clock | April 6, 2008Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
clock | April 6, 2008Obligatory Reading of the day: Why I feel so strongly about redundant digitization
clock | April 6, 2008About a month ago, Karen of The Beagle Project published a nifty paper in PLoS ONE. Now she wrote a blog post with the background story, the 'tacit knowledge' that usually does not appear in peer-reviewed literature but is essential for the workings of science - the kind of stuff that is transferred vertically from advisors to students, or horizontally between researchers at conferences.
It is important at this day and age for this tacit knowledge to become public. By hogging it, researchers in big institutions in developed countries hamper the development of scientists in small places…
clock | April 6, 2008There is a good review of Amanda Marcotte's book on Powell's site:
Fortunately, she manages to integrate enough fresh material to keep the book relevant to feminists of all ages. As she observes in her introduction, "Spotting sexism sounds easy, but the sheer commonness of it, coupled with its surprising diversity, makes it so that even hardened feminists could use refreshers." Marcotte shines when she takes aim on subjects that are rarely discussed in Women's Studies 101, from the passing stranger who demands that you smile to the ritual of self-flagellation that occurs when female coworkers…
clock | April 6, 2008There are many organisms that one can extract milky substances from, but cactus is NOT one of those. Which is a simple and useful way to figure out if the needly thing in front of you is a cactus or something else....
clock | April 6, 2008Or so says Talia in her book review.
I recently ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon.com for me and others, and all orders arrived nicely except this book which never appeared (lost in space?). Perhaps I should not worry, according to the review.
clock | April 6, 2008All humans, at some point in their lives, go ahead and die. Ages and causes of death vary widely.
Bloggers are humans.
All bloggers, at some point in their lives, go ahead and die. Ages and causes of death vary widely.
But, if you are a journalist with a dry spell in your inspiration, and if you feel threatened by bloggers, and if you already used all the cliches about bloggers being unruly, unwashed, untrustworthy Martians who lie (and point at Powerline, Instapundit or Little Green Footballs as if they were examples of the best of blogging, instead of the cesspools of racist, mysogynist…
clock | April 5, 2008A conservative is a man who does not think that anything should be done for the first time.
- Frank Vanderlip
clock | April 5, 2008You must have noticed that there wasn't too much effort on this blog over the past couple of weeks (except for the elaborate and too successful April Fools hoax). I've just been so busy lately. So, here is a quick recap, and some pictures.
Back on March 21, I went to Duke University to participate in a panel called Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel. From education, to public health in the developing world, to science journalism, writing, blogging and publishing. The room was full (80 people? Perhaps 100?!). I am not sure one hour was enough for…
clock | April 5, 2008Go at it! These are sooooo....bloggable ;-)
Computer Taught To Recognize Attractiveness In Women:
"Beauty," goes the old saying, "is in the eye of the beholder." But does the beholder have to be human? Not necessarily, say scientists at Tel Aviv University. Amit Kagian, an M.Sc. graduate from the TAU School of Computer Sciences, has successfully "taught" a computer how to interpret attractiveness in women. But there's a more serious dimension to this issue that reaches beyond mere vanity. The discovery is a step towards developing artificial intelligence in computers. Other applications for…
clock | April 4, 2008There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.
- Oliver Goldsmith
clock | April 4, 2008Exactly How Much Housework Does A Husband Create?:
Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families. For men, the picture is very different: A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week.
The figure included in the article states something quite different, see what Larry says about it.
Fossil From Last Common Ancestor Of Neanderthals And Humans Found In Europe, 1.2 Million Years Old:
University of Michigan researcher Josep M. Pares is part of a team that has…
clock | April 4, 2008This is the MySpace page of the band named Plos. They sing in German, so I do not understand a word, but somehow I doubt it has much to do with science or Open Access...
What does 'Plos' mean in German anyway?
clock | April 4, 2008Last week, Sheril, Abel and I went to Duke's Terry Sanford Institute on Public Policy to talk about science blogging and other aspects of Science 2.0 to a graduate class on science policy communication taught by Misha Angrist, who dubbed the three of us the Beacons of the Bloggerati! Sheril has an interesting picture, taken during lunch, in the balmy NC weather outside. Under the fold is an indoors picture taken by Misha, using Abel's camera (I forgot to bring mine):
clock | April 4, 2008There is a change in the command center of PLoS ONE this month. The transition will be seamless. The new editor, Peter Binfield has joined us a couple of weeks ago and has assumed the Big Kahuna position on the 1st of April. The outgoing editor, Chris Surridge will remain in advisory role for the remainder of the month. I am excited to see them both next week in Cambridge, so we can start plotting the strategy to take over the world together (over a Guinness or two, I hope). And, perhaps important to those who complain that ONE is too biologically oriented, Peter is a physicist, so you…
clock | April 3, 2008In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman.
- Nancy Astor
clock | April 3, 2008I and the Bird #72 is up on Ecobirder
Festival of The Trees #22 is up on Arvores Vivas em Nossas Vidas
166th Carnival of Education is up on I Want to Teach Forever
The latest Change of Shift is up on Nurse Ratched's Place
clock | April 2, 2008Good Sexual Intercourse Lasts Minutes, Not Hours, Therapists Say:
Satisfactory sexual intercourse for couples lasts from 3 to 13 minutes, contrary to popular fantasy about the need for hours of sexual activity, according to a survey of U.S. and Canadian sex therapists.
Mouse Calls During Courtship Help Search For Emotion-controlling Genes:
Scientists have long known that emotions and other personality traits and disorders run together in families. But finding which genes are most important in controlling emotions has proven difficult. Humans and mice have similar numbers of genes, but mice…