I’ve recently been digging into the family of blogs that goes under the umbrella name: scienceblogs.com.  Here’s the general mission:

Our mission is to build a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about science and its place in our culture, and give them a place to meet.

The Science Blogs are a tremendous resource, consisting 57 dedicated scientists and science writers reaching out to accomplish the above mission.  Look down the left column here for the bloggers.  Recently, I have spent time on these science blogs:

Discovering Biology in a Digital World, is authored by a woman who describes herself as follows:

I am a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepeneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology

She presents some cleanly-written articles on topics the deserve cleanly written articles, like “How do you Sequence a genome,”  What is a gene?  and “Make your own stem cells.”

Consider visiting Retrospectacle, whose quest is to ponder “how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower.”  In this link, she ponders the science of being rich.

Did you ever wonder why we curse?  Page 3.14  explores that issue here.  Or try out this demonstration to see how well you could create a carbon-neutral future if your were “King for a Day.”

For a bounty of thoughtful posts, visit Mike the Mad Biologist who, according to the blog, rants about “politics, evolution and microbiology.”  A good example of the high quality writing is “Chickens and Group Selection.”  You’ll also get a good dose of religion and politics from Mike.

Actually, you’ll get a good dose of politics stirred in with science at many of these sites, including Corpus Callosum and the Scientific Activist (including this post about yet another unqualified Bush Appointee at NASA). All of this “political science” is necessary, of course, because modern politics so often can’t bear to follow the lead of good science to follow the evidence where it leads.  Yet another engaging site along these lines is Dispatches from the Culture Wars, a site written by Ed Brayton.

Though not part of the Science-blog family, here’s yet another good science-education site I recently discovered.  Would you like to see some really impressive collection of science-related images and video, combined with crisp writing?  If so, check out Neurophilosophy.    Here is how the author describes his interests:

I write about most aspects of neuroscience, from the molecular to the cognitive. I am particularly interested in neuroethology, cognitive evolution, philosophy of mind and the application of nanotechnology to the biomedical sciences. I occasionally throw in a bit of astronomy/ cosmology, and anything else I find interesting.

I could imagine spending weeks reading the posts at these quality sites.   If only I had weeks . . .