jdupuis | September 13, 2013Yes, it's Ig Nobel award time.
For those that haven't discovered them yet, the Ig Nobel's are:
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.
Here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!
MEDICINE PRIZE: Masateru Uchiyama [JAPAN], Xiangyuan Jin [CHINA, JAPAN], Qi Zhang [JAPAN], Toshihito Hirai [JAPAN], Atsushi Amano [JAPAN], Hisashi Bashuda [JAPAN] and Masanori Niimi [JAPAN, UK], for assessing the effect of…
jdupuis | September 13, 2013Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson's book The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future is pretty obviously not a science book. Rather, it's a book about Canadian politics. But of course here in Canada these days, it's hard to talk about science without talking about politics at least a little. This book is interesting from a science policy perspective since it endeavors to give insight into the deeper rationale behind the current Conservative government's actions. In a sense, it asks, "What kind of Canada do Stephen Harper and…
jdupuis | August 31, 2013
Choosing Real-World Impact Over Impact Factor
Practicing Freedom in the Digital Library
Dandelions, Prestige, and the Measure of Scholars
Programmers insist: “Everybody” does not need to learn to code
Digital Decay by Bruce Sterling
New York Public Library Rethinks Design
CIOs Wear Second Hat (ie. head of small colleges libraries too)
Can't Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections
A New Polemic: Libraries, MOOCs, and the Pedagogical Landscape
Ethical reflections on MOOC-making (Rebecca Kukla)
Why Teach English?
Learning Styles:…
jdupuis | August 29, 2013One of the highlights of the year for me is the Lane Anderson Award shortlist announcement.
From their website:
The Lane Anderson Award honours the very best science writing in Canada today, both in the adult and young-reader categories. Each award will be determined on the relevance of its content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.”
The annual Lane Anderson Award honours two jury-selected books, in the categories of adult and young-reader, published in the field of science, and written by…
jdupuis | August 28, 2013I have a son who's starting his second year as a physics undergrad. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog.
By necessity and circumstance, the items I've chosen will be influenced by my son's choice of major and my own interest in the usefulness of computational approaches to science and of social media for…
Reading Diary: How to fake a moon landing: Exposing the myths of science denial by Darryl Cunningham
jdupuis | August 27, 2013Darryl Cunningham's How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial is a bit different from most of the graphic novels I've reviewed in this space. Most of the earlier books I've reviewed have been biographical or historical in nature with the more expository ones at least having some fictional narrative wrapped around the scientific content. I guess you could say there's quite a bit of sugar to make the medicine go down a bit more smoothly.
This book however is really nothing but exposition with just enough bare-bones narrative to keep the facts rolling. It's a series of…
jdupuis | August 24, 2013
I'm Not Your Sweetheart (& interesting counterpoint)
Library and Repository Communities Join Together to Identify New Competencies for Academic Librarians
How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
Anonymous asked: Have you personally received crap for being a Mover and Shaker, or are you taking statements against the award as being directed at its recipients?
30 Years of Change and Hype
ITHAKA 2012: A BELATED ANALYSIS
Why We Need Radical Change for Media Ethics, Not a Return to Basics
The Great Lakes Ecosystem: Uses, Abuses and the…
jdupuis | August 23, 2013Newsbiscuit is my favourite humour site and has been for a while. The dry British humour combined with OTT story ideas is irresistible.
And speaking of irresistible, I just love this one:
Disappointment for scientists as new super-computer fails to go mad
Scientists at Mal-Tech University, Wisconsin have expressed their immense disappointment at the failure of their new super-computer Off White to show any signs of megalomania.
The technological titan went online six months ago has since performed flawlessly, displaying nary a hint of sentience, lunacy or vague curiosity. Project leader…
jdupuis | August 19, 2013I've been mostly on vacation for the last little while so I've fallen a bit behind on writing the book reviews I feature here on the blog fairly regularly. In fact, there might even be a few books that, ahem, have been sitting around read and unreviewed for perhaps even longer than the last month or so.
I thought I'd use this post as a bit of internal incentive to actually get the damn things written.
I'll take a crack at listing some books here. I'll go with those that are read but unreviewed, in process of being read (or that I intend to start very soon).
I'm also listing those that are on…
jdupuis | August 17, 2013
Wanted: Nonlibrarian Librarians
Image, Public Perception, and Lego Librarians
I'm Not Your Sweetheart
Why your librarian is a superhero
Are the Boomers Ruining Libraries?
Hurtling Towards Relevance
The Long Suffering Librarian
Self-Censorship in Libraryland
How to Answer “So You Need a Degree to Do That?”
Yes, Virginia, it matters which library school you go to
Silencing, librarianship, and gender: it is worse to speak ill than to do wrong
I Do Not Want My Daughter to Be ‘Nice’
To Move Ahead You Have to Know What to Leave Behind
Making Open the Default Position
Restoring Trust in Government…
jdupuis | August 16, 2013Sometimes The Onion just nails it. I don't have to say how funny/happy/sad/conflicted/overjoyed/suicidal/smug/ your average librarian is going to find this one.
