Now that you’ve probably burned through the lists of historians, innovators, and food-writers to follow this year, we’re bringing it back home to the Smithsonian. As always, the Mall is cooking up some fascinating, crazy, and sometimes grotesque stuff for 2012. Bookmark these people and projects to keep up with this year:

Nicholas Pyenson: Pyenson studies and curates fossils of marine mammals. Get a feel for what is going on inside his lab and follow his team into the field—fresh from an expedition in Chile—at his blog, Pyenson Lab.

Postal Museum: Time for a pop quiz: A “hamper dumper” is:

a) machine in postal processing

b) bin of misprint stamps

c) failed mail vehicle

d) philatelic tool.

If you know the answer, you should be following the Postal Museum (@postalmuseum) for their daily #PostalQuiz and other philatelic factoids.

Biodiversity Heritage Library: As part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, the Smithsonian Libraries collects and digitizes biodiversity research for open online access—essentially, a bio-wiki. Check out @biodivlibrary for the species of the day: plants that eat worms, albino penguins and other bizarre creatures you never knew existed.

Archives of American Art Pinterest: The American Art Pinterest lets you browse the archives and “pin” the images you like to your virtual board. Mix and match from collections like “facial hair of note” and “ain’t no party like an artist’s party.”

Book Dragon: The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program’s Book Dragon is the pet project of former APA Media Arts Consultant Terry Hong, featuring reviews of “books for the multi-cultural reader.” Hong highlights literature for kids and adults alike that speaks to the Asian American experience. Follow her at @SIBookDragon.

Smithsonian Vids: For a moving view of the Institution, follow @SmithsonianVids. Meet a scientist studying frog-eating bats, or get a video tour of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Smithsonian Marine Station: This Natural History Museum field station, located in Fort Pierce, Florida, tweets news updates and photos from the field (er, coral reef) @SmithsonianSMS. Plus, there’s #followfriday trivia every week.

Field Book Project: Also, from the Natural History Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Archives check out this blog, where researchers post updates on their initiative to compile an online database of field books and journals documenting biodiversity research. Besides progress updates, you’ll also find excerpts of century-old field notes from explorers, birdwatchers and scientists (including lots of fun, old-timey sketches) and learn a lot more than you ever thought there was to know about indices.

Encyclopedia of Life: Take your best shot and enter the picture in the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life Flickr photo contest. The bi-weekly contest could be (and has been) any theme from “backyard life” to “sexual dimorphism.” Even if you don’t enter, be sure to browse the entries for gems like this.

And of course, if you’re not following them already, the museums are always Tweeting up a storm. Here’s the checklist:

American Indian Museum: @SmithsonianNMAI

National Portrait Gallery: @npg

American Art Museum: @americanart

Anacostia Community Museum: @anacostiamuseum

American History Museum: @amhistorymuseum

Air and Space Museum: @airandspace

Museum of Natural History: @NMNH

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: @hirshhorn

Freer and Sackler Galleries: @FreerSackler

Museum of African Art: @NMAfA

National Zoo: @NationalZoo

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: @cooperhewitt

Smithsonian: @Smithsonian

All Smithsonian Institution museums and the National Zoo are Open. Photo by Eric Long

All Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are open.

Don’t miss out on all the events and happenings, all scheduled as planned. Tarantula feedings at the Natural History Museum. A special tour of the Kinsey Collections at American History. An Earth Day celebration at the American Art Museum.

And here’s a list of all the exhibitions that are on view.  For the first time, the Freer Gallery’s renowned Peacock Room has been restored to its appearance in 1908, when the museum’s founder Charles Lang Freer used it to organize and display more than 250 ceramics from all over Asia. The new exhibition, The Peacock Room Comes to America, debuts today.

