A moonwalk during the Apollo 11 mission. Photo by NASA.

• The Best Science Writing Online 2012. Now available for pre-order.
• Radar. Remote controls. Artificial ball lightning. Even if you already knew Niccola Tesla was pretty cool, you probably don’t know how cool he was.
• Because high school biology is worth it. Why it’s worth fighting for specific content in high school biology classes.
• The science-blogging snake cites its own tail. The first systematic survey of science blogs published in PLoS ONE; one author blogs about it; and science bloggers weigh in.
• Mainly because terrorists aren’t completely stupid. Why profiling passengers wouldn’t make airport security more effective.
• Show us the p-values. A new genome-wide scan for genes associated with I.Q. gets the genetics right, but still screws up the science.
• Nowhere to go but up, fast. The emergence of faster predators gave prehistoric aquatic reptiles the bends.
• Heh: “the Kennedys of anthropology.” Maggie Koerth-Baker interviews two members of the Leakey family.
• It’s no so much what happens, but what doesn’t happen. The trouble with replicating studies in psychology. (See also.)
• Except with kids. The “golden age” of NASA space exploration wasn’t all that popular at the time.
• Putting the planet on chemotherapy. Proposals to “geo-engineer” a fix for climate change are kinda scary.

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