Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been chosen as Pope Francis, leader of the Holy See in Rome. That's all well and good, it's nice that heavily-Catholic South America is getting its due and I found it interesting that a Jesuit chose to name himself after a Franciscan.

While many inside the Catholic church (and always those outside) will find plenty to criticize - he is against both abortion and euthanasia and preaches tolerance for homosexuality but does not endorse it - we have one of the most cosmopolitan Pope's ever.

President Obama may have a thing for northeast academics but he at least stepped out of Harvard and Yale this time, tapping MIT Professor Ernie Moniz Monday to run the Department of Energy. Moniz, a theoretical physicist and simulation expert, was in politics during the Clinton years, as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1995 to 1997 and Under Secretary of the Department of Energy from 1997 until January 2001. 

Are you a science undergraduate or graduate student (or even a post-doc) who has discovered you love science but aren't crazy about the idea of doing research in a narrow field? 

Science is a big place and there are lots of other ways to be in the world of research without doing research. On  February 7th, 2013, Dr. Alex Berezow, microbiologist and editor of RealClearScience, explained how you can transition from the laboratory to the newsroom in a talk held at the University of Washington.

Obviously many of the insights can apply to anyone in science who wants to do their own outreach as well.

On TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, yesterday's topic was "The Anti-Science Left" and it starts off with a quote from my book with Dr. Alex Berezow, called "Science Left Behind", about the feel-good fallacies that anti-science progressives (and science media pundits who have to defend their political positions) use in order to claim to be on Team Science...but in reality are engaged in the scientization of politics.