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ConvergeSouth 2006

Yesterday, I spent a wonderful day in Greensboro, most of it on the NC A&T campus attending ConvergeSouth. I am still trying to recover from the event, so this post is just a big Hello to everyone I met there and another post about buidling online communities inspired by the meeting will follow soon. First, a big Thank You to the organizers of the event, Sue Polinsky, Ed Cone, Ben Hwang and JW. Great to see you all again! Great job! Last year, I came in knowing only a few people. Two days later, I knew many more. This year, it was only one day long so it was hard to catch up with…

AIDS doctors held on secret charges in Iran: a call to help

Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now confronts the worldwide scientific community involving two Iranian doctors. Declan Butler, Nature senior correspondent, has described the situation in a post at one of the Nature blogs: Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial Posted on behalf of Declan Butler Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating…

AIDS doctors held on secret charges in Iran: a call to help

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now confronts the worldwide scientific community involving two Iranian doctors. Declan Butler, Nature senior correspondent, has described the situation in a post at one of the Nature blogs: Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial Posted on behalf of Declan Butler Iran has summarily tried two of the…

Social Media Are Social

I didn't see this before yesterday's post about Twitter, but over at SciLogs, Kirk Englehardt gets evangelical, offering a very chipper list of "Ten Reasons for Academic Researchers to Use Social Media." I'll just put the item headers here, though each of these has a more complete description, with links to lots of other stuff: 10. You’re in the Driver’s Seat 9. It’s About the Network 8. It’s Newsy and Trendy 7. Promotion (may) = Citations and Downloads 6. Spreading Your Love of Science 5. Setting the Record Straight 4. Sharing Interesting Things 3. Enhancing Your Research 2. It’s Easy 1. It…

From London to NY to Copenhagen: Optimism about Science Journalism

Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Cristine Russell is back from the World Federation of Science Journalists conference and reports on a panel of leading editors who are generally optimistic about the future of science coverage at their respective news organizations. Editors at the Times of London and the BBC reported that their organizations were actually expanding their science beat. On the US front, the NY Times' science editor Laura Chang recognized the need to diversify their readership by "going broad," thinking specifically about what topics and dimensions of science are relevant…

Learning From Mistakes: An Important Revision to Conflict Monitoring Models of Anterior Cingulate

People are remarkably bad at switching tasks - and research focusing on this fact has isolated a network of brain regions that are involved in task-switching (I'll call it the "frontal task network" for short). One of the stranger findings to emerge from this literature is the fact that we're actually worse at switching to a more natural or well-practiced task after having performed a less natural one. One potential explanation for this "switch cost asymmetry" is that the task network may recognize the potential for errors when performing the unnatural task, and therefore "help it along"…

Proven: Michael Behe is a Moron

Michael Behe made a guest appearance in Beaver County the other day to engage in a debate on intelligent Design vs. Real Science. He got interviewed by a local reporter, who posed questions to both Behe and his antagonist. Here I provide a few excerpts for your amusement. First, you may be wondering where Beaver County is. The Beaver County Times Online, like most local newspaper, does not mention where it is. Do you know how much time we bloggers have to spend figuring out where these dumbass local stories come from? You have to use odd clues and make guesses. For instance, the…

The future of participant-driven genomic research

Over at the 23andMe blog The Spittoon, company co-founder Linda Avey expands on her vision for a novel model of genomic research, in which personal genomics customers contribute their genetic and health data to fuel research into the inherited and environmental triggers for disease. This is a model that 23andMe has been building towards for a long time. In May last year the company launched 23andWe, a cutely-named effort to obtain detailed health and trait data from their existing customers through online surveys which could then be combined with genetic data to find novel gene-trait…

In(s) and Out(s) of Academia

Bjoern Brembs is on a roll! Check all of these out: Incentivizing open scientific discussion: Apart from the question of whether the perfect scientist is the one who only spends his time writing papers and doing experiments, what incentives can one think of to provide for blogging, commenting, sharing? I think because all of science relies on creativity, information and debate, the overall value of blogging, commenting and sharing can hardly be overestimated, so what incentives can there be for the individual scientist? Journals - the dinosaurs of scientific communication: Today's system of…

