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Tangled Bank 75, The Science, Nature and Medicine Blog Carnival

Welcome everyone to the 75th edition of Tangled Bank! There is plenty of material here to read so I think that you all will find something to interest you in this collection of the most recent stories about science, nature and medicine. So without further ado, I will let you jump right in. Science and Religion Tara at Aetiology wrote about a recent talk about Intelligent Design by Fred Skiff -- a presentation that was long on rhetoric, short on light. I wrote a book review about God: the Failed Hypothesis by Victor J. Stenger. The book critically examines both empirical data and scientific…

Why I'm releasing my genetic data online

Back in June I launched a new blog, Genomes Unzipped, together with a group of colleagues and friends with expertise in various areas of genetics. At the time I made a rather cryptic comment about "planning much bigger things for the site over the next few months". Today I announced what I meant by that: from today, all of the 12 members of Genomes Unzipped - including my wife and I - will be releasing their own results from a variety of genetic tests, online, for anyone to access. Initially those results consist of data from one company (23andMe) for all 12 members; deCODEme for one…

10 Ways to Go Seriously Green

Ok, I've always hated those "Top 10 Ways to Green Your Apartment/Cat/Sex Toys/Shaving Equipment" articles, and yet they do serve a sort of purpose (at least the ones that aren't total rubbish) - narrowing things down and prioritizing is helpful. So for those of you teetering on the edge of joining the new Riot for Austerity, check out the real 10 ways to make a big difference - I promise this is the only "Top 10 Green" List I'll ever make you read! 1. Buy a lot less stuff. So much of what's out there focuses on replacing one consumer need with a marginally less toxic or awful option. This is…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Human Proteins Evolving Slowly Thanks To Multitasking Genes: Many human proteins are not as good as they might be because the gene sequences that code for them have a double role which slows down the rate at which they evolve, according to new research published in PLoS Biology. By tweaking these dual role regions, scientists could develop gene therapy techniques that produce proteins that are even better than those found in nature, and could one day be used to help people recover from genetic disorders. More.... Sea Creature's Toxin Could Lead To Promising Cancer Treatment: A toxin derived…

It's b-a-a-a-c-k. And I'm glad.

When two of the most loathsome members of the US Senate bring back again a bill that won't die, you'd think I'd be in high dudgeon. But I'm not. I hope the bill isn't killed or is allowed to die -- again -- and we finally get it. I'd much rather that the two right wing whack jobs, Senators Joe Liberman (morally corrupt Independent neé Democrat) and John Cornyn (morally corrupt Republican), spent their time sponsoring this kind of legislation than making their usual mischief that hurts everyone. What is this miracle legislation that brings me together with these usually worthless publicly…

ScienceOnline'09 - WiSE Lacks Shanties

After the Museum tour and dropping by Radisson briefly to see who else has arrived in the meantime, I went home to see the family and walk the reconvalesecent dog for a few minutes (thus choosing to miss Friday Fermentable except for the last few minutes), then back to Sigma Xi for the WiSE networking event. The place was packed (my estimate - 300 people) with women in science and engineering from local universities (Duke, NCSU, UNC, NCCU and others) as well as many participants of ScienceOnline09. This was an opportunity for local women in science not just to meet and network with each…

USA Science & Engineering Festival

Remember two years ago when I went to FEST in Trieste, Italy? (see pictures and coverage, e.g., this,this, this, this and more). Now nixed by Berlusconi who has other priorities than science, the FEST was one of the most exciting and famous science and technology events in the world. Sad that FEST is no more (at least temporarily), I am happy that a similar event will be held right here in the USA - the USA Science & Engineering Festival: The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival will be the country's first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area…

Jewcy on Evolution

The wonderfully named online magazine Jewcy, has been hosting a discussion about evolution and ID. Three entries so far: Neal Pollack gets the ball rolling by suggesting that he wants his children to grow up “utterly intolerant” of creationism. My kind of guy! Discovery Institute flak David Klinghoffer recites the standard talking points. Yours truly brings it home with this eloquent missive. I certainly like where Pollack ends up: A parent can no longer assume that his children won't encounter anti-evolutionary propaganda. While I'm skeptical about religion, I'm not opposed to faith and…

As if any more evidence were needed ...

