jdupuis | October 30, 2017As of November 1st, 2017, ScienceBlogs is shutting down, necessitating relocation of this blog.
It's been over eight years and 1279 posts. It's been predatory open access publishers, April Fool's posts and multiple wars on science. A long and wonderful trip, career-transforming, network building and an awful lot of fun. Over that period of time, ScienceBlogs has gone from the 800 pound gorilla of science blogging to just another site with not enough traffic to keep the lights on, which I guess is the way of the world. Things change, life moves on.
Thanks to everyone at ScienceBlogs for all…
jdupuis | September 26, 2017Deja vu all over again. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Canadian science under the Harper government from 2006 to 2015 was a horrific era of cuts and closures and muzzling and a whole lot of other attack on science.
One of the most egregious was the threat to close the PEARL arctic research station. (PEARL website) Fortunately, the outcry was so fierce that the Harper government extended PEARL's funding for five years. Well, guess what? The five years is up and PEARL is threatened with closure once more.
Canadian science under the Justin Trudeau Liberals has shown signs…
jdupuis | September 11, 2017The last one of these was in mid-June, so we're picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those macro-level issues, Trump and his cronies are still hammering away at climate change denial, environmental protection, research funding and public health issues. As exhausting as it seems -- and this is part of the plan -- amongst all of us opposed to Trump, we need to keep track of a wide range of…
jdupuis | August 18, 2017After a bit of an unexpected summer hiatus, I'm back to regular blogging, at least as regular as it's been the last year or two.
Of course, I'm a committed Game of Thrones fan. I read the first book in paperback soon after it was reprinted, some twenty years ago. And I've also been a fan of the HBO series, which though a bit inconsistent and wobbly at times, has been quite worth watching.
And speaking of winter, has anyone else noticed that winter doesn't seem to be coming? Has anyone noticed the person most worried about climate-related issues, Jon Snow, is having trouble being believed? In…
jdupuis | June 16, 2017Another couple of weeks' worth of stories about how science is faring under the Donald Trump regime. If I'm missing anything important, please let me know either in the comments or at my email jdupuis at yorku dot ca. If you want to use a non-work email for me, it's dupuisj at gmail dot com.
The selections are by no means meant to represent a comprehensive account of everything written about science over the last couple of weeks. I'm aiming for something representative rather than complete or comprehensive. For example, there are probably hundreds of articles written about the Paris Climate…
jdupuis | June 13, 2017As a kind of quick follow up to my long ago post on Some perspective on “predatory” open access journals (presentation version, more or less, here and very short video version here) and in partial response to the recent What I learned from predatory publishers, I thought I would gather a bunch of worthwhile items here today.
Want to prepare yourself to counter panic around predatory open access journals? Here's some great places to start.
How to talk about “Predatory” Publishing: Reclaiming the Narrative
Beyond Beall’s List: Better understanding predatory publishers
Blacklists are…
The Donald Trump War on Science: Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and other recent stories
jdupuis | May 31, 2017For people who are wondering why I'm not doing more of my patented chronologies or collections of posts, the answer is pretty simple. There's so damn much going on it's hard for me to find the time and mental energy to bring it all together. I'm currently working on posts covering the Trump budget proposal as well as the story about the various issue with the Environmental Protection Agency. I'm not sure when I'll get to complete those, but in both cases the story is on-going. I'm also hoping to do an update on the March for Science post.
I may also compile the story around Paris Agreement…
jdupuis | May 2, 2017Come work with me! Be my department head!
Here's the full posting:
Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream - Assistant/Associate/Senior Librarian
Discipline/Field: Head of Steacie Science and Engineering Library
Home Faculty: Libraries
Home Department/Area/Division: Steacie Science and Engineering Library
Affiliation/Union: YUFA
Position Start Date: October 1, 2017
Physical Sciences Librarian and Head of Steacie Science and Engineering Library, York University Libraries, York University
York University Libraries seeks an innovative and visionary leader who will inspire the librarians and…
jdupuis | April 28, 2017Like with La La Land a few months back, here we have a jazz-themed documentary that I haven't seen yet but have read an awful lot about.
Unlike La La Land, I actually intend to see Chasing Trane and actually have tickets to see an upcoming showing at a Toronto theatre.
The reviews seem fantastic, with more or less unanimous opinion that the film does justice to Coltrane both as a person and as a musician.
Some of what I've been reading...
Q&A with “Chasing Trane” Filmmaker John Scheinfeld / Down Beat
'Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary' serves the jazz legend well by Noel…
jdupuis | April 23, 2017Many thanks to the organizers of this past weekend's March on Science here in Toronto. They invited me to be part of the amazing roster of speakers for the event. I was honoured to take part and offer some of the lessons I've learned in the course of my various listing projects over the last number of years, especially the epic chronology of the Harper years.
There's a nice video summary here and a CTV News report where I'm interviewed here. A couple of additional media stories are here and here and here.