Other don’t-miss exhibitions and landmark Smithsonian artifacts like the Hope Diamond, Julia Child’s kitchen, the Ruby Slippers, The Wright Flyer, The First Ladies exhibition can be found at the following Smithsonian museum locations:

• The Smithsonian Castle
• The Carousel on the National Mall
• The Ripley Center and International Gallery
• The National Museum of American History
• The National Museum of Natural History
• The National Air and Space Museum
• The Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia
• The Smithsonian American Art Museum
• The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
• The National Portrait Gallery
• The Freer and Sackler Galleries
• The Hirshhorn Museum
• The African Art Museum
• The National Museum of the American Indian
• The National Postal Museum
• The National Zoo
• The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City
• The George Gusav Heye Center in New York City

This weekend marks a special time for Smithsonian visitors and the Institution’s spokesperson Linda St. Thomas expressed her delight that the museums were all open for business this weekend:  “People have planned for months, or a year or more, for their spring visits to Washington, which always includes visits to the museums and the Zoo. If it were up to us, we would never shut down. That’s why we are only closed one day a year—Christmas Day.”

Of course spring time is also is presenting Smithsonian photographer Eric Long with some of the most exquisite visual opportunities, enjoy this gallery before gearing up to head out.

Renaissance Man Solomon G. Brown in 1891. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Archives.

Business Plan—Calling all business execs and start-up ventures. Get in at the bottom on this deal. The National Museum of American History is planning a new exhibition on the history of business and innovation and is looking for your help. The museum has launched a site, American Enterprise, so that anybody with a good idea can log in and help plan the exhibit. Curators will blog about research trips and artifact collecting and you can offer tips on anything from artifacts to topics and even test ideas. The exhibit is slated to go on view in 2014.

Renaissance Man— In honor of Black History Month, The Bigger Picture remembers Solomon G. Brown, the first African-American to work at the Smithsonian. Brown, born a free man in 1829, worked at the institution for more than 50 years, serving in a variety of capacities, including: building exhibit cases, moving and cleaning furniture, and helping prepare maps and drawings for lectures. Learn more about Brown’s life and work at the Smithsonian, including his close relationship with the second Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer F. Baird, in the first in a series of related posts this month.

What Goes Up— What happens when you drop 200 paper planes from “the edge of space?” Well, that’s what Project Space Planes is trying to find out. The team dropped the planes, each containing a memory card with a message for the person who finds it, back in January. They are hoping to see a) whether the memory cards are tough enough to survive the journey and, b) how far the planes travel. Check out their site for more information and updates on the project. Thanks to the team over at The Daily Planet for the heads up.

Artists on Art— The Archives of American Art has made available excerpts from its oral history interviews with artists like: Robert Bechtle, Judy Chicago, Dennis Oppenheim and Joan Snyder. Hear their thoughts on photography, controversy, public vs. studio art and changes in their work. In addition to the podcasts, summaries of each interview, as well as transcripts of the conversations are available online.

Freer Gallery Director Julian Raby looks at the "gigapixel" princess. Image courtesy of the Freer.

You’ve never seen a Whistler this way before.

As a part of the newly announced Google Art Project, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art is giving art lovers an up close and personal look at James McNeill Whistler’s “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” along with 16 other works of art from museums around the world, including Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy” and Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Each is comprised of over 7 billion pixels, allowing visitors to the project to view each brushstroke and even see what sort of canvas was used.

In addition to these “gigapixel” paintings, the project uses the Google Street View technology to provide a tour of the inside of some of the world’s most famous museums. As for the Freer Gallery, the museum contributed additional works for browsing, from more Whistlers to Japanese prints to ancient Buddhas. Now, on frigid days like today, you can hole up in your home and tour the collections of the Freer (not to mention the Ufizzi, MoMA, the Met, Tate Modern and more) from the comforts of your sofa.

“I think they were keen to have one of the Smithsonian museums involved and I was extremely keen because it seems to me that at least some aspects of this are a game-changer for the way that museums approach the Web,” said Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. “The gigapixel allows you to see elements that you would really never ever see, certainly in traditional means of reproduction. You might see the crackle in the oil of a painting, you can sense the brushstroke in the artist’s hand and energy, you can see narrative details you would never see otherwise.”

