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The 81st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Leap Day conspiracy edition!

This year's a Leap Year, as it so happens, and it turns out that Leap Day is tomorrow. Unfortunately for "alternative medicine" mavens, conspiracy theorists, and lovers of woo everywhere, that means that the Skeptical Conspiracy to Suppress All Dissent--I mean, the Skeptics' Circle--is meeting over at--where else?--The Conspiracy Factory, where, just as woo-meisters have always suspected, skeptical bloggers everywhere are taking their instructions from their nefarious leader, who bears an uncanny resemblance to...well, you'll have to go over to the 81st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle to find…

Help science by celebrating with the USA Science and Engineering Festival and COPUS

Thanks COPUS for helping us get the word out about the Science festival! Read the full article here. Help science by celebrating with the USA Science and Engineering Festival and COPUS Four easy options to help bring science to center stage this October!! 1. Connect your local activities to the festival -- no matter how big or small The impact of many organizations working together is much greater than an individual effort... and easier! COPUS encourages organizations and individuals to coordinate activities in their community with the USASEF -- no matter how big or small. IT IS NOT TOO…

I get e-mail, too

I realize that PZ seems to have all the fun when it comes to entertaining e-mails from cranks, but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes get my share of such amusement. For example, yesterday, waiting for me in the morning in my e-mail in box was this delightful gem: From: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com Subject: the dark force behind the global crisis Date: February 23, 2009 12:29:07 AM GMT-05:00 To: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com To friends of life on Earth, There is a dark force working to undermine all ecosystems on Earth. This force is a trans-century cult that calls itself the Illuminati -- because…

Here we go again: More entertainers sucked into the "autism biomed" fundraising maw

Here we go again. Apparently, trying to bounce back from the humiliation of having had its plan to do a music and comedy fundraiser with Jill Sobule as one of the headliners shot down when Sobule found out that Generation Rescue is an "autism organization" that supports anti-vaccine pseudoscience like that of Andrew Wakefield and Mark and David Geier and quite correctly decided to withdraw, Generation Rescue is at it again with an event it's calling Comedy for Kids with Autism. According to the mass e-mail I received: Join us Saturday, September 11th at the Third Annual "Comedy for Kids with…

Do Serbian scientists need a blog of their own?

Not that it costs anything to have one... Yet, the Konsortium of science libraries in Serbia is seriously contemplating shutting down their KOBSON blog, an invaluable tool in science communication in the region. Danica, who the regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with as she is the Number One Champion for Open Science and Web 2.0 science in Serbia, has put a lot of effort into building the online infrastructure for Serbian scientific communication, including the KOBSON blog and the KOBSON wiki, as well as teaching and preaching to the local scientific community about the…

Science Cafe Raleigh - Darwin lives on: how gene-environment interactions affect modern society

This month's Science Cafe (description below) will be held on March 24th at Tir Na Nog. Our speaker is Dr. David Reif from the US Environmental Protection Agency. That evening we will be talking about the interplay between our genetic makeup and our environment & lifestyles. We will also discuss human genetics with a focus on evolutionary theory. Here is a link (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1879213,00.html#) to an interesting article by a popular author, Carl Zimmer that you might find fun to read. The article gives some background on Darwin and the ideas behind his…

Who are the Illuminati?

From Wikipedia: "Illuminati" refers to various organizations ... links to the original Bavarian Illuminati or similar secret societies, and often ... conspire to control world affairs by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations to establish a New World Order and gain further political power and influence. ... the Illuminati ... lurk... in the shadows and pull... the strings and levers of power in dozens of ... They are well documented in this book. And now, there is incontrovertible evidence of involvement of Hollywood and music industry stars in the…

You are all invited to ScienceOnline2010!