The WHO vaccine plan: while you're up get me a Grant

The wound opened by Indonesia's balk on supplying H5N1 viral isolates to WHO for vaccine surveillance (see here and here) has now been fixed -- with a band-aid: Indonesia and other five countries are being awarded grants by the World Health Organization to establish in-country manufacturing capacity for influenza vaccine, according to Indonesian branch of WHO. As part of a concerted effort to ensure more equitable access to a potential pandemic influenza vaccine, up to 2.5 million U.S. dollars sponsored by the governments of Japan and the United States will go towards Brazil, India, Mexico,…

Annals of peanut butter: from Texas to Colorado

The plant in Blakely, Georgia that was the apparent source of the salmonella peanut butter outbreak didn't make peanut butter for retail consumption. It made bulk peanut butter and peanut butter paste which became an ingredient in many other products. The number of products is now around 2000, the largest product recall in US history. So if you bought peanut butter retail you're safe, right? Not so fast. The Peanut Corporation of America (RIP; filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Friday) owned another plant in the Texas panhandle. Maybe you didn't know that. Neither did the Texas authorities,…

The Essence of Kleptocracy

At my advanced and cynical age, I have concluded some level of corruption in the political process is necessary. And I say that despite the very nice "thank you" note that Mr and Mrs Obama sent my wife last month for the challenge donation. They must have had to write a lot of thank you notes. Anyway, when I was young and idealistic I was outraged, outraged I tell you, at the corruption I was dimly aware of in the political process. Particularly within Iceland, where everyone really did know everyone else, and the corruption was particularly local and petty. But, while it was infuriating and…

Cato on Bush's Unconstitutional Tendencies

While we're on the subject of the Cato Institute, it's worth checking out their new report, written by Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, about Bush's abysmal track record on constitutional matters. It's funny, just a few months ago I had a hardcore liberal accuse me of being a "primitive reactionary" for defending the Cato Institute against his charge that the think tank was in the pocket of corporate paymasters. I pointed out that less than 10% of Cato's funding comes from corporate sources, but what good are facts against someone with an ideological axe to grind? Liberals generally like to think…

A response to a response to a proportionate response

In A proportionate response to Trump’s climate plans?" I reported RT's opinion that WTO rules only permit border taxes if there is an equivalent domestic tax. VV, no great fan of Tol, replied William, a scientific article published this May came by on Twitter. It states: "The implementation of such measures is likely to be technically possible under WTO rules (Veel, 2009 Veel, P.-E. (2009). Carbon tariffs and the WTO: An evaluation of feasible policies. Journal of International Economic Law, 12(3), 749–800. doi: 10.1093/jiel/jgp031; Zhang, 2009 Zhang, Z. (2009). Multilateral trade measures…

Is Linux Getting the Shaft?

As I recently reported, there is an order of magnitude difference between the market share of Linux "out there" in the world, and the market share of LInux on Scienceblogs.com and on this very blog. Subsequently, I was trolled by my very own brother "... so, when is Luniux going to reach 1% market share?...." and this item has come out on ZDNet (which we all know is essentially funded by Microsoft, right?): Linux - Still chasing that elusive 1% market share. Suddenly, it dawned on me that something is wrong with this picture. Maybe. Is it necessary to assume that the readers of Sb are…

Another New Term, Another Set of Teaching Experiments

Classes for the Winter term start today, and I'm totally prepared for this. Yep. Uh-huh. Losing a bunch of prep time to snow and ice last week hasn't thrown anything into disarray. Anyway, for a variety of reasons, I've ended up departing from my plan to not do any new preps while I'm stuck being Chair, and I'll be teaching intro E&M this term. This isn't a completely new class, but the last time I taught it I was very much in traditional lecture mode, and this will be my first pass using more of an active learning approach. Which will mean a lot of time re-working slides and that sort of…

The first annual StoryCorps National Day of Listening

The recent passing of Studs Terkel and my conversations with African American colleagues after the Obama victory has given me pause to think about our life stories, especially the life stories of our elders. For example, I lost all of my grandparents before I could get their life stories on videotape, digital recorder, or writing - I also said I was going to do it during some visit home. My grandparents had some incredible stories about The Great Depression, the World Wars, even the history of my hometown that was farmland in the middle of factories only a dozen miles from one of the…

