January 13, 2009
1. Andrew Sullivan trashed Bono for his Times column (judge it yourself and summarize it in a contest if you'd like) -- and trashed Bono's lyrics as well.
2. A reader objected, saying Bono's lyrics weren't ALL so bad.
3. Sullivan half-conceded -- and posted this video.
Mess not with Andrew.
January 13, 2009
Steven Waldman: Why the Huffington Post Can't Replace The New York Times
The idea that the Huffington Post, or the explosion of interesting internet news or blogging sites, can replace journalistic institutions like the New York times or other newspapers or dinosaurs of the mainstream media truly…
January 13, 2009
Rolling deadlines have kept me from the blogging desk, but I can occupy it long enough now to call out a few items that either haven't received as much coverage as they might have -- or that have gotten several interesting hits.
⢠At Huffpost, Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee offer the FDA a…
January 13, 2009
William J. Broad's Times piece on the new National Geographic "Ocean - An Illustrated Atlas gives a nice look at both the book -- and gives long-overdue and well-deserved attention to oceanographer Sylvia Earle, who co-authored the Atlas.
. Earle's passion extends to the far horizon. In the…
January 9, 2009
The bloggers at the design firm Pentagram know how to write a lede:
During the financially dismal 2008 holiday shopping season, one product held up nicely: bras.
Some great design worth exploring there, from the outfit that did the signage for the front of the Times building and the Atlantic…
January 8, 2009
This post by Science's Jennifer Couzin at ScienceInsider suggests how much serious overhaul the FDA needs.
Looks like some scientists at the Food and Drug Administration are doing what they can to influence president elect Obama's choice of their new boss. Nine scientists have written to Obama's…
January 8, 2009
The blog post of that name (covering the Science article "Mispredicting Affective and Behavioral Responses" to Racism raises a good question.
I always liked my sister's response when such sentiments were aired.
"Excuse me," she would say, "but your cape is showing."
January 8, 2009
When I lived in NYC and had the Village Voice close at hand, I loved reading Nat Hentoff, whether it was on jazz, politics, or whatever else excited him.
He got laid off yesterday, at 83. His farewell column makes it clear he's got more left to say.
Around the country, a lot of reporters are…
January 7, 2009
Walking Firenze
Leon Krier, from "The City Within the City".:
THE QUARTERS.
A city can only be reconstructed in the form of urban quarters. A large or a small city can only be reorganized as a large or a small number of urban quarters; as a federation of autonomous quarters. Each quarter must…
January 7, 2009
Always nice when a scene just jumps off the page.
Alice's tea party
Birds of the open forest dawn
Artist is Su Blackwell, whose site has a whole gallery of such enchantment.
Hat tip to my better half, Alice, who likes a) good art, b) cut-outs, and c) the Alice pictured.
January 6, 2009
From Mind Hacks: Deodorants boost sexiness by getting men in the groove:
I keep running into fascinating articles that The Economist ran over the Christmas period and this one is no exception - it covers research that suggests that men's deodorants do increase sexual attractiveness, but by…
January 6, 2009
"Of course," says Clay Shirky, "because people will hit the print button."
January 6, 2009
Yikes. "Creepy" only starts to get at it. Will Saletan at Slate describes a program DOD hopes to develop that will give the children of soldiers sent away a sort of avatar parent to replace the one Uncle Sam is busy using:
For ages, we've been telling children that ghosts aren't real. But DOD has…
January 5, 2009
Ezra Klein relays Jim Manzi's worry that public funding of drug trials
exposes you to the inverse problems of the current system. Namely, "bureaucrats and politicians tend to have enormous career risk from an unsafe drug introduction, but almost none from a rejected drug that would have been…
January 5, 2009
With this post, and with pleasure, I bring the blog formerly known as Smooth Pebbles -- now Neuron Culture (mark your RSS readers!) -- back to Scienceblogs.