Raby is convinced that endeavors such as the Google Art Project will increase interest in visiting art museums. “The traditional thing has been to say that any form of surrogate photograph, video, film will mean that people won’t come to the museums; actually, the experience is quite the opposite. In this particular case, I think it will create a sense of fascination that will engage completely new audiences.”

–additional reporting done by Arcynta Ali Childs

Goldfish Gulping as captured by the Los Angeles Times on April 30, 1939. Photo courtesy of the American History Museum

And the Gold Medal Goes To— What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten on a dare? Well, how about 101 goldfish? That’s the record for the largest number eaten in a single sitting, set back in April 1939, when goldfish gulping was a competitive collegiate sport. Check out the piscine cuisine over at O Say Can You See and see where your alma mater stood.

Dreaming in Outer Space — I’m sure we all thought we’d be flying cars by 2011 and possibly even living on another planet. Well, we may have to keep dreaming about that, but space travel for the common man may not be as far off as you think. Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company that organized the flights for the first “private space explorers,” plans to begin offering seats on the Soyuz spacecraft to commercial customers as soon as 2013. Next stop, the International Space Station. The Daily Planet has more details.

What’s in a Name? — There’s an insightful conversation happening over on the National Museum of the American Indian blog. Dennis Zotigh, a researcher and historian who also acts as a liaison for the museum, fields a lot of questions in his role as a cultural ambassador. He shares his answer to a popular one— “What do we call you, American Indian or Native American?” and invites readers to chime in. Join the discussion.

Your National Mall, now with Wi-Fi. Image courtesy of Flickr user vlastula

We here at ATM are pleased to relay an exciting announcement made by District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty and District Chief Technology Officer Bryan Sivak today: new outdoor hotspots provide free Wi-Fi coverage on the National Mall, from 3rd Street to 14th Street!

That’s right. Anyone with a laptop or other Wi-Fi-capable device can surf the Internet for free from this portion of the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. The Smithsonian Institution was one of several federal partners, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. General Services Administration and the National Gallery of Art, as well as companies in the private sector, that helped get this service off the ground. The National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of American History—as well as nearby sites like the National Gallery of Art and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—are all hotspots.

“Now anyone can enhance the experience of a tourist visit, work break or fitness walk on the Mall with all the rich resources available on the Internet—information, music, maps, video and more,” said Chief Technology Officer Sivak, in a press release. “This is one more example of how we’re deploying technology to make life and work for residents, businesses and visitors more convenient, efficient and fun.”

Expanding coverage to the National Mall is part of a larger free wireless Internet initiative in the District, and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) has created a handy map that identifies the names and addresses of the nearly 220 hotspots that have sprung up in District government and outdoor sites throughout the capital.

Now you have no excuse for not knowing about Around the Mall coverage when you visit the Smithsonian museums!

Decked out for the holidays, the Smithsonian Castle grounds are festive . Photograph by Eric Long

Twas the Night Before Christmas

and here on the Mall,

Not a creature is stirring in the museum’s vast halls

Full of objects and trinkets selected with care

By curators hoping you’d all soon be there.

Alas and alack, one day of the year,

The Smithsonian closes. But don’t shed a tear—

The day after Christmas the doors will swing wide

To let you all in. But until then, enjoy a few slides.

(Well really, they’re photos–you know what we mean)

Of gardens and buildings that look really keen

They’re all gussied up for the holiday season.

We’re pretty darn sure you’ll find them appeasing.

"The stars" of invertebrate zoologist Christopher Mah's Echinoblog (Photo courtesy of Mah).

Christopher Mah provides interesting dinnertime conversation, if you’re eating starfish at least. The post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History may be the only person in the world who can name any sea star on sight. With just a low-resolution snapshot via iPhone, Mah can tell you which species are hiding in your waters.

Naming starfish is only the start of Mah’s love for the marine invertebrate. As a child, playing on the beaches near San Francisco, he discovered an appreciation for the oddly misshapen creature. “Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by weird animals,” Mah says. “I was raised on Saturday afternoon monster movies.” As he moved through his academic training at San Francisco State University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, he eventually settled on starfish. Today he works with the Smithsonian to understand sea star evolution. His expertise has been key to identifying nearly a dozen new species and types of starfish.