Overlooked in the evolution war

Everyone's had a good time taking shots at Ann Coulter's inability to think straight. Some valiant types, like PZ Myers, have even sacrified several hours of their lives to reading and picking apart her pathetic prose. Everything she says is wrong, particularly her efforts to explain why evolution is a myth. All well and good. This kind of response is necessary. So are international efforts like that of the recent declaration by "67 national academies of science under the united banner of the Interacademy Panel on International Issues [who] blasted the scriptural teaching of biology as a…

Launching Weather Balloons in 45-mile-per-hour Winds

Brookhaven Lab atmospheric scientist Ernie Lewis with a mini "weather" balloon aboard the Horizon   This guest post was written by Ernie Lewis, an atmospheric scientist at Brookhaven Lab, who is leading a year-long climate study aboard two Horizon Lines cargo ships, the Spirit and Reliance. He recently returned from a preliminary "cruise" from L.A. to Hawaii and back aimed at assessing conditions for deploying instruments aboard the ships during the actual study, dubbed MAGIC, which will run from October 2012 through September 2013. Hawaii was wonderful, even though I only had a short…

Does technology make you happy?

Still in Italy. Here is a post from last year that was a follow-up to the entry that was reposted yesterday. Lets think about technology for a moment. Here I am typing on this laptop. Ideas flow (misspelled and grammatically incorrect) from my brain to my fingers to the keyboard ... over a wireless network ... into the vast ethereal space (known as the internet) ... to your home/workplace/café. So what good is any of it? You exclaim ... that's preposterous. Technology is good. You would then continue ... All these gadgets and gizmos, they're good on many fronts. They make us live longer,…

Report Suspicious Behavior

A black four door older model caddy in need of some body work and a new muffler turned into our street. The car drove quickly but furtively, the driver seeming to not quite know where she wanted to go, to the end of the faux cul-du-sac off of which each development's street radiated. A sharp left turn brought the vehicle next to a large storm sewer inlet, and out of the car flew a suspicious black thing with wires. The car roared off, too quickly to get the plate but not too quickly to be able to describe it and its occupants. An electronic, repetitive, alarm-like noise emanated from the…

Matt McIntosh is too kind to Colby Cosh

Here is Colby Cosh's response to the UN foundation's appeal to buy insecticide-treated nets to fight malaria: Africans aren't helpless animals--they know what works against malaria. Unfortunately, what works against malaria is DDT. But any country that proposes a program of household DDT application faces starvation at the hands of European bureaucrats and consumers. The nets are an unnecessarily expensive and epidemiologically phony sauve-qui-peut measure, a work-around for what could be described as the greatest ongoing mass murder ever perpetrated. Reilly's appeal (or Ted Turner's…

Reges, Vitis vinifera!

O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale" "Grape seeds may help attack colon tumors" A new study shows that feeding colorectal cancer-stricken mice with grape seed extract (that's right - grape seeds, not a bottle of the good stuff from the back of the wine cellar, so don't get any ideas) shrank their tumors by an average of 44%. This will undoubtedly lead to banner headlines in the murine press, but can these results be…

What Ten C-17 Cargo Planes the Military Doesn't Want Would Buy Us

If those who are upset about runaway government spending were serious, they would look at defense spending, which has increased in nominal terms by 75% percent. Consider what even a small level of war department waste would buy for us: With a price tag now approaching $330 million per plane and a total program cost of well over $65 billion, the C-17, produced by weapons-maker Boeing, has miraculously evaded every attempt to squash it. In fact, Congress even included $2.5 billion in the 2010 budget for ten C-17s that the Pentagon hadn't requested. Keep in mind that $2.5 billion is a lot of…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: in God they trusted

Maybe it says "In God We Trust" on our currency, but it's a financially risky strategy, as the "Christian-centered" Georgia-based Integrity Bank discovered as it came apart at the seams last week: The Alpharetta-based bank, which opened its doors in 2000 with a Christian-centered philosophy, is the 10th U.S. bank to fail this year and the second Georgia institution to fail in the past 12 months. As ranked by its total assets of $1.1 billion, Integrity becomes the third-largest bank failure in Georgia history. [snip] Integrity is the second financial services firm with a Christian-centered…

