TreeHugger, the little green environmental blog that could, has been purchased by the Discovery network for $10 million. This is a modest sum compared to the likes of Weblogs, Inc., an entire network of blogs which sold to AOL in 2004 for $25 million and, most recently, MediaBistro, founded by Laurel Touby, which was sold last month to Jupitermedia for $23 million. Still, it's not a bad payout for its founder, Graham Hill (pictured), who started TreeHugger with proceeds from his WeAreHappyToServeYou coffee mug business for which he exclusively licensed the rights to a popular NYC paper coffee cup design. Graham Hill wrote a lengthy blog post yesterday explaining the benefits of the sale to Discovery, noting that Treehugger was courted by "over 15 large companies" over the last year. Principally, Discover is looking to expand its "green" content online, which is where TreeHugger, which is currently ranked as the 17th most popular blog on the web by Technorati, fits in. It makes us nervous to see our favorite indie enviro blog get scooped up by the corporate machine, but it could be worse. Despite selling out, Graham betrayed his media mogul ambitions with his blog post entitled TreeHugger Acquires Discovery Communications.

Yours truly will be attending the Science Foo Camp at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA this weekend. Sci Foo is a free, invitation-only meeting organized by Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media and Timo Hanney of Nature.com. Lodging, meeting facilities, and of course the food are being provided by Google. Luckily, we'll be staying in a hotel, not tents like the icon suggests, which is great for me because, despite being an earth scientist, I hate, hate, hate camping. I'm not sure how much conference blogging will happen during the conference. For one, I'll be too busy talking and listening. Second, it seems they have some rules limiting blogging of the conference speakers, like no direct quoting of the participants, blah, blah, blah. Some notable attendees expected to be there are Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin's new wife, Bora Zivkovic from A Blog Around the Clock and PLoS-ONE, David Pescovitz from BoingBoing, and Vint Cerf, considered one of the "founding fathers of the internet." If you're going to be at Sci Foo, give me a holler. - Jackie

I just barely survived six hours on a plane with no internet service and no juice left on my laptop because I wasted spent it blogging in JFK this morning. I had no choice during the flight but to read a book (yes), watch TV (not), or (OMG!!) talk with a real live person sitting next to me (I'm so happy for your 24-year-old son who built and sold his internet company in less time than it took me to finish grad school. Excuse me while I go slit my wrists.). Then, after parking myself next to two free electrical outlets in the San Jose airport to juice up my cell and laptop, I received a five-day backlog of text messages from Boyfriend, including one inviting me to last night's dinner which I missed. Yikes! Now I've just arrived in my hotel room, and this free hotel wifi experience is coming to a quick, disappointing end due to the frequent interruption of my precious web browsing time with advertising in the form of ad pages that pop up between page loads and a permanent MetroFi banner ad at the top of my page (pictured). So far, I don't see an option to, say, pay for ad-free browsing, which of course I wouldn't do. If this is the future of 'free' internet, I think I'll stick with my private line, thanks. Luckily I have a Verizon broadband card because, yes, I am a tech junkie who must be online, all the time, everywhere because it makes my life sooo. much. better. Finally, I'd like to know how much the hotel will charge me if I open this 'complimentary' bottle of Syrah that's sitting on my nightstand, but the phone in my room doesn't work. - Jackie

Those compulsive science bloggers, poor souls, have already started blogging every single minute of their trip to the Sci Foo conference. Here are probably the best sources for finding all the latest info on the Science Foo Camp, to the extent that we're allowed to cover it, that is. Who knows? The best reporting may end when we board shuttles to the Googleplex in the next 15 minutes.

Participant's blogs: http://www.lexical.org.uk/planetscifoo/

Flickr Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/scifoo/

Technorati 'scifoo' tagged content: http://www.technorati.com/tags/scifoo/

I just finished leading a small discussion session on Why aren't there more scientists on the covers of science magazines? Magazine covers, I should note, are merely being used as a metric here to measure the visual space that media outlets are willing to devote to the faces of scientists. Why should we care? My concern grew out of discussions with non-scientists and their stereotyped views of scientists as isolated, possiby nutty geeks with wild hair. Thus, my thought is that if more modern, active research scientists were featured in the media, the public would begin to get a better idea of what a modern scientist is like. Just as we were looking at a slide of Wired magazine covers as a good example of a magazine that frequently features scientists and techies on the cover, Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson joined us. Chris pointed out that while Wired has a significant number of pages devoted to science content, "objects [such as a molecule] sell better than non-recognizable people." Moreover, Chris said that "magazines would go out of business" if science magazines put only scientists on their covers. If the crux of the issue is having "recognizable" scientists, then perhaps the burden is on scientists, or perhaps university outreach and PR departments, to promote themselves and their research. At the end of the session Chris Anderson asked if we could recommend scientists for the cover of Wired magazine. How about it Element Listers? Who would you recommend? Chris is listening. - Jackie