Mah is also one of a growing number of scientists who are bringing their passion to the public through blogging. As part of a National Science Foundation requirement to make his research easily accessible, Mah started “The Echinoblog.” Now a year old, he has blogged on topics ranging from “Giant Green Brittle Stars of Death! When they Attack!” to “What are the World’s Largest Starfish?” Mah keeps the writing lively and includes as many pictures as possible of exotic sea stars and urchins, (another kind of marine invertebrate or echinoderm, on which the title of the blog is based.)

Mah finds writing brings its own challenges and rewards. “There are days when I don’t know what I’m going to write about tomorrow,” he says. Though that usually changes when he sits down to read the latest in invertebrate zoology. Mah believes his unique background allows him to provide the bigger picture in echinoderm biology to his readers. “I’m proud of posts that have an intellectual challenge that I don’t think anyone else could have written but me,” he says.

One example he cites is his post on the relationship between ancient Greeks and sea urchins called, “The TRUE (?) meaning of Aristotle’s Lantern??” For centuries, the term “Aristotle’s Lantern” was thought to mean the sea urchin’s mouth, a set of five calcium plates located in the center of the underside of its body. But new research on the origin of the Greek word lantern found evidence that the shape of the whole sea urchin and not its mouth more closely resembles the word’s meaning, a point Mah supports with visuals in his post.

For Mah, his blog is an important part of the scientific process. He believes the product of science is as much research as it is outreach. “Science at the Smithsonian is supported by taxpayers, and they need to be beneficiaries of that money,” he says.

Click photo to view the 24-hour video Webcast (download time depends on connection speed).

Happy International Year of Astronomy! And how’s this for a celebration: A live 24-hour video Webcast called “Around the World in 80 Telescopes,” a digital travel around (and off) the globe to find out what’s happening at research observatories. The Webcast began last night and will continue through April 4th.

The Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics will have three of its facilities featured. The Submillimeter Array (see video above) in Hawaii, the Magellan Telescopes, (tonight, 11:00 p.m. EDT) in Chile, and the MMT Observatory (tomorrow, 2:50 a.m. EDT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In "Escape the Museum" by Majesco Entertainment, a curator tries to save museum artifacts after an earthquake.

Susan Anderson may be the first curator to star in a video game. She can’t pack heat like Lara Croft Tomb Raider, but Anderson is a different kind of heroine. Her strength is her intelligence and it comes in handy after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake devastates the fictional National Museum of History. Falling debris knocks her unconscious, and when she awakes, Anderson is alone in the midst of ruined exhibits.

This is the premise of “Escape the Museum,” by Majesco Entertainment, coming out today for the Wii system and home computers. You are in the shoes of Anderson, who must outsmart the museum security system to save art and artifacts from the now unstable displays. The game is in the “hidden object” genre, which means a heavy emphasis on puzzle solving.

I asked George Donovan, President of Gogii Games, the producers of “Escape the Museum,” whether they had the Smithsonian in mind during development.

JC: What is the National Museum of History based on? Are there any real pieces of artwork or specimens in it?

GD: We created the Museum based on a number of periods in history and research, not necessarily a certain museum. One thing that is mentioned in the game by name was [the hammer of German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann]. The player uses it to complete one of the puzzles.

JC: Video games are dominated by fantastical settings such as post-apocalyptic worlds, floating kingdoms and the stars. Why choose a museum as a game setting?

GD: In hidden object games one of the main concerns when choosing a theme is variety of locations. With a museum we were able to make every room or exhibit a unique and different experience for the player. Never the same content twice. That is why we are making the sequel now.

A scene from "Escape the Museum."

JC: Who is the curator heroine based on? What kind of personality does she have?

GD: She’s based on our target audience, a 35- plus year-old female puzzle solver and someone who is compassionate and uses their brain to solve complex puzzles.