The Poor Stay in the Houses, the Rich Walk Away

I've been meaning to write something about this New York Times article that suggests that affluent homeowners are strategically defaulting more than middle class and poor ones, but Mike the Mad Biologist said it better. While I realize regulation has become a four-letter word, regulation does force the regulated to act in certain ways that they would otherwise not. To the extent we want an ethical economic system, it needs to be structured and enforced in order to remove incentives and advantages for unethical (or 'athetical') behavior. But I realize that would be like totally Hitler What I…

Bikinis make macho men stupid

Lingerie makes hagglers happy-go-lucky Quoth the Nature summary: It seems that the more macho a man is -- at least according to his hormones -- the more the sight of an attractive woman will affect his judgement. Researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium asked men to play an ultimatum game, in which they split a certain amount of money between them. High-testosterone men drove the hardest bargain -- unless they had previously viewed pictures of bikini-clad models, in which case they were more likely to accept a poorer deal. Okay, so it didn't exactly make them "stupid," as the title…

Job Ad From Hell

When confronted with job ads like this, is it any wonder that people give up on their job searches? Highly competitive postdoctoral position available in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at [name elided]. Applicant must hold a PhD in molecular biology or evolutionary biology with a cumulative grad and undergrad GPA of 4.0. Graduates of MIT or Stanford preferred. Minimum ten years' postdoc experience required, the candidate must also possess an IQ of 160, perfect spelling and grammar, and be prepared to write a 150-page "demo" grant application describing why you want to work for us.…

Congress on Food Stamps

tags: hunger, poverty, food stamps Apparently, our congresscritters are having difficulty feeding themselves on what the average person gets for food stamps. Basically, food stamp benefits provide 26 million Americans with roughly $1 per meal, or $3 for an entire day's worth of food. Food stamps is the major anti-hunger program in this country designed to help people get enough food to eat. To learn first-hand how difficult it is to live on food stamps, several legislators are participating in "the Food Stamp Challenge" where they attempt to feed themselves on just $3 per day for one week. "…

Stone the crows

Well, the riots. And whilst Harry Hutton, as usual, talks a great deal of sense, the sense of surprise remains. The beak makes some good early points; initial reports were very vague; but it now looks like only the police fired. Which really doesn't help. Part of the recent phone hacking stuff has been yet more erosion of trust in the police. Mind you, according to wiki, the family were implausibly pretending that Duggan was unarmed, which didn't help either. And also, contrary to early impressions I'd got, I can see no evidence that the police ever claimed he shot at them. Time will tell…

Poll: How has the Swine Flu affected you?

Last week, I wrote a little article trying to get people to calm down about the swine flu. Yes, it will get you sick, yes, it's contagious, and yes, if you get it you should seek medical attention. But as of today, the CDC has only three cases of swine flu in my state, and only one swine flu-related fatality in the US. In other words, the swine flu hasn't affected me or anyone that I know. Until, that is, I went to the hardware store this weekend. I've just moved into a house, and it needs a lot of work. And by that, I mean there are rooms that are unfit for a human presence just yet. So,…

Meet the Pip

As of 4:35 this morning, Chateau Steelypips has a new member (though not yet resident, for a couple more days): This photo, with the traditional sky-bison for scale is our new baby boy, David Nepveu Orzel, henceforth to be referred to on the blog as "The Pip." Because "SteelyKid and The Pip" sounds like a crime-fighting duo to be reckoned with, it fits with the old domain-name scheme, and it's obviously a nickname, unlike the two other contenders, both of which were based on real-ish names suggested by SteelyKid ("Porter," short for "Transporter," which was SteelyKid's first suggestion of a…

Faith-Based Cactus Care

Some time around the turn of the millennium a friend gave me a cactus. It's been sitting happily in its pot ever since, proliferating into a cluster of green phalli until it was clearly too big for the pot. Yesterday I relented and transplanted it to a larger one. This involved a few arcane steps to make sure it would continue to thrive, steps I will describe in the following. The thing to note here is that I didn't know what I was doing. I have no cactus expertise, instead making it all up as I went along. Watch closely -- and kids, do try this at home. Getting the cactus out of the pot…

