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I am the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science). My job is to try to motivate you to comment on the papers there. My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com

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Media:

Registration is open for ConvergeSouth 2008

ConvergeSouth 2008 is ready to roll: The Web site is online and registration is open: http://2008.convergesouth.com/ We're calling for presentations - see the schedule and apply to present. There's a brand-new Video Walking Tour on Thursday, October 16, with Robert...

Moms, don't let your daughters marry bloggers!

All humans, at some point in their lives, go ahead and die. Ages and causes of death vary widely. Bloggers are humans. All bloggers, at some point in their lives, go ahead and die. Ages and causes of death vary...

Carrboro Citizen is One

My favourite newspaper has been publishing for a year now. . Robert Dickson and Kirk Ross mark the anniversary. Newspaper is not dead....

Science in the news: to push for it or to hide it?

Should we have a third culture?: The present problems with science communication are not only a result of mediocre writing skills or the diminished view of popularization the some scientists take. The public, aptly described as "consumers," have not developed...

On the state of the Media

Will one man's tryst mean a $200-billion heist will go unreported? Reading Habits of the Liberal Media (via Melissa). Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality High-level right-wing discourse Immigration irrationality What's Wrong With...

Alan Alda at the N.C. Zoo

He was here last Tuesday for filming of a scientific documentary for PBS: He was doing important work on an upcoming PBS special "The Human Spark", a three-part documentary about what makes us human, due to air next year. Alda,...

Another hit-job on blogs

David Neiwert: But I also noticed this line: "Unlike traditional, mainstream media, blogs often adopt a specific point of view. Critics complain they can contain unchecked facts, are poorly edited and use unreliable sources." And this distinguishes them from the...

The State of U.S. Journalism - Obligatory Readings of the Day

Glenn Greenwald: Tucker Carlson unintentionally reveals the role of the American press (the 424 comments are also worth at least skimming through). Jay Rosen: An Attractively Against-the-Grain Enterprise... Rachel Sklar: WaPo Writer Proves Own Thesis With Inane Op-Ed (follow ALL...

Zoo School X-Press

Regular readers must be familiar by now with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Today's news from the school - their students have put up the first issue of their online newspaper, the ZSX-Press. Go check it out! In related news,...

Link Journalism

The proposal for link journalism is not a new concept, though the phrase is good. This is something that bloggers have been doing for years and have been imploring the corporate media to adopt for years. On paper, you can...

ConvergeSouth2008

Sue announces that the website will be up in two weeks, and the blog is already up and running. You can help with organization. In any case, mark you calendars: ConvergeSouth 2008 will be held on October 16-17, 2008 in...

Totally obligatory reading of the day!

Chez describes how and why CNN fired him for blogging and then piles on! Spread the word. The old media needs to learn to respect the people formerly known as audience....

ConvergeSouth08

Sue and Ed are starting to plan the fourth ConvergeSouth and are asking the community to help with the planning....

Blogger Wins a Prestigious Journalism Award!

Congratulations to Josh Marshall for winning the George Polk Award! (Hat-tip)...

CNN control-freaks fire a producer for blogging!

Via Ed Cone (also see SteveK and McDawg) I see that CNN did Teh Stupid - they fired their producer Chez Sapienza. Why? Because he is blogging! On his own blog as well as on HuffPo. He writes about the...

I inform people against their will!

I've heard this one last year (02.16.2007) but heard it again today (it will probably re-air tomorrow - check your local NPR station) - the This American Life episode about Quiz Shows. It was composed of three stories: The first...

Jobs: SR. SCIENCE NEWS WRITER

The Duke Medical Center News Office is seeking a Sr. Science News Writer to be responsible for planning, developing, implementing and analyzing strategic comprehensive and diversified media relations programs and tactics. Through direct support of Duke Medicine strategic objectives...

The first SPARKY Awards

On the heels of David Warlick's session on using online tools in the science classroom and the student blogging panel comes the announcement that SPARC has declared the winners of the first SPARKY Awards for student-generated videos on the theme...

The role of political reporters

Obligatory Reading of the Day, by Glenn Greenwald: "Do they ever think about anything without reference to some high school cliche?"...

This is how MSM should handle scientific "controversies"

Praise where praise is deserved - Dan Abrams handled this segment perfectly, foregoing the he-said-she-said false equivalence, and even remembering to ask for the origin of the supposedly scientific study trotted out by the utterly dishonest proponent of the abstinence-only...

Barbeque Journalism

Jeffrey Feldman nails it: Every journalist working in America should print out that passage in extra-large font and tape it next to the bathroom mirror. Better yet, they should put the passage on a chain and wear it around...

