Social Sciences
gregladen | July 24, 2009From the NCSE:
Three historians of science are unhappy about their treatment in a creationist movie about Darwin, as they explain in a note in the July 2009 Newsletter of the History of Science Society. Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert write, "We have recently been featured in a documentary film, 'The Voyage that Shook the World,' produced by Fathom Media of Australia and directed by Stephen Murray of Synergy Films, New Zealand. We were led to believe that the movie was being made to be shown as an educational film on Australian broadcast television and possibly elsewhere.…
mspringer | July 24, 2009Far be it from a ScienceBlog to bloviate insufferably about current events, but I suppose I should weigh in on the whole Henry Louis Gates thing. I suppose this because I've had a very similar thing once happen to me. First Gates' story, then mine.
The accounts of Gates and the arresting officer vary on several points, and each paints the other in a very poor light. From the points of agreement we can reconstruct a minimal but probably accurate recounting of the events. Gates and his driver arrived at Gates' home. They could not easily get the door open either as a result of malfunction…
oracknows | July 23, 2009Although I often don't agree with him and have cooled on him lately, I still rather like--even admire--Richard Dawkins. While it's true I've taken him to task for having a tin ear for bioethics, lamented his walking blindly right into charges of anti-Semitism (no, I don't think he's an anti-Semite), and half-defended/half-criticized him for seeming to endorsing eugenics. What's really irritated me about him in the past, though, is his use of the "Neville Chamber atheist" gambit that I so detest, so much so that I once featured Dawkins in a Hitler Zombie episode (albeit not as the victim). On…
clock | July 22, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Henry Gee, the senior editor at Nature and blogger at I, Editor and The End Of The Pier Show , to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock.
Thank you. It's nice to be here. Nice decor. Hessian up the walls. Very 1970s. I like the lava lamp. This sofa needs re-uphostering, though. The smell. I think…
gregladen | July 20, 2009Because some of you are not my facebook friends ....
Here are the instructions....
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you.
First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
Copy the instructions into your own note, and be sure to tag the person who tagged you.
If you can't read, just list the picture books you looked at.
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Signet Classics)
2. Welcome to the Monkey House: Stories
3. The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches (Penguin Classics)
4. The Golden Book…
clock | July 20, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 220 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
clock | July 18, 2009
Here are the submissions for OpenLab 2009 to date. As we have surpassed 210 entries, all of them, as well as the "submit" buttons and codes and the bookmarklet, are under the fold. You can buy the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions at Lulu.com. Please use the submission form to add more of your and other people's posts (remember that we are looking for original poems, art, cartoons and comics, as well as essays):
A Blog Around The Clock: On Being a Nurse- a guest post
A Blog Around The Clock: Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
A Blog Around The Clock: Why social insects do not suffer from…
jstemwedel | July 17, 2009As promised, in this post I consider the treatment of the science-religion culture wars in Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. If you're just tuning in, you may want to pause to read my review of the book, or to peruse my thoughts on issues the book raised about what the American public wants and about whether old or new media give the American public what it needs.
In the interests of truth in advertising, let me state at the outset that this post will not involve anything like a detailed rehash of "Crackergate", nor a…
drorzel | July 15, 2009
Bad Boys | Film | A.V. Club
"From this rich central dynamic, all manner of hilarity springs. Smith is fastidious about the upkeep of his expensive sports car. Lawrence is a slob who gets his messy hamburger all over its glistening interior! How will they ever be able to work together? My curiosity was piqued! Incidentally, since Iâm writing about Michael Bay, I feel it is only appropriate to use as many exclamation points as possible, in a futile attempt to convey the mind-bogglingly extreme and in-your-face nature of Bayâs work. Whose face is Bay in? Mine. Yours. Societyâs."
(tags: movies…
pharyngula | July 10, 2009William Saletan highlights an interesting study in reproductive biology.
In a paper presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, Dr. David Greening, an Australian infertility expert, reports that 81 percent of the men in his study significantly improved their sperm quality, as measured by DNA fragmentation, through a simple one-week program.
The program was so easy that even the average guy could follow it. According to a summary of the study, "The men were instructed to ejaculate daily."
He presents it as a conflict for religious organizations like the Catholic…
thusspakezuska | July 8, 2009
Throughout the month of June, Philadelphia-area residents had the opportunity to take advantage of an extraordinary arts festival - Hidden City Philadelphia.