It is official - ScienceOnline2010, the fourth annual conference on science and the Web, will be held on January 15-17th, 2010 in the Research Triangle Park area (the exact location to be announced). Please join us for this three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, physicians, patients, educators, students, publishers, editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, web developers, programmers and others to discuss, demonstrate and debate online strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching science, and promoting the public…

Great professional development for K-12 science teachers

For five decades, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) has been an national resource for science education and teacher development in the somewhat unlikely setting of Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to a variety of print resources, often developed with NSF support. Among their greatest personal resources for teachers is the Keys to Science Institutes that provide an intensive, 5-6-day-long on-site experience for science educators together with a year-long web-based community that reinforces the skills and tools gained during the institute workshops. While not inexpensive…

Broadcast: The Search for Life

Update: The broadcast went really well. Thanks to everyone for participating. You can check out the replay and transcript with Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak here â Stay tuned for more interactive broadcasts to come. We've got some dingers lined up... Join us tomorrow for a special interactive broadcast of The Search for Life in the Universe, originally taped during the 2010 World Science Festival. Accompanying the broadcast, we're very excited to have live commentary and a Q/A session with the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak. Are we alone? It’s a question that has obsessed us…

Feeling ethically challenged?

Confused about terms like "autonomy" and "beneficance" and their relationship to biomedical research? The Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) is offering a short course at the University of Washington, Feb. 29th and March 1st, on Ethics in Science. Registration details and a description are below. An Ethics Shortcourse February 29, 2008, 4-8pm and March 1, 10am-4pm Waterfront Activities Center, University of Washington Registration Deadline: February 15, 2008 To apply online, please visit: http://www.nwabr.org/education/esc.htm $25 with credit card or $20 with check.…

Still more on social networks: Behaving yourself online!

This is the third in my informal trilogy on engaging in social media. The first two are here and here. I left off last time with this sentiment: It seems to me that one possibility if we want to engage these groups, is that we have to figure out where they already are and how we can fit into and improve that rather than try and build something completely new that we'll then try and entice everyone to join. Where do we go from here? Maybe if the communities we build were more accepting, civil and inclusive, that would be a start. Well, I like what Clay Shirky said recently about how our…

More on social networking

I'd like to pick up a little where I left off in my last posting on social networking. In that post, I was highlighting a post by Wayne Bivens-Tatum on how he prefers to interact in online environments. Or more precisely, how he prefers not to get too deeply involved. Wayne's points are well thought-out and reasonable. And a kind of challenge to those that want to build online communities -- the people they probably need to listen to the most when they are designing their communities are people like him rather than just people in the social media echo chamber. Now, of course Wayne got a…

URGENT CALL TO ACTION: Tell your Senator to OPPOSE amendments that strike or change the NIH public access provision in the FY08 Labor/HHS appropriations bill

E-mail I got yesterday - please spread this around ASAP: -------------------------------- The Senate is currently considering the FY08 Labor-HHS Bill, which includes a provision (already approved by the House of Representatives and the full Senate Appropriations Committee), that directs the NIH to change its Public Access Policy so that participation is required (rather than requested) for researchers, and ensures free, timely public access to articles resulting from NIH-funded research. On Friday, Senator Inhofe (R-OK), filed two amendments (#3416 and #3417), which call for the language to…

Not concerned with getting creationism into public schools, eh?

Just in case you needed more evidence that the young earth creationists of Answers in Genesis are boldfaced liars, they've published a new webpage advising students how to start "Creation Clubs" at their public schools. AiG has sworn up and down that it doesn't want to force their (appallingly incorrect) version of the history of the world into public schools, but over and over again the opposite has turned out to be true. Indeed, taking advantage of the ability of many schools being able to host religiously-oriented clubs run by students, Ham & Co. recommend doing the following to…

New Media and Science Communication

The Science Communication Consortium presents: DISCUSSION ON THE ROLES OF EMERGING MEDIA OUTLETS IN COMMUNICATING SCIENCE Thursday, JAN 31st, 7-8:30pm Mount Sinai School of Medicine, East Building Seminar Room (1425 Madison Ave at 98th St, NYC) A discussion of how science is communicated effectively - and ineffectively - through emerging media outlets, such as blogging, podcasts, online multimedia, and more. Blogs, podcasts, and other new media outlets have changed the way people learn about scientific info, and shortened the shelf life of these stories. This immediacy of information…

ScienceDebate2008--The Latest

Well it has been a wild ride so far...I wish this was my day job. ScienceDebate2008 now has, by my count, more than 80 bloggers in our coalition. And honestly, I'm very much afraid that some bloggers seeking to join up may have slipped through the cracks or not been added yet. And that's just one indication that we have generated a seismic online discussion of the need for a presidential debate on science in the current campaign cycle. Bora, who invaluably tracks such things, tallies well over 100 posts on the subject since Monday. This is, like, bigger than the famous framing debate. No…

