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ScienceBlogs Book Club: Inside the Outbreaks

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What We're Talking About Thursday, July 29, 2010

101 Days of Oil:
Guilty Planet in the Gulf

Yesterday marked 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. A lot has changed even in the past week; a containment cap has stemmed the gush of oil enough to begin relief well drilling, and BP announced the resignation of its chief executive, Tony Hayward, an act symbolic of its desire to move public perception beyond the spill and into cleanup efforts. That's a tall order, especially for Gulf residents whose lives have been turned upside down and wear their animosity toward the company with pride. Jennifer Jacquet of Guilty Planet is on the scene, speaking to people and documenting grassroots (swamproots?) efforts to map and document the spill as it slimes its way up into Louisianian bayous.

Voices from the Spill

Guilty PlanetJuly 28, 2010

"In a humble effort at citizen journalism, we went around New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf asking people what they thought of the BP oil spill. Most of victims don't have voices, but here is what a few of the humans thought (they wrote down their opinions or, on occasion, dictated it to us)."

Do People Hate BP?

Guilty PlanetJuly 20, 2010

"Do people hate BP? Yes. Does it matter? It must. Most CEOs believe that corporate brand reputation outranks financial performance as the most important measure of a company's success."

Balloon on the Bayou: Grassroots Mapping in Bay Baptiste

Guilty PlanetJuly 13, 2010

"'The bucketheads are here,' Jeff Holmes radioed back to his camp in Grand Bayou Village, a totally bizarre and charming outcropping of homes built on salt marshes that Holmes is worried will disintegrate under a thin but suffocating blanket of oil that is creeping up the bayou."

Video

Dave Ng talks about education and the developing trading card game called Phylo. You can contribute your artistic and scientific expertise to Phylo's ecology at phylogame.org.

Video

Says Isis, "Lightning may be only slighty less cool than blood vessels. Only slightly."

Book Club

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Mark Pendergrast wraps up the Book Club discussion and shares three interesting excerpts from Inside the Outbreaks.
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In Conversation

“Tony Hayward, CEO of British Petroleum, is headed for the exit -- with a $20 million golden parachute to guide him safely and luxuriously to the ground. The wages of sin may be death, as the Bible says, but reckless environmental destruction clearly pays much better.”

BP CEO Grabs Golden Parachute

dispatches from the culture wars

Channel Surfing

Life Science

erv

Theres a glitch in The Matrix... they changed something...

Endogenous filoviruses! YAY!! ... wait... didnt I already write about this... wait... wat?

Greg Laden's Blog

Yellowstone area griz kills one, mauls several

As you know, I have a long standing interest in dogs and bears and in the topic of...

Genetic Future

Protecting consumers from their own genetic data will come at a cost

Investigations launched by the FDA and US Congress have potentially set the stage for a large-scale regulatory crackdown on the embryonic direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry. Such a move would be premature, and would do more harm than good to consumers. The industry needs to change, but a more careful, measured approach based on increasing the transparency of genetic tests is the best way forward.

The Life Science Channel RSS Feed

Physical Science

Uncertain Principles

What Physics Topics Would You Like to Read About?

I had intended to write up a recent paper for ResearchBlogging today, but I cleverly forgot to bring...

Uncertain Principles

Dorky Poll: Experimental Hazing

I'm going to be spending a good chunk of the rest of my day scrounging up adapters to...

Christina's LIS Rant

Very cool - American Physical Society offers free access to public libraries

This APS rocks! Here's the press release from PAMnet: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APS ONLINE JOURNALS AVAILABLE FREE IN...

The Physical Science Channel RSS Feed

Environment

Casaubon's Book

Something Told the Wild Geese: Feeling Winter in Summer

.And like the wild geese in my oldest, Eli's favorite poem, I can feel the tang of winter coming. When you live on a farm, and when you eat with the seasons, winter is always coming in a way

Framing Science

The of Death of Cap and Trade: Getting Beyond False Narratives

Alternative policy directions are needed along with new approaches to communicating about the relevance of the issue.....

Greg Laden's Blog

Is BP Cutting Corners in Alaska?

The word on the street: Yes....

The Environment Channel RSS Feed

Humanities & Soc. Sciences

Aardvarchaeology

Continued Afro-Chinese History Manipulation

I hope the project does find a 15th century Chinese shipwreck. But if they do, then this will in no way validate the suddenly remembered folklore. It's a ridiculous product of current Afro-Chinese economic relations.