Seventeen months ago I said farewell to this Scienceblogs home, at least for a time, because I had not found blogging a comfortable fit.…
December 19, 2008
E.J. Dionne makes an interesting observation about Obama's pick of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
Because Duncan gets along with teachers unions but is also seen as a reformer, his selection was interpreted as a politically shrewd, split-the-difference choice. But that is not the whole…
December 19, 2008
Micheal Nielsen gets swiftly to a problem many scientists (and not a few writers) have with Gladwell's books -- and highlights their redeeming factors as well:
All three of Malcolm Gladwell's books pose a conundrum for the would-be reviewer. The conundrum is this: while the books have many virtues…
December 18, 2008
As Obama solidifies his teams on science, education, and environment, attention -- and not a little worry from the drug industry -- is turning toward his hunt for a new FDA commissioner. The WSJ Health Blog reports that the FDA Commissioner Coalition, which is heavy with groups financed by the drug…
December 18, 2008
One more reason to like Will Smith.
Hat tip to kottke, who links to some other amazing Rubikiean feats.
December 18, 2008
Scientificblogging, drawing on apparently credible medical expertise, deflates six common med myths.
My wife will love this. I've cited #4 to her a million times.
6 Medical Myths Debunked For Christmas:
1. Sugar makes kids hyperactive.
2. Suicides increase over the holidays.
3. Poinsettias are…
December 18, 2008
Atop other Obama appointments, this is one I suspect America's scientists will welcome. From the Washington Post:
Report: Holdren to Lead White House Science Policy
By Joel Achenbach
President-elect Obama will announce this weekend that he has selected physicist John Holdren, who has devoted much…
December 17, 2008
Other deadlines bar elaboration, but I wanted to draw attention to some worthwhile reading:
A good Wired Science story explores how "Free Range Research Could Save Chimps, the notion that Oil is Not the Climage Change Culprit -- It's All About Coal, and the Christmas Tree Cluster (of stars).
The…
December 16, 2008
Is there such a thing as internet addiction? Mind Hacks says the debate should be over:
A study just published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior has reviewed all of the available scientific studies on internet addiction and found them to be mostly crap. And not just slightly lacking,…
December 16, 2008
Via Kottke
Regret the Error has released their annual roundup of media errors and corrections for 2008. The absurd corrections are always the best:
We have been asked to point out that Stuart Kennedy, of Flat E, 38 Don Street, Aberdeen, who appeared at Peterhead Sheriff Court on Monday, had…
December 16, 2008
Good stuff from Zimmer:
You go for a swim, and you don't even notice the tiny worm that burrows into your skin. It slips into a vein and surges along through the blood for a while. Eventually it leaves your blood vessels and starts creeping up your spinal cord. Creep creep creep, it goes, until…
December 16, 2008
Beethoven showed up 238 years ago today. No one else, no one else ...
My violin teacher used to tell me, "You paid for the whole bow; use all of it." Those violinists aren't wasting any bow money.
NB: earlier title said "Beethoven's 7th, on his 238th". I do know the difference! ... but had begun…
December 16, 2008
The Washington Post, in a story fairly typical of other coverage, says that Obama's pick for Secretary of Education will "reach out to unions, school reform gorups" and "bridge the divides among education advocates, teachers unions and civil rights groups over how to fix America's school." Or as…
December 16, 2008
I don't play no stinkin' video games, but this is odd enough to be interesting Boing Boing reports, in two different posts, that
a) Some employers are apparently discriminating against World of Warcraft players on the grounds that their heads are always within the WoW and not fully in this one (a…
December 16, 2008
Forgive if I'm obsessed with this death-of-journalism thing -- Andrew Sullivan has a nice piece in the Times of London about dying newspapers. Like Surowiecki, he fears the loss of the deep reporting that newspapers are already doing less of, and for which so far we have no real replacement venue…
December 16, 2008
A teacher in West Virginia rallied her students to fight to keep the right to recycle -- presumably for the civic (and eco) learning experience. John Tierney argues she's missing a better teaching opportunity:
If we want our children to be scientifically literate and get good jobs in the future,…
