Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

Dave Mosher = Month at the Museum 2 Finalist

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Want to hear something crazy? The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago is hosting a contest called Month at the Museum 2 for one lucky roommate to live, breathe and eat science within their walls for 30 days and 30 nights.

The winner would serve as the face of MSI Chicago during the day. At night, it’s nerd vs. museum: Submarines, spacesuits, Apollo 8, airplanes, a fairy castle, plastinates, tornadoes, a coal mine and even a little town. For their troubles? $10,000 and a pile of gadgets.

Two months ago I applied, and the craziness has now reached fever-pitch: I’m one of six of MATM2 finalists.

The museum whittled the competition down from about 1,000 talented, charismatic and very nerdy people who applied, but they now want your feedback.

If you think MSI needs a lot of Dave Mosher in its life, please vote once per day, now through Oct. 3, 2011 at MonthAtTheMuseum.org I’ll be at the museum the morning of Oct. 5, where they’ll announce the winner during a live event.

It literally takes seconds to cast a vote, but if you’re like me you may forget. So I’ve crafted these daily calendar reminder buttons to help you out — one click and you’re good to go:

  • Tuesday 9/27: 0
  • Wednesday 9/28: 0
  • Thursday 9/29: 0
  • Friday 9/30: 0
  • Saturday 10/1: 0
  • Sunday 10/2: 0
  • Monday: 10/3: 0

Note: User of other calendar software? Save this .ics file to your computer and open it.

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The Nerdiest Marriage Proposal. Ever.

Saturday, July 16th, 2011

Yesterday, months of planning culminated into the world’s nerdiest marriage proposal.

I asked Kendra Snyder to marry me in the opened-up guts of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. (Where Kendra works as a science writer/communicator/public information officer-type.)

More specifically, I asked her on scaffolding below the center of RHIC’s 1,200-ton STAR detector. This house-sized machine examines the hot soup of energy present just moments after the Big Bang, which physicists recreate by colliding gold ions near the speed of light.

Make as many symbolic interpretations as you’d like — I chose the location for a lot of reasons! — but the truth is I wanted us to have a great story to tell. A ridiculously nerdy, epic and smile-prompting story.

So how did things go down? Here’s the skinny from each of our perspectives.

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It’s gonna be quiet ’round these parts

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Exciting development: I’ve started writing full-time for Wired.com’s Wired Science, throttling my W00Tmeter to maximum.

Bleh development: You’ll see less of my stuff around here as I settle into the new job. Once I have the hang of things, I’ll do my best to make Cosmopolitanaut a groovy place to be again. (Yes, I used the word “groovy.” So sue me.)

In the meantime, catch my latest pieces at Wired Science!

What the heck is a “Cosmopolitanaut?”

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Carl Sagan

Honestly, I don’t know.

Well, I didn’t know when I decided to start this blog. What follows is a rough summary of my thinking:

I love science, especially anything in the field of space/astronomy/the universe in general, and I think space exploration is the bee’s knees. That plus I wanted to give a serious hat-tip to Carl Sagan, my most favorite person of all time. “Cosmos” was a natural place to start.

As I put the new davemosher.com together, “cosmos” led to…

“Cosmonaut” — we all know what this means. I hope. If you don’t, I may cry.

“Cosmopolitan” — one of those pesky words I always forget the meaning of. Enter Mr. Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: 2cosmopolitan

Function: adjective

Date: 1798

1 : having worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope or bearing

2 : having wide international sophistication : worldly

3 : composed of persons, constituents, or elements from all or many parts of the world

4 : found in most parts of the world and under varied ecological conditions <a cosmopolitan herb>

cos·mo·pol·i·tan·ism \-tə-ˌni-zəm\ noun

M-W.com

Definitions 1 and 3 looked good, particularly since I’m not the most sophisticated person on this planet (personal references available).

When we smack “cosmopolitan” together with “cosmonaut,” conveniently leave out the Russian connotation, knead for 10 minutes, let rise for 1 hour, form into loaf and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F:

Cosmopolitanaut – A space explorer of unlimited scope that may be composed of many different persons, constituents or elements.

Sounds pretty good to me, especially because “many different persons” allows me to have some guest blogger buddies when I’m lazy. But I want to point out that your average space explorers — as serious as they may be about their jobs — don’t simply bang out experiments and build stuff in the cold vacuum beyond Earth.

They take pictures. They watch movies. They do somersaults in mid-air. They play with their food. They even play golf.

So I hereby decree that the Cosmopolitanaut blog will be a place to explore the universe with a healthy serving of fun. You’ll get science, skepticism, self-mockery and the occasional photo, video and personal story which (at least on the surface) are completely unrelated to science.

Sound good? If so, here’s the RSS feed.

Coming soon

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Dave is tweaking his final Web site design and working hard to get Cosmopolitanaut up and running, so sit tight.

Check back very soon to see something, well… useful here.