clock | September 10, 2008Josh Marshall:
Let's face it. Lipstick on a pig is a classic American phrase. And there's just no better way to describe the McCain-Palin ticket:
clock | September 10, 2008There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Obesity as a Perceived Social Signal:
Fat accumulation has been classically considered as a means of energy storage. Obese people are theorized as metabolically 'thrifty', saving energy during times of food abundance. However, recent research has highlighted many neuro-behavioral and social aspects of obesity, with a suggestion that obesity, abdominal…
clock | September 10, 2008A lovely article in Bon Appetit about the food scene in Durham and Chapel Hill - here are a few short snippets:
America's Foodiest Small Town:
Imagine a place where foodies not only have a favorite chef, but also a favorite farmer; a place where the distance between the organic farm and the award-winning restaurant is mere miles; a place where a sustainable future is foreseeable. It's all a reality in Durham-Chapel Hill.
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Durham and Chapel Hill--united by an eight-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 15-501--are best known for two things: tobacco and their utter hatred for…
clock | September 10, 2008The 188th edition of Carnival of Education is up on The Core Knowledge Blog
Carnival of the Liberals #73 is up on Redonkulous Redundancy
clock | September 10, 2008This month's Theme Of The Month in PLoS ONE are bats! Midway between the release of Batman II and Halloween, this sounds like an appropriate choice. Peter Binfield provides more information.
A number of our bat papers have received media and blog coverage (and not just by Anne-Marie!), but it is never too late. Bloggers tend to write about the newest papers, fresh off the presses. But nothing stops you from going back and covering one of the older papers if you find it interesting. Perhaps you were just not aware of it before.
Here are some of our bat papers to date, showcasing the…
clock | September 10, 2008Vedran continues to spread the Openness in Serbia:
"Anglo-American School Belgrade, a small private school in Belgrade, started its academic year with an opening ceremony celebrating the joy of learning.
Teachers who gathered on the first day of school learned about the intention of the school management to offer them a number of links to Open Access repositories and Open Access RSS feed aggregators for use in educational practice. Teachers learned about the freedom of knowledge and, with great enthusiasm, started to explore a variety of resources of information in order to enrich lectures…
clock | September 10, 2008Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior:
Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
White Men Attach Greater Stigma To Mental Health Care:
Beyond financial and access barriers to mental health care, factors such as…
clock | September 10, 2008From SCONC:
Monday, Sept. 22
5:30 - 7:00 PM
Lecture: "Hot, Flat and Crowded"
New York Times columnist and Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Friedman will discuss his new book on the technology needed to address the energy and climate crisis and how America can be a leader in the "Green Revolution."
Information: Karen Kemp 919-613-7394
Page Auditorium, Duke
clock | September 9, 2008I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving - we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
clock | September 9, 2008As usual, under the fold....
Quote of The Day:
"Do you think what is appealing here? I'll be careful here. This is not about sexual relations... Everybody watching this. This is not what I am talking about. When you see the picture together of John McCain, who is an older man, but he is a kind of Audie Murphy hero image and this obviously attractive woman much younger than him, it's like they are offering themselves up as a kind of a political couple, almost like Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, Senator... President and Senator Clin... They are offering themselves, it's a fascinating tableaux. They…
clock | September 9, 2008Read this.
Then watch this:
How does Palin fit into this?
Like this?
Or this?
Or this?
Or this (check my comments there)?
Related
clock | September 9, 2008There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. I guess picking all 12 would not really be 'picking'? But all 12 are interesting to me! OK, here are six, and you go and look at the other six as well. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers.
Social Waves in Giant Honeybees Repel Hornets:
Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have evolved a plethora of defence behaviors. Against predatory wasps, including hornets, they display highly coordinated Mexican wave-like cascades termed 'shimmering'. Shimmering…
clock | September 9, 2008Linnaeus Legacy #11 is up on The Other 95%
Hourglass #3 is up on SharpBrains
Grand Rounds 4.51 are up on AppleQuack
The 141st Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Why Homeschool
clock | September 9, 2008Fake News Shows Don't Teach Viewers Much About Political Issues, Study Finds:
A new study suggests that entertainment news shows such as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report may not be as influential in teaching voters about political issues and candidates as was previously thought.
Discovery Challenges Fundamental Tenet Of Cancer Biology:
Yale researchers have identified an unusual molecular process in normal tissues that causes RNA molecules produced from separate genes to be clipped and stitched together.
Memory Enhanced By Sports-cheat Drug:
A drug used to increase blood production in…
clock | September 9, 2008First read this:
Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks…
clock | September 9, 2008PLoS ONE has already published a large number of papers in chronobiology. But we want more. Hey, I work there - I want to see more.
So, when I went to the SRBR meeting in May, I did whatever I could to explain how PLoS ONE works and why my colleagues in the field should consider publishing with PLoS.
One thing we neeeded to give potential authors confidence is to add more chronobiologists to our Editorial Board in order to ensure that their mansucripts will be handled (and thus reviewed) by the experts in the field.
So, I am very happy to announce that we have secured editorial services…
clock | September 9, 2008Readers of my blog are surely familiar with Scicurious, a frequent commenter here and someone whose posts I have linked several times over the past few months because they are, well, sooooo cool!
So, I am super-happy to announce that Scicurious will be joining Evil Monkey as a co-blogger on Neurotopia 2.0.
Some people are excited about drugs. I am excited about (neuroscience of, OK) sex. I am excited to see the NC contingent grow even bigger!
So, go say Hello to Scicurious and keep checking Neurotopia in the future.