The Storytelling of Science will feature a panel of esteemed scientists, public intellectuals, and award-winning writers including well-known science educator Bill Nye, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, theoretical physicist Brian Greene, Science Friday's Ira Flatow, popular science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, executive director of the World Science Festival Tracy Day, and Origins Project director Lawrence Krauss as they discuss the stories behind cutting edge science from the origin of the universe to a discussion of exciting technologies that will change our future. They will demonstrate how to convey the excitement of science and the importance helping promote a public understanding of science.

The second part is where this happened. There is some lively debate between Neil Tyson (of course) and pretty much everyone else. He seems to win just cause he's bigger.

If you haven't watched the Daily show this week, I really recommend going back to watch these full episodes. They have just been brilliant critiques of the failures of the media around Boston and the congressional failures on gun control.

Jon says in this clip what I have wanted to say all week. We spend immense amount of time and energy on things that kill only a few people, but fail to act on things that kill millions. Reminds me of the days Naomi Klein's book: The Shock Doctrine. We just bounce from issue to issue hearing emotional arguments on the most dramatic versions of the news of the day.

In news about Religious sexuality nonsense

• Oral Sex Survives for Virginia Lovers
• Kiwi's legalize Marriage for love
• Pat Buchanan thinks he is the MLK of Bigots

I thought I would continue of the conversation about how uncomfortable Atheists are having anyone that approaches the role of a spokesperson by a belated acknowledgement of the late great and sometimes grating Christopher Hitchens. His birthday was April 13th.

Watching these clips of his verbal slap-downs, it reminds me his retorts were powered by both skill and viciousness. Both those qualities made him terribly entertaining even when he was wrong, leaving some of his more intelligent victims having fun while being publicly trounced.

Happy birthday Hitch, your thoughts live on in the written word and float around the internets shocking people to this day.

Reference ( ← Hope you didn't have to click on this to get it.)

• Does eroding belief in free will cause cheating? Failure to replicate a famous result.

• Boxes sealed with ATHEIST tape lost by USPS 10X more often than controls

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• Why Most Biomedical Findings Echoed by Newspapers Turn Out to be False: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

• It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

• Happy Pi Day!

• This viral video is right: We need to worry about wealth inequality

• The 500MW molten salt nuclear reactor: Safe, half the price of light water, and shipped to order

• HuffPo + Ted = nonsense

• 10 huge discoveries uncovered with small geolocators

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Snapped it in Joshua Tree Park. Also got the Orion Nebula while I was at it. Cute story (for nerds): I didn't see it bare-eyed, but in the pics it showed as the brightest dot. Only explanation I can come up with is that the camera captured a lot of the infrared I couldn't see.

This is nice. I was watching Maher's show tonight after a while to see what he's up to these days. I'd thought even though he'd never recanted publicly all his anti-med and that sort of rhetoric, that brushing up with scientists like Dawkins and Krauss (who was there just a few weeks ago), at least he'd learned that maybe, just maybe, the fact that the science blogosphere considered him a sort of clown almost on a par with Jenny McCarthy, would be deterrent enough to make him think twice before doing another self-mouth foot-putting.

• Bill Maher: Anti-Science Knuckle Dragger?

In last night's episode he compares California voters, who rightly rejected a proposition that would have forced companies to label GM products, to people who don't want to know if there is horse meat in their food.

It's very nice to see a very prominent lefty site take him to task. I wonder if even the anti-GM people here would agree with that comparison. His exact words:

New Rule, if you're one of the millions of Californians who voted against labelling genetically modified foods, you can't complain when it turns out there's horse meat in your hamburger, and your sushi is made out of lost cats and condoms.

Also, I'm mad cause I think he just called me stupid. Really, watch that New Rule (video embedded in the DK article), it's unbelievable how many fallacies are in there (game: name them!).

• Arguing about pseudoscience: a useful analogy

• Don't be beguiled by Orwell: using plain and clear language is not always a moral virtue

• IBM makes Watson the size of a pizza box, starts offering cloud access to doctors

• Magic Revealed: Cups Trick Found to Be More Effective Than Thought: Scientific American

• Peregrine Pharma Is Wasting Money On A Placebo Cancer Drug

• Marco Rubio Has Learned Nothing

• Death as a Foodborne Illness Curable by Veganism

• Another owl trapped in a car