This unique arts festival...brings Philadelphia's best unknown historical and architectural landmarks back to life through original works of art...There are many historical and architectural landmarks around Philadelphia that at one time were all important to the city's neighborhoods, but their significance - and in some cases their existence - has been forgotten over the years, making them hidden to the people who walk, run, or drive…
mikethemadbiologist | July 8, 2009I've written before (here) about the problems I have with the new trend in economics to misuse irrationality and to wrongly credit it for phenomena. So, a long-time reader sent along a Conor Clarke interview with Paul Samuelson, in which he discusses irrationality (boldface questions; italics mine):
Okay, what's the distinction there? I'm curious what you think about some recent developments in economics, some of the movements that are hot right now -- like behavioral economics, part of which wants to challenge the notion of humans as utility maximizing rational agents.
In my view behavioral…
nisbetmc | July 8, 2009
A 1997 poster appearing in Central Park.
Perhaps the best commentary on the cultural reaction to Michael Jackson's death comes from the NY Times' columnist Bob Herbert. After describing meeting Jackson in the mid-1980s as one of the "creepier experiences" of his life, Herbert goes on to discuss how Jackson was the perfect symbol of the age, a retreat for Americans into fantasy during the years of the Reagan administration, rising poverty, and an escalating crack and drug epidemic. As Herbert writes:
In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and…
gregladen | July 7, 2009The British Council, a Royally Chartered organization involved in education, has completed a survey which indicates that there is "a broad international consensus of acceptance towards his theory of evolution."
From the press release:
The research, conducted by Ipsos MORI, surveyed over ten thousand adults across ten countries worldwide including Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Great Britain and the USA.
The results show that the majority of people polled have heard of Charles Darwin with the highest levels of awareness in Russia (93%), Mexico (91%),…
sb admin | July 6, 2009The Washington Postâs Pamela Constable reports on brickmakers in Pakistan, where a worker might toil from 4:30am to sundown, produce 1,200 bricks, and earn $3.50 for the dayâs labor.
Brickmakers toil near the bottom of Pakistan's economic and social ladder, forever at the mercy of heat, dirt, human greed and official indifference. By law, they cannot be compelled to work or be kept in bondage; in practice, the great majority are bound to the kilns by debt. The work is seasonal and families move often, but if they leave one kiln for another, their debt is transferred to the new owner. If they…
drorzel | July 3, 2009
Charlie Rose - An interview with David Foster Wallace
A 1997 interview, when Wallace was promoting A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, covering a wide range of topics.
(tags: video writing books literature movies humanities academia society culture)
In Which Your Host Witnesses a High-Speed Chase : Built on Facts
"Conservation of momentum happened. The collision was not entirely inelastic nor was it entirely elastic. The truck struck the car very solidly on its right side behind the center of mass of the car, sending the car into a spin more or less along its original trajectory.…
emjohnson | July 3, 2009Human nature is one of those concepts that, like "common sense", everyone knows what you mean but no one knows how it's defined. Ironically, the most insistent proponents of human nature are often those who have benefited from the status quo in society and prefer people to remain just as they are.
June 27 (the day before my son was born) was the birthday of the famed feminist, author and political radical Emma Goldman. I had the opportunity to spend last summer at the Emma Goldman Papers in Berkeley, California to study her unpublished speeches and correspondence. As someone who was…
drorzel | July 1, 2009
Newton, P.I. | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"Happily, Tom Levenson (of The Inverse Square, and one of our honored guest bloggers) has provided us with a fascinating peek into a telling episode in Newtonâs later life â his career as a criminal investigator. Not really âP.I.â, as Newton was acting in his capacity as a government official, the Warden of the Mint. The story is closer to something from Law and Order or CSI â remarkably close, in fact. "
(tags: history physics science books levenson blogs cosmic-variance)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Strong Basis in Confusion…
laelaps | July 1, 2009
A somewhat tamarin-like restoration of Ganlea megacania. By Mark A. Klingler of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
It seems that almost every time a new fossil primate is announced the first question everyone asks is "Is it one of our ancestors?" Nevermind that it is all but impossible to identify direct ancestors and descendants in the vertebrate fossil record (including primates). If the fossil can be construed to be a human ancestor it gets plenty of attention and if it is not the reports are left to wither. For a primate fossil to be seen, it must be promoted, and this often…
bcohen | July 1, 2009Among other things, John Stuart Mill wrote about deliberation in a democratic society. It's the philosophy that a strong democracy is one whose members are actively involved in the functioning of that government. This, as opposed to a passive, distanced, and unreflective citizenry. Engagement and participation into the activity of the society offer benefits in at least two directions: in one way, they make for a stronger democratic society as a whole by demanding connections between the everyday life of the citizens and the everyday operations of the government; this is an advantage that…