Print Dead At 1,803
Reaction to print’s tragic demise was overwhelming, with countless individuals within the publishing sector left reeling at its death.
“I’m in absolute shock right now,” said Charles Townsend, CEO of Condé Nast Publications, who reportedly worked closely with the beloved medium throughout his career. “I knew that it had been struggling recently, but, still, I thought it had many more happy, healthy years in it. I…
jdupuis | August 9, 2013Albert's Ideas helped build spaceships and satellites that travel to the moon and beyond. His thinking helped us understand our universe as no one ever had before.
But still, Albert left us many big questions. Questions that scientists are working on today.
Questions that someday you may answer...by wondering, thinking and imagining.
So ends the incredibly wonderful children's book On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein with words by Jennifer Berne and pictures by Vladimir Radunsky.
Aimed at a preschool audience, this book tells the story of Albert Einstein's life in lively and…
jdupuis | August 5, 2013It's been a while since I posted one of these lists, that's for sure. A couple of weeks ago someone on Twitter posted a link to the Tool version of led Zeppelin's No Quarter. "No that's cool!" I thought to myself. Wouldn't it be fun to add that to a bunch of other great cover versions and do a Music Monday post. And here we go.
All of this brings up the endless debate on cover versions: close copy as homage or total re-invention? I like both so I won't take sides. And a few of each are included below.
No Quarter. A Led Zeppelin song covered by Tool.
Young Man Blues. A Mose Allison song…
jdupuis | July 27, 2013
Change Rhetoric: Good and Bad
Three challenges: Engaging, rightscaling and innovating
Time for a little dissent
To Be Or Not To Be A Library Director
How to Answer “So You Need a Degree to Do That?”
Putting Things in Perspective
Here’s how Amazon self-destructs
Amazon vs. your public library
Small Pieces Loosely Kludged: Peer Review and Publication in Math Scholarly Communication
The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life
If We Share Data, Will Anyone Use Them? Data Sharing and Reuse in the Long Tail of Science and Technology…
jdupuis | July 26, 2013A fun little apocalyptic post from everybody's favourite humour site, Cracked. Skynet, anyone?
5 Machines That Are Already Learning Humanity's Weaknesses
5. Slot Machines
Slot machines are a diagnostic of everything we still need to fix in the human brain. It's normal to throw a couple of dollars in to try them out, because paying attention to new, loud, and shiny objects used to be good survival instincts before television.
Slot machines are reverse swear jars -- you put money into them and then curse -- and have the same effect on a functional mind: teaching you not to do that again.…
jdupuis | July 25, 2013
How Technology Is Destroying Jobs
The Fall of the American Worker
The Internet’s destroying work — and turning the old middle-class into the new proletariat
Giving Away Our Lunch
Reminders about the Economics of Becoming an Academic
Econ 101 is killing America: Forget the dumbed-down garbage most economists spew. Their myths are causing tragic results for everyday Americans
What Is College For?
The Great Dereliction
The Stakes for All of Us (higher education reform must be approached very carefully)
Cash-Strapped Universities Turn to Corporate-Style Consolidation
Information Consumerism: The…
jdupuis | July 18, 2013
Silencing, librarianship, and gender: a preface
Silencing, librarianship, and gender: what is silencing?
Gender and Digital Identity
Does the library world squash public dissent?
Library Schism: How Do Librarians Define Their Profession?
The Librarian Shortage Myth & Blaming Library School
Waiting for Batgirl
The MLS quasar, and Lists for the Perplexed
New Services, New Skills, and Renewing Staff
Breaking Up with Libraries
Hey Libraries: It’s Not Me, It’s You and Part 2: Who Gets to Keep the Couch?
SUL supports conference anti-harassment policies and My library supports anti-harassment…
jdupuis | July 17, 2013I have a son who's just finished his first year as a physics undergrad. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog.
By necessity and circumstance, the items I've chosen will be influenced by my son's choice of major and my own interest in the usefulness of computational approaches to science and of social media for…
jdupuis | July 10, 2013On May 20th, 2013 I published my most popular post ever. It was The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment. In it, I chronicled at some considerable length the various anti-science measures by the current Canadian Conservative government. The chronological aspect was particularly interesting as you could see the ramping up since the 2011 election where the Conservatives won a majority government after two consecutive minority Conservative governments.
As an exercise in alt-metrics (and here), I thought I would share some of the reactions and…
jdupuis | July 8, 2013There are two kinds of children's books: those that are aimed primarily at the kids themselves and those that are aimed at the adults that actually shell out the cash to pay for the books. There's certainly a lot of overlap -- books that kids love but that also catch the eyes, hearts & minds and wallets of the adults doing the shopping. But wander the aisles of your local bookstore and you'll see what I mean. Often beautifully illustrated, with a sophisticated artistic touch and a mature and serious topic, you can tell the books that are aimed at the parents and uncles and cousins and…