evolgen
Posts by this author
I'm a big fan of Wikipedia. I was happy to report that the dynamic encyclopedia is just as good as Britannica. But there is a limit to what any encyclopedia can tell you. They are excellent places to go for a quick introduction to material that is otherwise unfamiliar to you. For example, if I want…
If you want to find an image on the internet, you can usually find a relevant picture using Google's Image Search. But the Google search matches text, not the image. Glyn Moody points us to a cool new plan which will allow you to search images on the web using images. This idea sounds awesome, and…
They are asking another question of us. They have also changed their name -- just remember where you first saw that gimmick. Anyway, on to their question:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day…
The ScienceBlogs Donors Choose program kicked off with a bang yesterday. Evolgen is attempting to raise a modest $500 dollars to fund in class projects for public school science classes. There are fourteen proposals to choose from in the evolgen challenge, which will run for the next two weeks. As…
Phylogeny Friday will take a hiatus for an undetermined length of time. Don't worry, it will be back. I just need to focus on other things besides digging through the literature for trees.
Dr. Reed Cartwright has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. Reed's a Panda's Thumb contributor and theoretical population geneticist. We'll forgive him for the second point, seeing as how he did have my academic grandfather as an advisor. The Panda's Thumb was the great inspiration for…
What is evolution? Razib started it. John Hawks joined in. I offered my opinion in the comments on GNXP. But I felt obliged to say more, here.
It seems like most of the readers in the ScienceBlogs universe don't understand the difference between evolution and natural selection. When Razib asked…
The ScienceBlogs bloggers, led by Janet, are trying to raise money to fund in class projects for math and science teachers. To donate to the evolgen pledge drive, click here and choose one of listed proposals to partially fund. I have also posted a link to the DonorsChoose website on my sidebar (on…
Andy Clark has written a review of comparative evolutionary genomics for Trends in Ecology and Evolution. His review deals with identifying functional regions of the genome and inference of both positively and negatively selected sequences.
Clark is one of the leaders in the field of evolutionary…
Another review of Michael Ashburner's book Won for All is available on PLoS Biology. PZ Myers also wrote a review of the book, and the two pieces complement each other nicely.
Mendel's Garden is a brand spanking new carnival devoted to all things genetic (classical, molecular, evolutionary, etc). The deadline to submit an entry for the first ever edition is Thursday, June 15 at 11:59 central time. If you have recently posted something on your blog about any area of…
Read this reply to Francis Collins on Pharyngula. Collins, one of the biggest movers and shakers behind the human genome project, is also Christian and very eager to tell the world about it. Now he's written a book about his faith. Doc Myers takes Collins to task for the shaky ground upon which his…
This one goes out to all the kids who don't drink. By kids, of course, I mean our wonderful readers -- spoken to in a condescending manner -- not minors. I would never encourage minors to drink. That's illegal, and everything that is illegal is bad. Real bad.
A paper in the pipeline at Cancer…
'Dem fools is asking us this:
"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?"
I guess "novelist" isn't an acceptable answer as it's not an "area of scientific research". Well, that and I've…
There's a new blog carnival on the block, and it goes by the name Mendel's Garden. As you can tell from the name, it's all about genetics. If you have a recent genetics post that you would like to contribute to the first rendition, submit it by Thursday, June 15. Thanks to Paul Decelles at the The…
Janet has tagged us with an irrational meme. Below the fold are 3.14159265 things about me.
3 reasons you blog about science:
To practice writing.
To organize my thoughts and force myself to follow the current literature.
There are worse ways for me to waste my time.
Point at which you would stop…
As I write this, Mexico is about to kick off against Iran in Nuremberg. Yeah, that Nuremberg. And that Iran. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony coincidence.
OMG, check out the new evolgen banner! You gots to see this. I'm totally ragging on the Discovery Channel advertisement (that's 'advert' for you on the other side of the pond). Me so funny. Me go, haha! Laugh. It'll only be up while the Disco Channel KRAKATOA ad (ie, advert) is running. Have a good…
The Nature Newsblog is reporting that mathematicians have shown that scoring begets more scoring in soccer football association football. I don't have access to the Nature News article, but it appears that World Cup goals cannot be modeled as Poisson random variables.
Wondering why I called it…
If all has gone according to planned*, the new version of the ScienceBlogs homepage should be up and running. Along with the new homepage comes a whole slew of new bloggers. Go on over and check it out. It should be totally awesome**.
* This is a scheduled post, so all may have not gone according…
You may have thought that Orin Scrivello was the worst dentist ever. Well, have I got a story for you. This dentist isn't a sadist, and his follies were far from intentional. But the implications of his conduct greatly affected the lives of at least five of his patients. This week's Phylogeny…
A poll of 1,200 undergrads at 100 colleges in the United States found that 73% of the students think iPods are "in". One tenth of all old people know that "in" means "hip". Half of all old people think "hip" means "the thing I just got replaced". Drinking beer and stalking Facebook tied for second…
For the past few weeks, I have allowed commenters to post using their TypeKey account. I didn't want to require commenters to register with TypeKey if they did not want to, so I still allowed comments from unregistered readers. TypeKey allows me to authorize comments much faster, as I do not need…
Hsien at Genetics and Health decided it would be interesting to interview some idiot and post the answers online. The idiot tried his best to answer the five questions (no, not those five questions) posed to him, and you can either berate him for his answers at Genetics and Health or right here in…
I present for you an example of inferring a bit too much from inappropriate data. This isn't quite the same as making claims about demography based on 100 nucleotides from 6 individuals. But it's not much better given that this example is from a study of extant organisms. Abstracts to clarify what…
The New York Times has a science blog. A science blog that I cannot access because I am not subscribed to TimesSelect. The Times wants readers to pay to read a blog. This is worse than a blog without comments.
(Via Complex Medium.)
I've learned that writing about alcohol is great for the ol' site meter. Even the teetotalers got active in the comments. Despite the rampant sobriety that seems to be spreading amongst sciency types, I still believe that alcohol is the lubricant that greases the scientific process.
But scientists…
No, Dr. Mayr did not dislike the beach. That's just how all the kids are saying, "You ain't down with the shit I'm doing." Anyway, read this post attacking the physicists for calling us stamp collectors on a blog with a very cumbersome name. MissPrism puts a throw-away link at the end of the post…
The Lehigh University Department of Biological Sciences was awarded $1.8 million by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to fund undergraduate education. No word if Michael Behe will use any of the money to fund his gigantic research program in intelligent design.