Daily Science Haiku - Open Hand

Make prosthetic hand
using open source design and
a 3D printer.

Father makes open source prosthetic hand for his son

Daily Science Haiku - Kepler 78b

Earthlike in size, mass,
and density, but too hot.
Goldilocks it ain't.

Kepler 78b

Bonus haiku!

Right now, influence
the future of humanity.
Tweet #humansinspace.

Help decide the future of human spaceflight, only on  Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Daily Science Haiku - Life at the Speed of Light

A 3D printer
for the genome? Download your
flu vaccine today.

Life at the Speed of Light

Daily Science Haiku - Time Travel

Note: I actually wrote this yesterday, but I've been sick for nearly a week now, and I just plain forgot to hit "Publish." Apologies, Jenise

Spinning universe?
Infinite cylinder spins?
Wormholes? Nah. Just live.

3 Simple and 3 Complicated Ways to Time Travel

Weekend Science Sonnet - NSA Protests

Haikus are nice and easy to write, the verse equivalent of popcorn. But I'm finding myself frustrated by the short form, occasionally wanting to write more on a subject. So I thought that on weekends, when I nominally have more time, I might write a longer piece, such as a sonnet.

So here's the first installment, inspired by the NSA protests this weekend.
 

In 1984, a painting screwed

to the wall neatly hid a two-way screen.

Today, all screens are two-way. Our accrued

lives, socialized, blogged, twittered, seen

anywhere the Internet can reach.

Our phones calls monitored, our email tracked,

our texts and likes and posts and selfies each

become a datum warehoused, numbered – hacked?

Security backdoors give access to

devices, gateways to identity,

for our protection, we're told. False is true.

The Fourth Amendment balks security.

Probable cause? With every word we say,

we become suspects to the NSA.

Daily Science Haiku - Asteroid 2013 TV135

Higher odds today
can become no chance, depends
on trajectory.

Why is the chance of an asteroid impact in 2032 going up? [Don't panic.]

Daily Science Haiku - Smartphone Microscope

Buzzing your pocket:
infinitesimal worlds,
yours to discover.

How to turn a smartphone into a digital microscope

Daily Science Haiku - Remipede

Pale, toxic cousin
of woodlice, remipede hunts
in total darkness.

First venomous crustacean found.

Daily Science Haiku - Poppy

Open-source poppy
blooms, pollinating young minds,
seeding engineers.

The Poppy Project

Bonus Poem!

At the Triangle Inn

Morning light outlines
the ceiling vigas. Adobe
walls begin to glow.

Cuyamungue breathes
the crisp high desert air like
lovers sighing dawn.

Oct 12, 2013

Daily Science Haiku - Li-Fi

Light reaches your eyes;
you see. Light reaches laptop;
you see the whole world.

A plan to turn every lightbulb into an ultra-fast alternative to Wi-Fi

Note: Sometimes, poems just fall on you. No sooner had I posted yesterday's haiku than a link to this article arrived in the MIT LinkedIn feed. Go figure. So I wrote the haiku and saved it. This morning, all I had to do was click Publish.

Daily Science Haikus

While my father-in-law was here visiting last month, he mentioned that he writes a couplet to his fiancee each morning. This got the back of my head thinking, Hey, why don't I do something like that? And then I thought, a bit more consciously, hey, why don't I write a haiku every day about science and post it on the Facebook page for Einstein's Workshop? So I began today with a haiku about Titan and meteor impacts. I'll also be posting the haikus here.

The hardest part of this, by far, was finding just the right science news to write about. I cruised the NYTimes, ScienceNews, Scientific American, boingboing, Laughing Squid, and finally found the right article in New Scientist. I'm rather bummed that I missed Ada Lovelace Day on the 15th. I may write something about her tomorrow anyway, because I can. And I may put the birthdays of every great female scientist in my calendar so that I can immortalize each one as they go by. But that's all a lot of work, so I'd also appreciate suggestions. If you see a very cool science tidbit (or you've just published something cool and want it promoted), let me know.

And now, today's haiku:

Wetlands on Titan?
Meteor impacts erased
by hydrocarbon swamps.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24430-astrophile-soggy-bogs-swallow-craters-on-titan.html#.UmPRRRDaM-A