JC: Do you think this game will motivate players to go to real-life museums?

GD: I hope so. Maybe they saw an exhibit or some artifacts in the game and want to get a closer look. So many topics are covered, from dinosaurs to space.

JC: Are there any surprises to making a video game like this?

GD: I’m always surprised how much I learn myself from researching scenes and ideas. Sometimes I get lost reading Wikipedia for hours on a topic.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Archives

I look at this photograph and I immediately start reminiscing about many a fun-filled afternoon playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, bopping the backsides of plastic technicolor hippopotami in an attempt to eat more white plastic marbles than my opponents. I can totally see the guy on the left going, “Hey, what’re all these marbles doing in here?”

Or can’t you just imagine these guys standing around—perhaps a little sloshed—singing, “Oh I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do!”

Or, “Didn’t I see you in Fantasia?”

But there again, my ideas may be coming from FAR left field.

What words come to mind when you see this image? Create captions of your very own in the comments area below to enter in our second caption writing contest. Our first was a wild success.

Be creative! You have until noon on Wednesday, March 4 to send in your ideas.

The winner—and the original caption information for the image—will be announced here on the blog later that afternoon.

The twin-spot triplefin, a species of blenny found near Malpelo Island in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. Credit: Ross Robertson.

Blennies aren’t the prettiest of nature’s creatures. About as long as a roll of quarters, with big eyes and a gaping mouth, the fish are loved by scientists for their ecology more than their beauty. With over 800 species across the oceans, they are one of the world’s most diverse fish families. By studying differences in blenny color, shape, size, location and diet, scientists can theorize how and why each member of the species branched off from the rest of the group.

With so many fish in the sea, keeping track of all this information can be tricky. To help, scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute developed interactive tools to map diversity in all fishes. Their first Web-based information system, created late last year, lists the nearly 1,300 species of fish of the isolated Tropical Eastern Pacific ocean range, which extends from the coasts of Southern California to Northern Peru and as far west as the Galapagos.

“The area acts as a laboratory to study evolutionary change that we know happened, [after the formation of the isthmus of Panama divided the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans], approximately 2.8 million years ago,” says Smithsonian scientist D. Ross Robertson, who co-created the research tool with Gerald Allen of Conservation International.

Robertson and Allen, who in 1992 first described the twin-spot triplefin blenny, (pictured above), are now diving in the waters around the Caribbean to collect and photograph local fish for their next Website. “Photographs of live or freshly collected fishes are important aids for identification,” Robertson says. “And systems such as this can incorporate far more than a book can.”

Although the website is designed to help scientists identify fish species, spot patterns of diversity and plan conservation efforts, anyone can enjoy the ‘Random Images‘ tab, which cycles through the over 2,800 pictures of tropical fish found on the site. If a flounder or eel catches your eye, more general reader information can be found at the Encyclopedia of Life or Wikipedia.

Portrait of Jack Nicholson by Martin Schoeller, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery

When actor Jack Nicholson showed up to his photo shoot wearing a red clown nose, Martin Schoeller did what any photographer would do and snapped the picture. When the entertainment value wore off, the portrait artist asked Nicholson to remove the nose. The moment Schoeller then captured now hangs in the “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Schoeller, a staff photographer at the New Yorker, discusses the stories behind his portraits, which include subjects like Nicholson, actress Angelina Jolie and President-elect Barack Obama, in an audio slideshow featured this week on the magazine’s Web site.

Schoeller’s commentary provides an interesting perspective on these famous faces. “He looked so much younger then,” he says of Obama, who Schoeller first photographed in 2004 while the President-elect was running for Senate, “He already has aged so much in the last four years from the campaign trail.”

The other voice featured in the slideshow is a second New Yorker staff photographer, Steve Pyke, whose black-and-white portraits of subjects like actor Sir Ian McKellen and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are also in the Portrait Gallery exhibit.

“Portraiture Now: Feature Photography” will run through September 27, 2009. View the exhibit online at the National Portrait Gallery’s site.