Climate Declaration

Via Planet3.0 I see there is a declaration of the need, and competitive advantage it would bring, for action on climate change signed by a not insignificant number of major (non-fossil fuel) corporations.  As Michael Tobis points out, it is, rather strangely, presented as an image only. So my contribution is running it through an OCR tool, formatting and presenting it below:   Tackling climate change is one of America's greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century (and it's simply the right thing to do) What made America great was taking a stand. Doing the things that are hard. And…

Nickel and Dimed

This is somewhat belated, as it's no longer active, but I had a bunch of other things to do last week, and never got around to posting about Blog My Wage: HOPE asked Houston City Council member Peter Brown to spend a week living on the wage of a city worker. Council Member Brown took the challenge and lived -- and blogged -- on the wage of city employee Belinda Rodriguez, who has just $23.03 a day to buy food, gas and clothing for herself and her three children. Better late than never, though. It's a brief but fascinating look at what being poor is like. I've been fortunate enough in my life…

Scott Pilgrim

So, I blew off stuff I should've been doing, and went to see a matinee of the Scott Pilgrim movie this morning (it's very much not Kate's sort of thing, and I would feel guilty ditching her with SteelyKid to see it during the evening or on a weekend). Actually, first I went to Borders for half an hour to read the last volume of the comic, so I could compare the two endings-- I should probably buy these, because I really like the story, but I balk at shelling out that much money for something that I can read in half an hour in a bookstore. I liked it a lot, but then, I'm a sucker for this sort…

Wanted: The Hoosiers of Science

I've been revising a chapter on collaboration in science for the book-in-progress, making an analogy to team sports. And it occurred to me as I was trying to find a way to procrastinate, that while science is a highly collaborative endeavor, most of the popular stories that get told about science are not. There's no Hoosiers of science out there. Now, admittedly, the sample of great pop-culture stories about science period is pretty small. But what does exist mostly concerns individual struggles-- the lone genius who can revolutionize science by just thinking about it in isolation, but who…

What killed Steve Jobs?

You've probably heard the story going around that Steve Jobs' death was avoidable, if only he hadn't been so gullible as to steep himself in quack medicine. It turns out, though, that the story is a lot more complicated than that: David Gorski has written the best summary I've seen so far. In short (because it is Gorski, after all, so it's exhaustively long), there was an element of woo in Jobs' early response. After his pancreatic cancer was first diagnosed, he delayed surgery for 9 months to try out some improbably dietary approaches. It was a massive operation that was strongly recommended…

Looking for a little ELISA help

Question for the lab geeks out there regarding general methods for antibody detection of specific analytes in cells, serum, and urine. Do you have a favorite book, chapter, or any other reading material that you would use to guide students through designing and validating their own ELISA for a serum or urine protein? If you have any lecture slides you use and could share, I'd be happy to credit you. Some famous guy(s) gave me his H1N1 slides last year and helped me look like a genius. I know that it takes a mighty, mighty fine antibody to do this relative to one for an immunoblot or even…

"Green Shoots" in Graphs

Courtesy of Chart of the Day... href="http://www.chartoftheday.com/20090522.htm?T"> Click on the graphs to see the Chart of the Day explanations for the data. The top chart shows the aggregate earnings, over time, of the companies in the S&P 500 Index.  The second chart shows the ratio between the aggreagte price of the stock, and the earnings of the companies. Oversimplified view: A low price-to-earnings ratio means that you are not paying much, to get a share of a company that is earning a lot.  A high P:E ratio means that you are paying a lot for companies that aren't…

Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play

A new off-off-off Broadway production is in the works. It has: Drama! Intrigue! Denialists Exposed! It's Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play. Read on to find out about Endocrine Disruptors! See how the tobacco interest is related to the recent Bisphenol controversies! Hear about Nalgene and the National Toxicology Program report and industry spokespeople! Revel in the claims of lobbyists! Look in on the outcomes of an entire regime of consumer products and late-modern chemical production! All at the Science Creative Quarterly today and, soon, in limited production at community theaters near…

