Members know that The Retort is the newsletter of the Idaho Academy of Science. That publication is issued four times a year on a “loose” quarterly basis. Obviously, that’s not a good way to share “newsy” items that might be of immediate interest. Hence, as Co-Editor of The Retort, I have created this blog to handle information and/or exchanges that require a more timely response. That will most likely include stories about members (awards, sabbaticals, field trips, etc.), Academy business, and news items that are too short for The Retort itself.
Of course, you could go to the web sites for the various Idaho organizations to pick out items such as we’re likely to use here. However, we hope our members – and other interested folks – will appreciate someone else gleaning such tidbits and posting them at one common location. (Let us know if you see something of interest we might post here.)
The blog is set up to accept Comments, which can be submitted under a Google account name (and some others), or as “Anonymous.” The system transmits an e-mail to me for each Comment, which allows us to accept or reject the input. While we hope for all positives, negative Comments will be posted so long as they are not personal attacks, libelous, or otherwise objectionable. Comments not relevant to a given topic are also likely to be rejected, and could be marked as Spam. (We reserve the right to mark obvious “commercials” as Spam.)
We will also entertain “guest blogs” that might be of interest to our audience. These could involve observations and opinions about science and technology, or about science education. We will say, right up front, that articles with a too-obvious or heavily biased political slant will not be accepted – there are other venues for that material. Too inquire about submitting a guest blog, send an e-mail to ias_biz (at) earthlink.net. We will, of course, identify and credit the source of any material that is posted.
