Science Hashtags

I will be peppering my weekend conversation with great ice breakers, including, actually, literally, an icebreaker. In a race to exploit the resources beneath the #melting Arctic as well as new shipping channels including the #NorthwestPassage, the icebreaker U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy “arrived at the the North Pole on September 5.”  It was “the first American surface ship to get to the top of the world by itself.” Hello, Santa.

[In appreciation of the engineering involved, why not wear one of these Stand Back I’m Going To Try Science t-shirts? Full disclosure: Husband has one.] #Arctic

#Pinkie, “a rare bottlenose dolphin with a bubble-gum pink hue” is taking social media by, uh, the bottlenose because she is both 1) cute (as all dolphins are) and she’s even better then all the dolphins because 2) pink.

[Is pink really a color? Scientists go hmmm…maybe not.]

In related-because-both-Pinkie-and-early-man-are-mammals news, the switchboard has been lighting up with word out of a cave in South Africa reporting the bones of many individuals of a New Species of Human Ancestor, Homo naledi. Or, for us moderns, #Homonaledi. Follow the sensational tweets of Lee Berger, the expedition’s lead #paleoanthropologist.

File under, Probably You Could Have Predicted That, And Good To Know If We End Up Making Whisky on Mars, and #Whine but it’s been recently reported that “the taste tests have detected ‘major differences’ between Earth-bound whisky and the vial that flew in the International Space Station for some three years.”  #spacewhiskey #ziggystardust

I’ll tell you what. Teenagers are the worst.  #adolescentmind: is there one? Yes. But.  “Teens are not quite firing on all cylinders when it comes to the frontal lobes.” I am learning that their brains are different from our brains in ways that are so profound, frightening, and significant that I am only letting my kids, now 8 and 10, drive self-driving cars.

Hopefully also by the time that my kids are old enough to go to college, college will be affordable and we will know what is the purpose of education. #highereducation #harvard #howtoraiseanadult Right now, the jury is out. College Calculus: What Is The Real Value of Higher Education?