Fad diets and cave men

Crooked Timber has a great post on using what you think ancestral man ate to argue for various types of fad diets: There seems to be about as much theorising relative to evidence in the discussion of what cavemen ate and did, as the ev psych crowd try to get away with about their family and political arrangements. Obviously, the suggestion that cavemen "didn't eat carbohydrates" can't be meant literally -- we would never have survived if this had been true. They ate fruit, seeds, roots and all sorts. I suspect that what's meant here is that cavemen didn't eat much starch because they hadn't…

OT: On repairing an iphone cracked screen

The other day when I had to be at a stupid training session off site very early in the morning, I stepped on my iphone in the dark. It apparently slid out of my purse. Sigh. It turned on, but the glass was shattered on the front. So I looked around and you could get the screen and the digitizer with a couple of tools for about $25.  I carefully watched a bunch of YouTube videos and decided to give it a try. After all, pieces of glass were falling out and it didn't seem like a good idea to get many of these in my ear. I sat down last Saturday morning to fix it. The videos I watched showed…

Best Colleges Rankings: Best for Who?

It's that special time of year when involved parents everywhere rush out to buy the essentials: calculators, notebooks and the latest issue of US News and World Report. America's Best Colleges 2008 hit newsstands on Monday and no surprise...Princeton, Harvard, and Yale lead the pack with the usual suspects following suit. For about two decades, the magazine's been ranking schools based on criteria like graduation rates, SAT scores, and alumni gifts to determine which institutions deserve the top spots. To me, these rankings always seemed somewhat arbitrary considering they take a one-size-…

Hershey: the Borg of chocolate

Sadly, Hershey has announced the immediate closing of the small Berkeley factory that, since 2001, has been the flagship of Scharffen Berger chocolate. Scharffen Berger's dark chocolates were a favorite among Bay Area residents years before it was sold to Hershey in 2005; the cozy Berkeley factory used to be open for tours and chocolate tastings (followed by obligatory hot cocoa at the cafe next door). I have many fond memories of Scharffen Berger chocolate, so this news is depressing. To add insult to injury, Hershey is also closing the factory of Joseph Schmidt in San Francisco - a company…

If you can't get rid of garbage, worship it

Every time you use a plastic bag at the grocery store or buy another bottle of water you are contributing to the deluge of one-use, throw-away plastic products that pile up in our landfills or float out to sea. One group in Baton Rouge is trying to raise consciousness with Sacred Waste, a performance art piece that illustrates the problem. This performance art show is a unique blend of art and science – it conveys some of its information in some unusual and compelling ways: the costumes, the set, and all the props are made of discarded plastic – each costume is made of 100-300 plastic bags,…

Variations on a Theme of Smoking

Ever wonder what goes through the mind of someone smoking their first cigarette? I've often wondered what first-time smokers think of as they light up: "I'm so excited." "This tastes weird." "I hope I'm doing it right." "Finally I fit in." "Better not mess with me anymore." "This is relaxing me." "It's so cool!" "Dear (insert name here - Mom, Dad, Teacher, Police Officer, etc.): Go F*** Yourself!" I wish I knew, and not just out of a morbid interest in consumers who willingly buy a highly addicting product designed to slowly ruin their bodies, if not take their life. I can't imagine that…

Smithsonian picks a new boss

G. Wayne Clough, president of Georgia Tech, was tapped to run the Smithsonian Institution. As we've reported, he steps into a deeply troubled organization. His predecessor allowed infrastructure to crumble, appropriated museum artifacts for personal use in his offices, and focused more on cozying up to corporate sponsors than on the scientific and educational mission of the Smithsonian. In many ways, Clough seems well-suited to restoring faith in the Smithsonian. He comes with an academic background, which means he will understand the needs of his staff, and appreciate the balance between…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jelka Crnobrnja

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailovic from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and…

On Chores

Chores sounds like such a dreary word, and until I moved to a farm, I would never have believed that I'd have anything positive to say about it. As a kid, I did chores around the house, and while I may have groused less about the dishes and cleaning gutters as an adult, I certainly didn't (and don't) love the jobs. But on a farm, chores are something else - they are bookends to each day, a formal structure like the forms of a sonnet or musical scales that shape the day. They can be speeded up, slowed down, slightly elided and occasionally contracted out, but for the most part, they are…