I arrived in NYC at 6:30am this morning after taking a redeye flight out of San Jose, and have a bunch of post ideas relating to the conference, which I think I'll spread them out over the week so I can give each topic the appropriate amount of thought and a little background research. The Sci Foo crowd was amazing. For now, I'd like to invite all of you science bloggers out there to join the Science Bloggers group on Facebook. Don't forget, there is also the Science Blogs link directory here on Element List, where you should submit your blog or science website if it's not listed there already. Science blogging, when we get down to it, is about sharing ideas and building community. It's good to have a central place to meet up, in this case on Facebook, and be able to see pictures of all the other science bloggers. We've had 55 members sign up in less than 24 hours. See you there. - Jackie

Buried into yesterday's New York Times Science section is a report that NASA Commander Scott Kelly, who is scheduled to lead Space Shuttle Mission STS-118 to the International Space Station today, contacted several newspapers to tell them that reports of astronauts being drunk on flying missions were exaggerated. In fact, the NY Times article says the reports were merely anecdotes received by the investigative panel, which never confirmed the claims of astronaut drunkeness within 12 hours of launch. NASA is reportedly investigating the claims. “To see a minor part of the report exaggerated and misrepresented was extremely disappointing,” Commander Kelly wrote. “We fully understand our responsibility to this country.”

Related:

• NASA Findings of Astronaut Health Reviews
• NASA Space Shuttle Mission STS-118 (Official Site with video links)
• NASA STS-118 prelaunch webcast video
• CNN launch coverage / CNN video

Drugs and Poisons - Blogger Chris, a grad student from Toronto, Canada, writes about, you guessed it, drugs and poisons. Chris loves poisons. And drugs. And gossip. He typically profiles chemicals such as sanguinarine, which is said to possibly cause cancer from toothpase and swollen limbs when found in mustard. Some of the best posts come from knowledgable readers who write about what drugs they have taken by prescription or over a hospital stay, not off the street as you might expect. A sample...

Since you ask, I am reminded of one time I was in the hospital for kidney stones, which ended up being one of the longest sedative drug-binges of my life. It began as what I hoped was a quick visit for some hydrocodone to dull the relentless visceral groin pain, but ended up in a 3 day hospital stay and a lithotripsy. What follows is the truly amazing list of substances I was on, and my personal opinion of them....

A Good Poop - In this blog the so-far anonymous author gives short, sharp commentaries on curious medical journal research articles. It's only been around since May. Here are a few sample postings on the problems with piercings:

Social Media reports that Scientific American is accepting user-generated science videos, which you can submit here. While the link seems legitimate enough, we can't find an accompanying article describing the program on the Scientific American website. According to the disclaimer on the upload page, Scientific American cannot guarantee that it will post your video or even acknowledge your submission. Nor are they offering any monetary compensation. So why should you submit your videos to Scientific American versus, say, your own page on YouTube or perhaps another science video site such as JoVE? Beats us, but if you have a good tip, we'd like to know.

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail author, blogger, and Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine has found himself in an interesting situation. When he's not busy running a magazine or blogging, Chris builds Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for a hobby. He also runs a UAV social network on Ning called DIYDrones.com. Last week Amir Aalipour, a 17-year-old Iranian UAV enthusiast, proudly posted pictures of his UAV in a RCGroup chat room draped in the Iranian flag. In his latest blog post, Chris writes, "Part of me says 'Bravo Amir! Excellent work on the airframe, and thanks for posting.' And part of me says 'Yikes. We're helping Iranians make UAVs draped in nationalistic colors. This isn't going to help us in our efforts to destigmitize drones.'" Quite a discussion has ensued in The Long Tail blog comments regarding whether the UAV open source movement, or Chris's site in particular, is giving comfort to the terr'ists. Amir himself joined the discussion to give his side of the story.