Five-times-five - celebrate the 5th birthday of Creative Commons

Alma Swan and Lawrence Lessig remind us that Creative Commons is celebrating its 5th birthday this December. Alma writes: Creative Commons (CC) is celebrating its 5th birthday. Lawrence Lessig has written to all supporters describing its 'dramatic' growth during the...

Web

Some good, thought-provoking reads about the Web, social networking, publishing and blogging

Science 2.0 at SILS

Jeffrey Pomerantz invited me to give a brownbag lunch presentation on Science 2.0 yesterday at noon at the School of Information and Library Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was fun for me and I hope...

Come to ConvergeSouth

This is why you should attend ConvergeSouth. OK, Anton will lead a session, and so will I, but check out the entire program - it is just getting more and more amazing every year! And it is probably the most...

Brian Russell is now a Social Software and Multimedia Consultant for Hire

And it is hard to find anyone better than Brian: I am now available for hire to consult on the creation, care, and feeding of online communities. Plus I can create audio and video for the web. To get an...

Deep Sea News on TV!

My SciBling Craig McClain is one of the people considered by a major cable channel to host a show about the deep sea. You can help him get this cool job by showing your support in the comments on this...

False Journalistic Balance

When Klaus-Martin Schulte attacked Naomi Orestes and she responded, there was quite a lot of blosopheric response to it. If you look no further than scienceblogs.com, there were no less than eight direct responses (and some lively comments as well):...

Blogger Blowback

On Sunday, LATimes published a viciously uninformed piece about blogging by some Skube guy (who appears to be here in NC though I have never heard of him before). The blogosphere, as expected, responded with laughter and dismay. Today, LATimes...

How to deal with HIV denialists online

My Scibling Tara Smith together with Steven Novella, published an article in PLoS Medicine last week that all frequent readers of science blogs will find interesting: HIV Denial in the Internet Era: Because these denialist assertions are made in books...

Michael Skube: just another guy with a blog and an Exhibit A for why bloggers are mad at Corporate Media

Here are a few pertinent quotes, but read the entire articles as well as long comment threads. Ed Cone: Skube published an opinion piece about blogs that, with the help of his editors at the LA Times, failed to uphold...

Snubbed by Google News!?

What Kevin says....

Science in The Simpsons

Michael Hopkin interviewed Al Jean, the executive producer of The Simpsons show, about math and science, sometimes central, sometimes hidden, in the episodes of everyone's favourite show......

World 2.0 at Rainbows End

Books: "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. It's 2025 - What happened to science, politics and journalism? Well, you know I'd be intrigued. After all, a person whose taste in science fiction I trust (my brother) told me to read this...

Net Neutrality?

I am having difficulty understanding what this is about, who is who, what are the institutional affiliations and potential biases, etc. Can someone explain it to me: Net Neutrality: Undifferentiated Networks Would Require Significant Extra Capacity: Using computer models, the...

Social Networks, danah boyd, and Class, Redux

Apophenia, danah boyd's blog is one of the first blogs I ever read and have been reading more-or-less continuously over the past 3-4 years (since she took a class on framing with George Lakoff and blogged about it). She is...

Media Coverage of Science

I am looking in the closet to see if I can find my tie, because I am going to this in an hour - a very bloggable event: A Lunch and Panel Discussion TALKING TO THE PUBLIC: How Can Media...

Voters' Brains and Framing Politics

First, a video of Jonathan Haidt - Morality: 2012 (Hat-tip to Kevin): The social and cultural psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks with Henry Finder about the five foundations of morality, and why liberals often fail to get their message across. From...

Of course the media is infantile when their main news source is a baby!

Thanks to Jeff over on Shakesville (or should it be IN Shakesville?): Election Central reports that Drudge (who the hell and why still reads that sleazeball of all people!?) tried to slander Edwards by insinuating that his daughter Emma-Claire supports...

To Educate vs. To Inform

You may be aware of the ongoing discussion about the tense relationship between scientists and science journalists. Here is the quick rundown of posts so far: Question for the academic types--interview requests The Mad Biologist and Science Journalists Science Journalists...

We're All Journalists Now

Scott Gant is on NPR's Diane Rehm show right now, valiantly defending bloggers from grouchy journalists. They will have a podcast up later....

For European LifeScience Bloggers

It is high time a blogger wins this prize, don't you think? If you are in Europe or Israel, and you have a life-science blog, apply for this award: EMBO Award for Communication in the Life Sciences Call for entries...

Lab Action!

Remember back in November, when everyone got excited about JoVe (the Journal of Visulized Experiments)? Well, it is not alone in its niche any more. There is now another site similar to that: Lab Action. Of course I homed in...

The Inter-Ghost Connection

The other day I was chatting with my brother (the smarter brother of Sherlock Holmes) on the phone, and he said something that may have some truth to it - I was predisposed, from early childhood, to understand and like...

The importance of being an expert on ...something, anything!

