Liz Langley

Things keep getting better & better for my new column on Alternet....so far it's gotten twice as many shares on Facebook in less than three days this week than it did all week last week! So thank you to everyone who has been passing it around!  I love it and am happy to share it so Click Here for Ten Amazing Discoveries You May Have Missed This Week! Here's a tiny preview...there's sci fi tools from Dr. Who & Star Wars come to life (a sonic screwdriver & teeny tiny lightsaberes), the crab formerly known as Prince, birds exterior decorators, a solar power project on a possible Native American cremation site and a "weapon of mass instruction" - the amazing picture of what one artist did in repurposing a military vehicle to bring free books to the people. Hope you enjoy it - pass it on, subscribe, and I'll be back with more! Yeay!!                      ( photo by Senckenberg Research Institute, Germany)

So finally  a week after seeing Jane Goodall at Rollins College I got to see  Chimpanzee , which Dr. Jane was promoting. Those of you who either know me or have read my work for awhile know that I'm a chimp girl...I wish I could just walk into the bush like Dr. Jane and sit and watch the chimps for a few years. They're amazing, riveting to watch, plus they don't talk. For someone who is so constantly surrounded by words that seems like an awesome oasis.         Chimpanzee is as close as I'm likely to get to an adventure like that in the near future, so I'm glad I got to go and would go again. It's a documentary that managed to snare a remarkable storyline...(SPOILER ALERT) one of little Oscar, an orphaned chimp and the cutest baby of all time (sorry, everyone, but look at him) who is adopted by the most unlikely member of the troupe: the alpha male.        The scenes these cameras capture is jaw-dropping especially of the way the apes strategize to win ba

So far, so good....for the past three weeks I've had this awesome new column running on Alternet and the new installment is up!! In  Ten Amazing Things The World Learned This Week!  you'll learn about how the Tupac stage illusion was created, a potential new blood test for depression, shrimp with no eye sockets and other deformities, post-BP spill, a fabulous new kind of sponge that should help in cleaning up such oil spills in the future, creatures under the Arctic ice sheets that may be making a comeback, caterpillars with stings so painful (but faces so precious!) you'll want to garden in a Hazmet suit (be careful, fellow Floridians!). Like all people who are newly in love I have been obnoxiously gushing about how smitten I am with this column...I really want to keep it! So if you like it, FB share, tweet, pass it on in whatever way you can. Most of all I hope you enjoy it! (Tupac picture from E! Online , Pus caterpillar pic from NY Daily News )                

This weekend What's Hot in Central Florida is all about home - taking care of it culturally & environmentally starting on Saturday with the Hannibal Square Heritage Center Folk Art & Craft Festival  with lots of great local Florida artists, music & food and really, is any day spent in Winter Park a bad day? Also on Saturday, you all know there's nothing I won't do to skip out and head to the beach and I can't think of a better reason than  Turtle Day  at the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet, celebrating the conservation and rehab of marine and wildlife with the planned release of several animals to end the day on a happy note. Finally  Central Florida Celebrates Earth Day  in downtown Orlando with lots of local vendors, more great music and educational stations with tips on green cleaning, gardening, food prep and all kinds of stuff you'll want to know about to help make your world - especially your little patch of it - a nicer place.  You can li

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Friday the 13th is my lucky day. I was born on Friday the 13th. Today is already turning out to be a good one. My new column (second week) is up today on Alternet,  Ten Amazing Things The World Learned This Week , AND this afternoon my FIRST RADIO INTERVIEW is going to air on  WMFE! Usually I do a segment called "What's Hot in Central Florida," but since the  Florida Film Festival  starts today I got to do something very different and interview FFF and Enzian Theater programming director Matthew Curtis (who was a great sport in being my very first radio interview subject). Matthew and I covered some great stuff in our 3-and-a-half-minutes, which you can hear LIVE today at 4:30 pm or by clicking HERE to go right to WMFE,  and you have to listen to it to hear who the BIG CELEBRITY GUESTS are going to be!!! Of course, as in every interview, there were a lot of things we talked about that didn't get into the mix, inevitable with something as vast as the FFF, here's

Oh, my god! They let me do it again! Last week my new column "Ten Amazing Things the World Learned This Week," appeared on a trial basis on Alternet and it looks like so-far-so-good because they let me do it again! So here are   Ten Amazing Things The World Learned This Week  some funny, some a little scary, some exhilarating notes from the world of science including moonbows, da Vinci's to-do list and the power of music to awaken people from the world of Alzheimer's. That one blew me AWAY. I link to video from a Time magazine story and you really have to see it, a clip showing an old man who literally seems to come back to life thanks to his favorite music being played for him on an iPod. If you need your faith in the world refreshed (and who doesn't sometimes, this'll do it. So please click and if you like it pass it on - tweet, share, yell across the hall or whatever it is you young people do to get the word out these days. I love this job and I want

Todd Stave owns a property on which sits the abortion clinic his father used to operate and which is now operated by someone else. When protestors held vigils on his property he didn't let it bother him; it was their right, he said. But when they brought their harassment to his child's school they crossed a line. Stave recruited a network to give them as good as they got.  Pro-life protestors get a taste of their own medicine . No sir....they didn't like it! There's a "why didn't anybody think of this before" ring to the idea of giving anti-choice harassers the same back. I think it never occurred to the pro-choice mindset to harass people because it is, by definition, a hands-off mindset, an MYOB way of thinkingc. The anti-choice contingent, on the other hand, doesn't think you have  private business, so why would it occur to them to keep their nose out of yours?        Most Americans favor legal abortion , by the way. Majority. Just FYI.

     One of the spiffy things about my job is that I get to sift through what feels like a google of stories every day on the web - funny, amazing, alarming, intriguing, beautiful stuff....most of which seems to get elbowed out of the way by whatever insipid junk (remember the attention paid to Sarah Palin's bus trip? remember Paris Hilton?) is screaming for attention like a wet baby in long a Target line.      I'm so happy to take small part in changing that.      This past weekend Alternet.org debuted a new column by yours truly,  10 Cool Things The World Learned This Week , a recap of all the coolest science news of the past few days. You'll get amazing stuff every week, like T-Rex's feathery ancestors, Bonobo robots (Bonobots!) and super Earths that could be suited for extraterrestrial life...in other words stuff that's a smidge more important than the Kardashians.        We don't all have time to look into every intriguing headline that flashes by us

It's not even tax day yet and 2012 has worn me out.  Good thing this weekend is full of refreshers, like Janine Klein singing an all-Adele set  TONIGHT at Fringe Frida y,  Ron Jon's 48th annual Easter Surf Fest and  Seminole State's Planetarium Show: The Final Frontier: The Age of Space Exploration  (all I want to know is 'When do we leave?')             You can hear more about all these things by listening for me live on "What's Hot in Central Florida" today on WMFE 90.7 FM at 4:32 pm OR if you're busy getting ready to run away to Mars (like I am) and can't wait you can listen to the podcast version right now , which is pretty spiffy! Maybe I won't leave after all....