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Our friends Tim and Michelle Williams moved into a local house a few months ago. In the garage, they found a jam jar containing the bones of a squirrel and the remains of its rotting flesh, dated 1985: presumably a zoologist lived in that house 28 years ago, began preparing a specimen, and moved out before finishing.

The last time we reported on the Apatosaurus cervical-shaped Umbaran Starfight from The Clone Wars , we’d heard from the concept artist Russell G. Chong, who had done the final design on the startfighter, and who told that he wasn’t aware of a sauropod original to the design.

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Matt and I have been sniggering at the Lousy Book Covers tumblr (slogan: “Just because you CAN design your own book cover doesn’t mean you SHOULD”). A couple of evenings ago, he wondered whether we could do better. And whether we could do it in half an hour. In no time at all, a competition was born. Here are the rules: You have 30 minutes total to create the cover from scratch.

My new article is up at the Guardian . This time, I have taken off the Conciliatory Hat, and I’m saying it how I honestly believe it is: publishing your science behind a paywall is immoral.

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[Neuroscientist and open-science advocate Erin C. McKiernan invited readers of her blog to vote on which of four candidate projects she should work on next. Today she posted the results, and I couldn’t help but comment. This is what I said, lightly edited.] You should work on what you want to. Time spent on any project other than the one that’s burning in your hindbrain will feel painful, awkward and boring, and probably be unproductive.

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