Today's Obligatory Reading of the Day is this essay by Kagro X: Have you ever read, seen, or heard a mainstream media account of some event in which you've been personally involved? Or in which you have developed, under whatever...

Web, politics and everything else....

Writing actual science posts takes a lot of time, research, thinking and energy. I assembled a large pile of papers I want to comment on and I actually started writing posts about a couple of them already, but Real Life...

Framing Global Warming

NPR has started a year-long series on climate called Climate Connections. The other day, they broadcast the first in a series of their educational segments, starting at the very beginning: the carbon atom. You can read the intro here and...

The Future of the Interview

Excellent article by Jeff Jarvis: The obsolete interview (hat-tip: Anton). As I've been interviewed several times this year, I agree. The world is changing: media, just like science publishing (see below) and getting a job (see further below) will change.......

Another fox hiding from atheists in a hole?

Barry Saunders is a local columnist for Raleigh News & Observer who I never thought was very funny (there is a mysoginist streak in his writing) so I rarely read him these days. But the other day I could not...

Feldman Skewered

It appears that scientists are not the only ones who do not grok framing. Jeffrey Feldman's book got blasted by some ninkompoop in NY Times yesterday. Jeff responds: Indeed, when I read that passage I wondered if the reviewer had...

Framing Science - the Dialogue of the Deaf

My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science" Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford...

The Power of Emoti(c)ons

Energy Use Study Demonstrates Remarkable Power Of Social Norms: Most people want to be normal. So, when we are given information that underscores our deviancy, the natural impulse is to get ourselves as quickly as we can back toward the...

"Post-human"

The best way to make it easy for the low-brow followers to kill the enemy is to dehumanize it. That is what right-wing talking-heads have been doing for a while. Of course, if someone actually gets killed, they did not...

The Iraq War is four years old...

...yet even at the start of it, back in March 2003, The Onion understood the dynamics of war and the psychology of defenders of war better than almost half of Americans and all of GOP today. [Hat-tip, commenter Lindsey]...

If everything but Britney Spears is boring, why are you here?

On the heels of my last week's post, it seems everyone is writing about journalism, blogging, and how to move back from infotainment to actual journalism, as in "information + education" which a populace needs if the democracy is to...

Christocentrism

When a newspaper publishes a column about religion (in their Religion section) that takes into account only the Christian point of view, someone is bound to object. When the newspaper rectifies the error by publishing an article by an atheist,...

Local Paper

The first issue of Carrboro Citizen is now available both in hardcopy and online. [Background here] Update: Brian is gushing over it.......

Are we Press? Part Deux

This is kinda funny. Waveflux digs out a couple of truly ancient articles - What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers and What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists by Steve Outing, which, though not as awful as some (especially the first...

In Less Than An Hour! 'Galapagos' on the National Geographic Channel

I hope you see this on time to tune in. Hat-tip: The Beagle Project Blog...

New local independent paper - introducing Carrboro Citizen

There used to be two big independent papers in the Triangle: Spectator and Independent. The former was full of information about local events, movies, restaurants. The latter had some of the best political and social writing anywhere. Then, several years...

A data point for net neutrality

Abandoning Net Neutrality Discourages Improvements In Service: Charging online content providers such as Yahoo! and Google for preferential access to the customers of Internet service providers might not be in the best interest of the millions of Americans, despite claims...

The Reducible Complexity of John McCain

Evolution works according to a very small set of simple rules. If a) there is variation in a trait in a population and b) that variation is heritable and c) one variant is better adapted to the current local environment,...

MSM: how to get on bloggers' good side....or not

About two days ago, about 120 local bloggers (their e-mail addresses probably taken from the local - and now obsolete - Triangle Bloggers MeetUp.org page) got an e-Vite to this: You are cordially invited to attend to the NBC 17...

Good Blog, Bad Blog

Some politicians fear blogs. They must have something to hide, dontcha think? Other politicians love blogs and run their own. Unsurprisingly, they are beloved by their constituencies....

To Netroot or to Pretend to Netroot?

A tale of two candidate's video distribution strategies: These examples highlight an interesting problem for candidates: while YouTube offers tools to manage posting comments, you cannot control what content your page links to. In going to "where the people are,"...

Very cool

Is Internet going to change the way politicians campaign and the way they are perceived? Check this video, the first in a series of "webisodes" filmed behind the scenes with John Edwards: Doesn't that completely change your perceptions? Update: Sorry,...

I am the TIME Magazine's Person of the Year!

And so are you! Blogs rule!...

Edwards on Hardball last night

If you missed the Hardball last night, you can watch it here. Here is Raleigh News & Observer: 'Hardball' not so hard for Edwards: Likely Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards passed the world leader pop quiz Tuesday night. He correctly...

People who should know better...

...but they do not....