Meme: 101 Ways to Improve Your Life When You Can't Find a Job

While the economy is still performing CPR on itself, you may find yourself without a job. Worse still, if you are like me, you may not be able to find another one. In the meantime, here are 101 ways to improve your life (and take up some extra time) when you can't find a job no matter how hard you pound the pavement. Here's my edited version of their list along with some of my annotations. Those activities I've done, or do, are noted with a red asterix. *Catch up on all those books you've ever wanted to read through the local library. :: I go to the library nearly every day, thanks to MY…

Alternaworld Redux or World of Warcraft Ate My Wookie

I talked before about how I think the Internet represents the possibility for Alternaworlds -- worlds facilitated by social interaction on the Internet with their own rules and standards. Well, this World of Warcraft business may be rapidly careening out of control, but it is beginning to fulfill most of the criterion for what I would call an alternaworld. MSNBC gives this rather late-to-the-party or Dad-has-just-discovered-how-the-mouse-works description: In the physical world we vainly scrounge for glory. Bin Laden still taunts us, the bus doors close before we reach them and leave us…

Quorum Sensing and the Blogosphere as a Superorganism

A microbiological metaphor for the blogosphere (from November 27, 2005): Heh! I always wanted to write this post. Being lazy is actually good sometimes. Just wait long enough and, lo and behold, someone else will write your post! Saves you time and energy. Daniel Conover, whom I had great pleasure to meet in person at the ConvergeSouth conference, wrote a very thought-provoking post: Bacteria, blogs, holographic consciousness and The Singularity. There is a lot of biology there, but that is just a pretext for trying to understand what the Internet, and blogs in particular, are growing up to…

Holy cow, yet another conspiracy theory!

This has been a year of some wonderfully crazy new conspiracies. Birtherism is actually looking pretty banal next to the "Obama is gay-married to a Pakistani" conspiracy, the "Obama is a Jihadist sleeper agent conspiracy, the Aurora conspiracies, job numbers conspiracies, polling conspiracy theories from America’s least-accurate pollster Dick Morris, and, my former favorite, the Obama is buying bullets for the Social Security Administration to kill all Americans conspiracy theory. Now the American Spectator is publishing a new crackpot conspiracy theory that I think rivals my former…

Food Storage and Preservation Syllabus

There is still space in my upcoming (starts April 15) Food Storage and Preservation Online class, for those who are interesting. If you've wanted to start preserving or building up a food reserve and have no idea how to start, or perhaps you learned to can once upon a time, but want to explore the full range of food preservation options, or you've joined a CSA and want to know what to do with all that food you are getting, or cut your grocery bills - this is the class for you. Each class includes a couple of practical projects for you to try out each week. The class is offered…

Take Denialism 101

John Cook, of Skeptical Science fame, has created an online course through the University of Queensland and edX, on denialism and climate change. Easy to access and free to take, I found it simple to join from their facebook page, and if you don't want to join you can still see the lectures from their Youtube channel. Having gone through the materials so far I have to say Cook nails it. His graphic depicting the 5 tactics is very clear and easy to understand. Also I think he has done a great job of making clear that the problem isn't one of education, facts or knowledge. The problem is…

CFP: Engineering and social justice special issue, get your papers in!

Call for Manuscripts: Special issue of Engineering Studies: Journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies on "Engineering and Social Justice" Editors, Engineering Studies: Gary Downey (Virginia Tech, USA) and Juan Lucena (Colorado School of Mines, USA) Special Issue Editor: Jen Schneider (Colorado School of Mines, USA) This planned special issue of Engineering Studies invites submissions from scholars across the disciplines who study engineering and its intersections with social justice. Engineering, as educational and professional practices often aimed at developing…

Join Our NC Science Blogging Conference Session Online on Saturday!

Karen Ventii has posted information about how to join our session online at the conference wiki. Here's the details: [The Gender and Race in Science Blogging] session will be broadcast LIVE on Saturday January 19 at 11am on Ustream.tv. Please tune in and participate online. Please note that you DO NOT have to register on Ustream to post comments. We look forward to hearing from you and reading your questions. Use the link above or copy and paste the address (http://ustream.tv/channel/gender-and-race-in-science-blogging) into your browser.

