE AND FULFILL” IN ACTION. Rebecca Skloot went far afield from science in the first third of her book by telling the back story on Henrietta Lacks — all about the hardship of her life working on a tobacco farm in Virginia. Guess what that non-science opening resulted in — Amazon Book of the Year.

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The people have spoken, and it’s pretty clear somebody is going to lose a lot of money with the movie, “Cool It,” which has only raked in $52,000 at the box office after more than a week. That’s bad. Lomborg did something far worse that spreading lies — he made an unpopular climate movie which stinks things up for everyone.

THE SKEPTICAL EGG LAYER. Guess who just found out how tough Hollywood is? With the total box office of his new movie he could hardly even buy a Prius.

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Surfing legend Andy Irons was reported dead on November 2 from dengue fever. This month’s cover article for Discover Magazine is about how global warming is causing tropical diseases to spread north, including dengue fever. Is there a connection…you tell me.

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These days lots of people are thinking to themselves, “I wonder if a good video might help bring attention to our project?”

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The video we did for Science Cheerleaders is about to pass 100,000 views on Youtube.

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You wanna see a demonstration of what a good video can do for you? Take a look at what is erupting with the Science Cheerleader project.

A month ago I joined Darlene Cavalier and her Science Cheerleaders in Washington D.C. at the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival. I hired an excellent young local videographer named Brandon Garcia (I found him off of Craigslist — one of 85 people who responded to my post — you can do the same thing). We filmed for a day, then edited for a week, ending up with a 3 minute video that is being blogged about all over the internet.

THIS is the power of video. THIS is why I wrote an appendix at the end of my book offering up a few basic tips on how to make a video that will stimulate people (rather than boreĀ – btw, in case you missed our discussion of boredom on the NY Times blog of Andy Revkin click here). THIS is why I’m headed to Norway in January to run a videomaking workshop. THIS is why we are running another video workshop at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Puerto Rico. THIS is why I’m doing a videomaking workshop at U. Mass Lowell in April. THIS is why a number of public health and medical groups are working with me now on videomaking.

On and on.

And maybe you’re saying, “Oh, sure, how tough is it to make a popular video filled with sexy cheerleaders.” Well, you wanna know how easy it is to make a boring video with sexy cheerleaders? It’s a powerful medium. You can take it either way — you can bore or you can inspire. It’s your choice.

Goooooo Science Cheerleaders!

I wrote about it when it happened. It was one of those evenings that will last forever. You can take all the panel discussions and nights of academic discourse, squash them together, and they won’t hold a candle to this one event.

It was just the two brothers, their families (which are rather extended), their friends, a whole lot of nice University of Maine folks, and a ton of great music. I’ve talked about this event previously, but my accounts are nowhere near as good as what Brian Robbins wrote (below) last week in The Commercial Fisheries News. It was a great experience, from start to finish.

Apparently, judging from the photo caption, Brian is performing with no pants on.

I grew up in Kansas. The good thing about people in Kansas is that they don’t waste a lot of time sitting around talking about doing things. They actually DO things. We need more of that.

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“See your future. Be your future. May, make, make it. Make your future, Danny. I’m … I’m a veg, Danny.” — Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), “Caddyshack”

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It’s been a little over a year now since my book was published. Time to take stock of the responses as there’s a great deal to learn by looking at some of the misconceptions about the book.

………………………………………Once again, all together now, “Storytelling IS NOT the same as lying.”

One thing they made us learn in film school is that there is no such thing as a “wrong opinion.” You don’t argue with reviewers, you just do your best to listen. Some authors use their blogs as a forum for rebutting their reviewers. That’s not what I’m doing here. I’m only seeking to understand where people are coming from when they say these things — all of which I find both fascinating and further revealing of the points of resistance to what I’m advocating.

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You may scoff at the thought of cheerleaders, but these women are a lot more than a bunch of dancing pom poms.

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Darlene Cavalier, a former professional cheerleader herself, has created The Science Cheerleaders. I believe in the project so much that I shot this short video two weeks ago at the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival in Washington D.C., which gives you a little sample of who they are. It was their first official public event. They were a huge hit. Gooooooo Science! (btw, if anyone in the D.C. area needs an outstanding cameraman/editor I’d be glad to put you in touch with Brandon Garcia who did camera and editing)

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Disease control and evolution have dealt with controversy forĀ over a century. By comparison, climate science is relatively new to the idea of public resistance. This has had consequences.

…………..WHAT’S MISSING FROM THIS PICTURE? Disease control has the CDC, evolution has NCSE, but climate … ?

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