I left Canada just two weeks before the 2010 Winter Olympics, and spent the last week fruitlessly trying to track down the must-have item of the season: red mittens with the Canadian flag on them. Now I’m in England during the London Olympics, and I’m actually attending! I’m going to see two of the synchronized swimming events in August. Of course I also watched the opening ceremony, which was amazing. I loved the selection of things chosen to showcase to represent the UK. Music, James, Bond, the Queen, childrens books, Mr Bean – they’re all things that people in other countries know and associate with the UK. Perfect choice. Meanwhile, I also saw some fun Olympics things popping up on Tumblr. Here are wo of them:

How do you create the perfect flame? The Ontario Science Centre (which is one of my favourite science museums in the world – also a topic for another post) produced this animation that outlines how the flame has changed over time.
Found via It’s Okay to be Smart, reblogged from Explore.

And if you have to take part in the Olympics, but it’s kind of inconvenient, and you need an excuse to get out if it, have a parent or guardian sign this form – by Twisted Lil Doodles.

I recently joined Tumblr. I lie. I joined way back in 2007, when I set up a tumblr to collect things that would make me smile during the final stretches of my PhD. But I recently joined with a new account. I wanted the account “easternblot”, but, believe it or not, someone had just taken that only *days* earlier. So I’m transferbuffer instead.

One of the things I’m finding Tumblr useful for, is for finding new and interesting things. So I thought I’d introduce “Tumblr Tuesday” to showcase some of the things I found and the Tumblrs I’m following.

I can’t promise this will be every Tuesday. In fact, I can probably promise that it will NOT be every Tuesday, but when I find something post-worthy I’ll try to do that on Tuesdays.

Today:

Digits – a series of posters for a campaign that promotes people with careers in science or math to visit classrooms. The blackboard art is funny and imaginative – inspirational rather than factual.

Found on Fresh Photons (Chris Ing!) who reblogged it from Staceythinx. Both are Tumblrs to follow if you like beautiful pictures related to science.