My fellow presenters were Master of Ceremonies Rupinder Brar and speakers Dawn Martin-…
jdupuis | April 1, 2017You know, I'm the best librarian. Just the best. My collection is huge. The very very best collection. Such a great collection. I love collecting. I'm very good at bibliographic instruction. Nobody does bibliographic instruction like me. Students love it. I can talk for hours. I have long, beautiful book stacks. Look at those book stacks, are they small book stacks? I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you.
And since I'm the best librarian, my pal The Donald, the President of the United States, has hired me to be the Chief Executive Officer for the National Parks Service Library…
jdupuis | March 27, 2017For your reading and collection development pleasure...
It's been a while since I've done one of these posts, kind of seeing what's on my mind a little in the science-y and tech-y book world and kind of a way to help me remember what I want to pick up. It's also been a while since I've actually reviewed a book, but I do think I'll be getting to some of the backlog fairly soon in some mass group posts.
In any case, some books I'd like to read, ones that I've not acquired yet but probably will soon.
The Politics of Fear: Médecins sans Frontières and the West African Ebola Epidemic. Edited by…
jdupuis | March 24, 2017The world is going to hell in a hand basket. But at least we can laugh as we're sucked relentlessly into the Hellmouth.
Maybe if we all collectively understood science and evidence better, the path to Hell wouldn't be quite so straight and narrow. So maybe that's what's making me think of these particular funny bits today. And by funny I mean so funny in hurts.
First up, we have retired basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal, who apparently really and truly believes the world is flat. He has a doctorate in Education, by the way, which I just can't even.
Shaquille O'Neal agrees with Kyrie…
jdupuis | March 14, 2017OK, I admit, Friday Fun a few days late...
In any case, last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, March 10, 1997 marked the very first episode of one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and certainly my personal favourite. Although I didn't start watching until the mid-2000s (I had two young kids in 1997 and was not watching much TV. We heard a lot about how great it was, but weren't in any space to be adding new shows to what little we were watching), once I did start with the DVDs, I was hooked. I've watched the whole thing through twice and…
jdupuis | February 24, 2017My library's Hackfest was yesterday so I'm feeling kind of burnt out today. Today's linked post cheers me immensely, in a side-eye, gallows humour kind of way.
This recent Retraction Watch post is funny and you should read the whole thing: Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing.
Significosis
Neophilia
Theorrhea
Arigorium
Disjunctivitis is a disease that is about a collective proclivity to produce large quantities of redundant, trivial, and incoherent works. This happens because of several reasons, but primarily because quantity of publications is usually…
jdupuis | February 21, 2017US president Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, is a terrible idea for many different reasons and has been widely condemned. Banning people due to their refugee status, religion or national origin has no place in a civilized society. while it has been overturned in court, it appears that Trump is going to try again with a new Order.
The purpose of this post isn't to go into the details of the Executive order or to analyse the myriad reasons why it's a terrible idea, but rather to share a detailed cross section of…
jdupuis | February 17, 2017
Why music ownership matters
Forgetting What I’ve Heard: Why I Miss Buying Music
Henry Rollins: Will I Be Able to Finish Listening to All My Records Before I Die?
Beyond Jazz’s Boys Club
The Forgotten Architects of Jazz — And the New York Women Bringing Them Back
Beyond the boys club: Striving for diversity and inclusion in experimental music
Sexism In The Music Industry - When Women Lean In, Others Need To Listen Up
Almost Famous, Almost Broke: How Does a Jazz Musician Make It in New York Now?
Be a good girls or play like a man: Why women aren't getting into jazz
10 Women Instrumentalists…
jdupuis | February 12, 2017Is the March for Science (and all it's satellite marches) too political or not political enough?
The text on their website gives a sense of where the organizers are coming from:
SCIENCE, NOT SILENCE
The March for Science is a celebration of our passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. Recent policy changes have caused heightened worry among scientists, and the incredible and immediate outpouring of support has made clear that these concerns are also shared by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The mischaracterization of science as a…
jdupuis | February 5, 2017I've been thinking a lot about this the last week or so, with media appearances already out there and more to come. The list of links I've amassed is quite impressive, a significant number to add to the post highlighting Sarah Boon's advice. But that was a week or so ago, which seems like an eternity in Donald Trump years. So perhaps it's time to take another look at the issues around science advocacy and politics in the Canadian context.
My advice? Don't bring a test tube to a Bunsen burner fight. Mobilize, protest, form partnerships, wrote op-eds and blog posts and books and articles, speak…
jdupuis | January 30, 2017How bad could it be? On so may fronts, the first week or so of the Donald Trump administration was the shit show to end all shit shows.
But we're only going to talk about the science stuff here.
As the more astute observers among my readership will observe, I still haven't updated the Pre-Inauguration Edition of this post. Nor should this post really be considered a true beginning to tracking the post-inauguration devastation that the Trump administration will wreck on science, technology, the environment and public health. I'm hitting the high lights here with a more complete accounting to…