Greg Laden's Blog

Barry Glassner, Fear, Poor people and their babies: Friday!

I've been interested forever in human perceptions of risk and culturally mediated fear. I got to work with...

Greg Laden's Blog

Sociosexually, what is "safe"?

Are you a "safe guy"? Or do you know someone who (you or he or some else thinks)...

The Social Sciences Channel RSS Feed

Education

Adventures in Ethics and Science

Research methods and primary literature.

Complicating the "two cultures" framing of research (and of what undergraduates should be learning in a research methods course).

Greg Laden's Blog

Livingston, LA School Board To Implement Discovery Institute's "Academic Freedom" Law

Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, has a major blog post addressing...

Uncertain Principles

Two Cultures Defining Research

I was initially puzzled by the headline "Research-Assignment Handouts Give Students Meager Guidance, Survey Finds," and the opening...

The Education Channel RSS Feed

Politics

Greg Laden's Blog

Quick, we need five or ten bucks...

For a new project to fund progressive candidates, with the intention of countering the 200 million or so...

Deltoid

Judith Curry and the hockey stick

Judith Curry has damaged her credibility by making careless and ill-thought-out claims.

Greg Laden's Blog

Tim LaHaye: Obama will cause the End of Days

The Politics Channel RSS Feed

Medicine & Health

The Pump Handle

Diane Lillicrap on Crane Safety

If you've got four minutes, watch Diane Lillicrap explain the importance of OSHA's new crane rule.

Respectful Insolence

A science section for the Huffington Post? More like a pseudoscience section! (2010 edition)

Funny how everything old is new again, isn't it? Yes, if there's one thing I've learned over nearly...

Respectful Insolence

Dr. Snyderman, please be more careful...

Nancy Snyderman isn't helping. At least, she wasn't helping yesterday. Don't get me wrong. I like the fact...

The Medicine & Health Channel RSS Feed

Brain & Behavior

The Thoughtful Animal

Parental Verbal Abuse and Why I'm Not ROFL

Have you heard about NCBI ROFL? It's a previously-independent blog that has been incorporated into "Discoblog," one of...

Greg Laden's Blog

A headset that reads your brainwaves?

Tan Le's astonishing new computer interface reads its user's brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects, and...

Developing Intelligence

SyNAPSE: In Pusuit of The Cognitive Platform

"What we're seeking is not just one algorithm or one cool new trick - we're seeking a platform...

The Brain & Behavior Channel RSS Feed

Technology

Uncertain Principles

Twitter in Business Schools

My initial reaction to the financial meltdown caused by the housing bubble was "Are our business leaders really...

Greg Laden's Blog

Personal data of 100m facebook users published

These data were scraped by security consultant Ron Bowles, using code that scans Facebook profiles and collects all...

Mike the Mad Biologist

Genetic Testing, Antibiotic Resistance, and CLSI

Direct-to-customer genetic testing can learn from antibiotic susceptibility testing.

The Technology Channel RSS Feed

Information Science

Confessions of a Science Librarian

SciFoo: The Joys and Sorrows of Blogging on a Network

A few of us are proposing this session at the upcoming Science Foo Camp at Google HQ this...

Universe

Science Poem Manifesto

Earlier this year, I received a charming email from a pair of Helsinki-based artists and designers who...

The Thoughtful Animal

This blog needs a logo

Like the headline says. I've been thinking about setting up a schwag shoppe, and so I'm going to...

The Information Science Channel RSS Feed

Jobs

Uncertain Principles

Distilled Faculty Outrage

Via Inside Higher Ed this YouTube video is pretty much a distillation of faculty reaction nationwide to higher...

The World's Fair

The World's Fair - now in the United Kingdom... (and just to clarify, not Hogwarts)

O.K. It's been a while since I last posted, but I do have a good excuse. I've been...

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

Ask Dr. Isis - Can I Be My Boss's Landord?

Yes, little darlings. That is the title of this edition of Ask Dr. Isis. I can't come up...

The Jobs Channel RSS Feed
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ScienceBlogs Super Photos

SB Basics

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Synthetic Biology

Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:

Pharyngula May 30, 2007

“Playing God”

The Loom January 31, 2008

"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti

Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006

Build your own virus


See Also:

Cribsheet: Synthetic Biology
Seed’s downloadable science guide

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