My second post...

...at The ScienceBlogs Book Club has been posted. Go forth and enjoy. As always for these Book Club Posts, no comments are allowed here. Got a response? Hate my guts? Think I'm in the pocket of Big Pharma, Big Government, and the Illuminati, too? At least for this post, say it over there!

Update on NASA Talk: Communicating Climate Change

For those unable to attend next week's talk at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, there is a call in number to listen to the presentation and discussion. See details on the talk here. Audio will also follow online. Also if you are a non-NASA staff member and would like to attend, here are the details. Leave a comment in the space below and I will email you back with the staff contact information: [Non-staff] will need to contact me at least a day ahead of time so that I can let security know how many people to expect. I'll need a couple of days for foreign nationals, since I'd have to get…

Get Out the Vote

If you're in the US, it's Election Day, so go vote. I'd like to say something here about how I don't care who you actually vote for, but of course that's not true-- I would strongly prefer it if you were to vote for Barack Obama and other Democrats, and against Mitt Romney and a Republican party that sees sneering contempt for modern science as a path to electoral victory. But more than that, I prefer to live in the sort of country where people actually exercise their hard-won rights to help determine the future course of the nation. So, go vote. Even if it's for the wrong guy. And if your…

Republicans and Sanity

The twain shall never meet. Below the fold. Not work safe. Do not be drinking coffee. Sex with demons! Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy I always thought homosexual were savage. Glad to see the Illuminati are in charge still. Thank you Right Wing Watch and Rachel Maddow. Hat Tip PZ Myers.

Pope Knocked Down

I'm reading that Dan Browne book about the Illuminati. Given that, I doubt this could really happen: This, however, seems very likely to happen:

Good news

evolgen reports that that Specter-Harken amendment to restore some of the cuts to the NIH budget and provide a modest increase necessary to prevent the our biomedical research effort from slowly eroding. Support was broad, and it was bipartisan. (No doubt it doesn't hurt that this is an election year.) However, this is just the first step. The House still has to vote on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, and then there will be a House-Senate conference committee. To preserve the progress made, we'll have to turn our attention to the House. I'll keep an eye out for when this…

All Hail Eris!

Xena is renamed ... Eris after its demotion, and its sidekick become Dysnomia Eris Interesting choice of namespace, I blame the Illuminati. see here and here Is a Harvard special... Praise Eris!

Around the Web: On Naming Names and Calling Out Trolls, Not so tech-savvy millennials and more

On Naming Names and Calling Out Trolls Gawker, Reddit, Free Speech and Such Millennials: They Aren’t So Tech Savvy After All Project Information Literacy: Inventing the Workplace and How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace The Philosophy of Open Access Impostors, Performers, Professionals - I and II (feeling like an academic imposter, pt II on the job hunt) The Teaching Track? Really? Teaching them to fish… (on higher ed "disruption") Zeitgeist: On Ditching the Monograph and Digital Print Culture The B-School Twitter-Free Zone The future of higher…

Get into the motion of the OCEAN!

I believe that most of my readers are very environmentally-conscious people. After all, how could you stand reading the ravings of a clearly tree-and-animal-hugging girl like me unless you had a soft spot for things that are green. So you all might like to know about a brand new, volunteer-based conservation group called OCEAN: the Online Community Environmental Action Network. Here's what OCEAN's creator, David Shiffman, had to say: I am proud to live in a time when more people care about protecting the environment than ever before. However, even with all of the amazing people working in…

You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube Contest

Join the fun! All schools, after school, and other "Not for Profit" community youth organizations in the Greater Washington DC area (including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia) serving ages K-12 can participate. We currently have 37 teams registered for the competition and we have registrants in all 3 divisions - Elementary, Middle and High Schools. Our goal is to have 100+ teams! The Tournament will consist of teams of eight students in grades K-12 plus a teacher/coach, divided into 3 divisions as follows: Div 1 - Elementary Grades K-5; Div 2 - Middle School Grades 6-8; Div 3…

