• Scott's miscellanies by Scott Keir

    I think this is going to be a fairly varied collection of posts on stuff to do with art, science, culture, geekery and science communication. But we'll see, eh? And, just to be clear, what I type here is my own opinion, not my employers'.

    • Charles Darwin is full of hot air

      Thursday, 26 Jun 2008 - 23:24 UTC

      No, not our lovable dead blogger but Charles Darwin the Dolphin balloon who is taking part in the world’s first internet balloon race.

      Balloons (handily in the shape of sponsor Orange’s four mobile phone account logos) race across participating web pages. There’s a map of the pages, though I don’t quite understand how they fit together. And the closest to a science website I’ve found so far is Celebrity Backwash, which will certainly keep the geneticists and paternity testers amongst us happy.

      Charles has a bit of catching up to do, but here’s hoping evolution trumps out, eh!

      Last updated: Thursday, 26 Jun 2008 - 23:24 UTC

      • Comments

        • Date:
          Thursday, 26 Jun 2008 - 23:47 UTC
          Cath Ennis said:

          Yerch, that backwash site is creepy!

        • Date:
          Friday, 27 Jun 2008 - 07:31 UTC
          Brian Clegg said:

          I have struck a blow for science sites by submitting the Popular Science site – at the moment its status is ‘pending’ and it just has a place marker on the site – I don’t know how long before it becomes an official part of the race…

        • Date:
          Friday, 27 Jun 2008 - 07:58 UTC
          Scott Keir said:

          Hurrah!

          Charles is about to visit several pages of The Sun newspaper. That’s an astronomical object, so I guess that counts too?

        • Date:
          Friday, 27 Jun 2008 - 16:06 UTC
          Brian Clegg said:

          I’m not sure whether my site will be listed in time – it’s currently showing as pending, which means if you visit it you’ll see a little balloon floating in the bottom left hand corner, but it isn’t on the race route. As the whole thing finishes on Monday, I might be too late to get included. Nice idea, though.

        • Date:
          Friday, 27 Jun 2008 - 16:16 UTC
          Brian Clegg said:

          What Scott has’t pointed out is if you click on the link to his balloon not only can you visit it, you can give him a boost, which he really needs as he is 30,824th at the moment.

        • Date:
          Friday, 27 Jun 2008 - 23:42 UTC
          Scott Keir said:

          Indeed, Charles the dolphin could do with a boost, Brian, unlike our genuine article who got to number one in Time out this week for significant things in London.


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