Resurrection of the Blog

It's been too long since there has been a posting on the Beagle's science blog. Apart from the fact that we've done many, many regular updates on the Beagle's Facebook group, and on our Twitter feed, there's no real excuse for this other than lack of time, maybe even a touch of laziness. So let's try again... hi! Welcome to the H.M.S. Beagle Science Blog.

At the moment, we're in the midst of a nasty cold and snow snap in the American Midwest, in what has been called one of the biggest and most widespread snow storms to hit the United States since the 1950s. In case you were wondering, for the Kansas City metro area, temperatures of minus six degrees Fahrenheit (-21 deg. C) are not considered normal. Not to put too fine a point on it, it has been an interesting few days.

As life returns to normal, we can return our focus to the news: big news, especially, from the beyond our world, out into space. The Kepler mission has come in with big results, including yesterday's announcement of multiple candidate Earth-like planets, and the announcement of a six-planet system, for now known as Kepler-11 ( Science Daily link | BBC News ). Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy is decidedly enthusiastic as well, and he's not alone.

So... a lot going on. Watch the blog for longer articles, more commentary, and keep up with us elsewhere too. Website updates, new and exciting things, and lots of really weird, wild stuff is all in store. Stay tuned!

Meet the Beagle All Over Again

Let's take a moment for a quick entry now, to tell you about what's going on at the Beagle.

First, 2009 is a big year for science. In the event that you've somehow missed it, it is not only the International Year of Science, but the International Year of Astronomy. There are a lot of important anniversaries that fall in 2009, and we're hoping to add our efforts to those of the friends of science around the world.

Secondly, if you're already a Facebook user, you can now join the Beagle Society group on Facebook. We're posting upcoming events to the group, and trying to get everything in place there so that you can be updated on all the latest happenings with the Beagle as you would be with your long-lost high school friends. You can also comment on our Wall, upload photos, and do all of those Facebook things that you enjoy the most. The Facebook updates will not replace the regular email updates, but we're hoping to extend our reach with a little bit of additional publicity in a different medium.

John and Carol will be at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in the next few weeks, looking for what's best and brightest, or at least, what's interesting and affordable, from the world of minerals, rocks, fossils, beads and the like. The trip to Tucson is something of a busman's holiday, but it allows them to get out of town for a bit, and, as the colloquial wisdom has it, a change is as good as a rest...

Our online store is growing rapidly, and will eventually include everything that you will find in our physical store. You can visit it here at HMS Beagle Online. We're adding descriptions to items as rapidly as possible, but unfortunately there's no easy way to describe 10,000 items (give or take) from the two-line truncated descriptions in our point-of-sale system. Our goal is for the site to be an effective surrogate for an in-store visit. For those of you wondering, we chose to use PayPal as our primary payment means in the interests of everyone's security. PayPal has a proven track record in conjunction with eBay, and we're sure that a lot of you already have PayPal accounts. Of course, if you're still cautious about paying in this way, we'll also accept your payments through the post or in person, and you can select the Walk-In delivery option if you want to shop online and then come to collect your purchases, or the site will automatically quote you rates for UPS or US Postal Service shipping. If you haven't already taken a look, please do, and let us know what else you might like to see there.

And finally (though we're somewhat late in expressing this), we want to extend our warmest thanks to everyone who has supported the Beagle in 2008. Thanks to you, we have had what could in these economic climes be considered a good year, and January has also shaped up thus far to be on a par with our expectations. We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2009, and hope that we can continue to rely on your patronage and support. As always, if you have any questions, please drop us a line or post in the comments.

Best wishes to everyone for an educational and enrichment-filled 2009!

Welcome to the Blog!

Hello, and welcome to the blog of HMS Beagle, your store for science adventure, located in Parkville, Missouri. You can visit our website here, or come and see us in person if you happen to be in the area.

We are a store devoted to science education and advocacy, located just northwest of downtown Kansas City, Missouri off MO-9; 15-20 minutes north of Overland Park (I-635 to MO-9); 20 minutes east of Leavenworth (MO-45 to MO-9); 15-20 minutes northeast of the Kansas Speedway and The Legends (I-435 to MO-45 to M)-9); 15-20 minutes south of Kansas City International Airport (I-29 to MO-45 to MO-9); 30-45 minutes south of St. Joseph (I-29 to MO-45 to MO-8); 4½ hours west of St. Louis (I-70 to I-435 to MO-210 to MO-9); and 3½ hours east of Wichita (KS Turnpike to I435 to MO-45 to MO-9). We stock a wide variety of educational, investigational and entertaining items related to science.

In coming entries, we will have a variety of comments and discussions of science including issues of the day, events in history of scientific importance, as well as updates on what is going on in the store, and new events and special activities that are coming up.

Thanks for stopping in, keep reading and post your comments!