October 7, 2009
Here Comes Science by the alt-rock band The Might be Giants is a delightful CD/DVD set of kids music and video about...Science! The set comes with both a CD with all the music and a DVD with all the videos wrapped into a show with animated, light-hearted commentary and introduction by the two…
October 2, 2009
Yes, it's the IgNobel Awards for 2009!
Let's take a look at a couple of the more amusing ones:
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining -- by experiment -- whether it is better to be…
October 1, 2009
In a reputation economy, social media can provide a powerful set of tools for establishing and enhancing your reputation. An enhanced reputation can lead to enhanced opportunities, in the form of job offers or other professional opportunity.
Academia is a reputation economy, of course, but…
September 30, 2009
It's time for the annual Mocking of the Thomson session.
Check out my previous iterations of this amusing pastime: 2002, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008.
Yes, I've been at this for a while, but to no avail. My main point in all this is to make clear that I don't believe that the Nobel prizes are chosen…
September 28, 2009
Here's an amazing and fairly unique opportunity for a research-minded librarian who wants to significantly advance her or his research program. The appointment is for up to three years and the starting date is somewhat flexible.
Here's the terms of reference for the position:
Each appointment…
September 28, 2009
Those of you with long memories may recall that I was on the jury for the 2009 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.
Well, the names of the winners have just been released:
Adult: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Young Adult: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
You can check out the…
September 25, 2009
God, I love The Onion: Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.
An international panel of leading anthropologists, cultural critics, biologists, and social theorists announced this week that Western civilization will reach its lowest conceivable point at 3:32 p.m. Friday…
September 24, 2009
Predicting the future is tricky business. Trust me, I know.
But there's two ideas I always like to keep in mind when I put my futurologist's hat on:
The future will be at least as diverse as the present, probably more so. But not likely less.
There's no guarantee that things will change for the…
September 23, 2009
If you feel the need to socially network with ScienceBlogs and any of us various SciBlings, you can do so on Facebook and Twitter. I suspect that most of us who are on those services are fans/followers of ScienceBlogs.
The main places I hang out are Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook. Drop by and…
September 21, 2009
That's the question asked by Lance Fortnow in a recent Communications of the ACM Viewpoint article (free fulltext).
Fortnow's article continues a discussion about scholarly communication patterns in computer science that's been going on for a while in the "pages" of the CACM. I've blogged about it…
September 18, 2009
As many have not doubt noticed over the months and years of my blog's existence, I am a hardcore science fiction fan. And just as with the science/librarian world, there are countless blogs and other sites about the science fictions/fantasy/horror worlds. And of course, I have trouble keeping up…
September 18, 2009
I'm talking about the new-to-me Wolfgang's Vault! Among other things, it includes a Vault Store, where you can buy prints and other swag; the Concert vault with 2859 concerts, the Crawdaddy magazine & archives. The concerts material can be sliced & diced into playlists and radio shows.…
September 16, 2009
I haven't done one of these in a while, so there's quite a backlog to clear.
Reports
Digital Scholarly Communication: A Snapshot of Current Trends
Crowdsourcing, Attention and Productivity
Strategic Outsourcing and Cloud Computing: Reality Is a Sober Adversary
Library Storage Facilities and the…
September 11, 2009
No, I don't mean the werewolf entry in Wikipedia, I mean the use of Wikipedia by werewolves.
You see, I recently received a review copy of The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten by Ritch Duncan, Bob Powers and Emily Flake.
As you can imagine, it an imaginary non-fiction book…
September 10, 2009
I've always thought the born-digital, high-quality review articles (called "lectures") that Morgan & Claypool publish as part of their Synthesis product are one of the best products out there. They really get publishing scholarly and professional materials in the digital age.
One of their most…
September 9, 2009
Just yesterday I posted on preserving the the history of the computing field, musing at the end that digitization projects could save a lot of documents.
Well, what comes along today in the latest What's New @ IEEE for Students is a note about the IEEE-USA History Project:
Digital Archives,…
September 8, 2009
An interesting article from the most recent IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Preserving Records of the Past, Today by James W. Cortada. In concerns the difficulty that scholars of the history of computing have in finding primary materials to work with, mostly in the form of documents.…
September 4, 2009
I just love those articles that turn up every once in a while that make fun of the typos and factual errors students make on their exams and term papers. I know it's cruel but I can't help myself. Best Wank and Gaza: this year's top exam howlers is a pretty good example of the form.
Meanwhile, a…
September 3, 2009
Keywords of a Librarian is the title of a new blog by academic librarian Mary W. George. What's very interesting about the blog is where it's being hosted.
It's part of InsideHigherEd's BlogU community so Mary George is a fellow academic library blogger embedded within a faculty blogging community…
September 3, 2009
It looks like ScienceBlogs will be getting a lot more community-like and a lot less we-talk-you-listen -- and that's a very good thing.
Since we're listening, we'd also like your feedback on how we should set up our community.
As you may have heard from one of our bloggers, ScienceBlogs will soon…
September 1, 2009
A bunch of recent journal & magazine issues to catch up on. There's lots of cool stuff to highlight, so I'll only list a couple of articles from each issue. Unfortunately, most of it will be behind the IEEE paywall.
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v31i2
Think Piece: Preserving…
August 31, 2009
"The past can survive only if it can beat out the future" (p. 142)
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Laurence Lessig is a great and important book, one that should be read by anyone interested in the future of the Internet, culture and expression.
This book is a plea…
August 28, 2009
John Scalzi has a couple of very amusing posts at the AMC TV website, John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design:
Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view ("I can't see a thing in this helmet!" -- Luke…
August 27, 2009
Apparently inspired by the occasional Five Songs I Love posts I've been doing (here, here and here), Ava at Jemsite asked me if I wouldn't mind coming up with one for their blog.
Well, it sounded like a cool idea -- so here's what I came up with.
It was a fun experience so I hope to do more guest…
August 27, 2009
And speaking of reading, a couple of the books on the summer reading list I posted yesterday were actually purchased at the World Science Fiction Convention dealers' room! We were lucky that this year the con was in Montreal, my home town and very near Ste-Agathe, where we spent most of our…
August 26, 2009
My annual summer blogging break has officially come to a close. I returned to work Monday after a very nice four week vacation. Yes, I use my whole annual vacation allotment all at once and go the rest of the year without any significant break except for Christmas.
The first three weeks we spent…
August 21, 2009
Oooh. I love lists of books!
And, hey, I'm on a blogcation, you're probably on vacation too. So here's some reading material for the beach, backyard or cottage!
SCIENCE
Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones (Little, Brown £20) Enthralling life leads us through…
August 20, 2009
During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from September 3, 2008. There was some nice discussion on Friendfeed that's worth checking out.
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Some recent posts that got me thinking…
August 18, 2009
During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from January 13, 2009. It ended up being pretty popular and was the reason that ALA Editions initially contacted me about doing a book.
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August 14, 2009
One of the most important things librarians do to manage their book collections is weed. That involves removing the really old, useless stuff to make way for the shiny, new, useful stuff. Shelf space is limited, of course, but you also don't want to clutter your shelves with items that are too…