Geronimo's Skull & Bones

It's funny sometimes being a Yale graduate with my upbringing--a blue-collar, middle-class kid from rural America. One thing in particular I just never quite got was the whole secret society thing. As such, it's been a bit amusing to see all the attention they've gotten in the years since my graduation. The Skulls came out in 2000, trading on the name of Yale's most prominent "secret" society, Skull and Bones. A few years later, a classmate wrote Secrets of the Tomb, an exposÃ© of Skull and Bones. And then, of course, the Skull and Bones memberships of both George W. Bush (and his…

Skeptics' Circle Number 70 - Conspiracy Factory

This week it's our friend Factition at Conspiracy Factory. However, he makes the poor decision to let the world know about our contacts with the Illuminati as part of our anti-conspiracy disinformation campaign. Traitor!

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 6

Sunday, January 17 at 9-10:05am E. Science online talks between generations - Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp: Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a…

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 5

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 4

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 3

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 2

ScienceOnline2010: Talks Between Generations (video) - Part 1

Science Online London 2009 - now in Second Life

Science Online London is next week. I really wanted to go this year, but hard choices had to be made....eh, well. For those of you who, like me, cannot be there in person, there are plenty of ways to follow the meeting virtually. Follow @soloconf and the #solo09 hashtag on Twitter. Join the FriendFeed room. Check out the Facebook page. And of course there will be a lot of blogging, including in the Forums at Nature Network. And for those of you who have computers with enough power and good graphics cards, another option is to follow the conference in Second Life - check that link to see how.

Science: It's a girl thing. Excuse me while I die inside.

Yet another well-meaning yet soul-crushingly misdirected initiative from the public purse, this time as the European Commission engages in a cack-handed attempt to convince the high-heeled, lipstick stained people they've conflated with women in general that science is a Girl Thing. It seems to assume that it's impossible for women to be interested in chemistry unless it's in the context of cosmetics, or biology except insomuch as fashion. If you can stomach it, here's a the video in all its garish horror - Science: It's a girl thing (now removed in shame by the makers - mirror below). It…

Everything you ever needed to know about conspiracy theories

Too bad it's missing one big one. There's nothing about the birther movement there: See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. I think that about sums it all up: moon hoax, 9/11, the Illuminati, the Masons. What more could there be?

Discuss "Unscientific America" Saturday at Firedoglake Book Salon.

For those of you who have been following the various online reviews of and reactions to Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, you may be interested in the Firedoglake Book Salon discussion of the book. The discussion takes place Saturday (tomorrow), 5-7 pm Eastern (2-4 pm Pacific; those of you in other time zones can probably calculate your local time equivalent better than I), will include author Chris Mooney, and will be hosted by yours truly. Given that I'm pretty convinced I have the best commentariat in the…

Goats, lotteries and the Reverend father

I don’t usually highlight my e-mail spam, but this was so priceless, I just had to. So much wrong here: Guinness is running its "Online Lottery" out of a PO box in Killorglin. I’ve seen Killorglin. It’s best known for a goat being annually named King of Ireland. Seriously. And apparently now the payment representative is working out of the UK (+44) with a Hotmail account. Who have thunk it? And the general manager of the notification department is a Reverend. As in priest. These people aren’t even trying anymore. Full text below the fold. Guinness Online Lottery. Diageo Ireland P.O. Box…

Tripoli Six, brief update

With over 150 blog posts from around the world now registered (Declan's Connotea tally here) and the full length documentary, Injection online for free (trailer here, complete streaming video here, time to catch our breath. Declan tells us the US Center for Nursing Advocacy received over 150 letters of support because of the blog campaign, even though they were not a contact target. They send their deep appreciation to all who are helping on this campaign for justice for five nurses and a doctor. If you are a nurse or want to support nurses you can get find a guide to their letter writing…

No matter where you are, you can participate in the Science Blogging Conference

Yes, about 200-something people will be participating in the Science Blogging Conference in the real space and real time, being physically present. But, both those who are here and those who are not should also participate online. Here are the three main places to do so: 1. The Wiki The main conference wiki, set up by Anton Zuiker, is the center of the conference universe. Look around and see what is happening. Check the 'Recent Activity' tab to see who made changes to what page recently. Feel free to edit pages - no need to enter the e-mail address (it will reject your edit) - just solve…

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