In 1999, Dembski established the Michael Polanyi Center - an ID institute - at Baylor University. As this article notes, Dembski appropriated Michael Polanyi’s name, contrary to the wishes of his literary executor and son, Nobel Laureate John Polanyi, in an attempt to associate Polanyi with a cause he clearly would not have shared. Richard Gelwick, the articles author, should know. He is the author of The Way of Discovery: an Introduction to the Thought of Michael Polanyi (1977) and Michael Polanyi: Credere Aude: His Theory of Knowledge and Its Implications for Christian Theology (1965),…

AU STUDENTS PROVIDE CONTEXT TO TIME MAGAZINE'S CYBER-HYPERBOLE

This week, Time magazine names all of us as "Person of the Year." According to Time's editors, in this Web 2.0 era of digital media, average netizens are transforming society in powerful ways, changing politics, community, and personal lives for the better. "You control the media now!" declares Time in its cover feature. Here's more of the mag's hyperbole: . ..look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of…

Two Views of Same Event

Two different news organizations chose two different photos to illustrate the same event: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_carter" rel="tag">Jimmy Carter speaking at href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandeis_University" rel="tag">Brandeis University, in response to criticism of his boook: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Peace_Not_Apartheid" rel="tag">Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. The top photo is from the New York Times, href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/us/24carter.html">At Brandeis, Carter Responds to Critics.  The bottom is from Fox…

Sphere

Sure Sphere is a filthy piece of literary swill but it also a vital component of any submersible. As you may remember from geometry, for any given volume, a sphere has the smallest surface area, or for any given surface area, a sphere will have the greatest volume. From a practical standpoint for a deep-sea submersible, this means less surface for pressure to act upon. Thus the choice for the 'large' compartment to hold humans on a deep diving submersible is a sphere. The first deep-diving sphere was the aptly named Bathysphere of Barton and Beebe, making its first unmanned test in 1930.…

Anemones.

On that beach walk the other day on which we saw the various shorebirds, we also got a peek at some tidepool inhabitants, notably anemones. The tidepool dwelling anemones may look like flowers, but they're actually invertebrates. There are a bunch of species of anemone within the genus Anthopleura, and I wasn't committed enough to actually messing with the critters in ways that would help me make a definitive identification. (For example, this site says that A. xanthogrammica can be distinguished from A. sola by way of its "tighter sphincter muscle". I can live with the uncertainty,…

Massive Prehistoric Snake Ate Crocodiles; Today's Snakes Eat Alligators Then Explode

In a fairly hilarious slip, yesterday a USA Today said researchers had found a 2500 foot snake fossil in Colombia.  Uh, make that a 2500 pound snake (it was about 40 feet long). But still:  BIG SNAKE!!  And it was 65 million years old (OLD SNAKE!!).  The Independent's headline called it, "The Snake That Was So Big it Ate Crocodiles."  But that's actually not news: Plenty of snakes eat things like crocodiles. And that sometimes gets very ugly ...  Here, from the Culture Dish archives, is the disturbing news about what can happen when a snake eats a big reptile:   Rangers just…

Contact Your Senator about Increasing the NIH Budget

The Genetics Society of America is requesting that its members contact their Senators to ask them to support an amendment to increase the 2007 NIH budget proposed by President Bush. As it current stands, the proposed 2007 budget is equal to the 2006 budget (without even a correction for inflation). If you would like contact your Senator, you can look up his or her address, phone number, email, and fax number here. I have reproduced the letter from the GSA below the fold. From the Genetics Society of America: Read below and contact your Senators using the CapWiz connection (see URL below)…

Thank you! All of you who helped Science Blogging Conference be a success!

The second annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, held January 18 and 19, 2008, was an unqualified success. Find a comprehensive listing of links to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn about the conversations and networking at the conference. Like our inaugural event, this second conference was a collective activity — many, many organizations, companies and individuals pitched in, in ways large and small, to keep this conference free, attendees fed and the discussion lively. Please join us in thanking them. (We thanked…

The Climate Change Emails: Implications for Public Education and Engagement

I've been busy the past week with wrapping up the semester. As a consequence, I have not had the chance to post about continuing developments related to the stolen emails from servers at University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). However, today is a convenient time to weigh in, since I share many of the same conclusions offered by Mike Hulme in recent op-eds at the BBC and Wall Street Journal. Before discussing the Hulme articles, let me relay a few observations. Since the stolen email story broke, my concern has been that many bloggers and commentators are overlooking the…

Using Facebook to assess the size of social networks

There are some people who argue that the Internet increases the size of people's social networks by lowering the transaction costs of interacting with people. Facebook -- as a dataset -- is handy for determining whether this is true. Everyone on Facebook has friends with whom you communicate on a regular or irregular basis. Therefore, it could allow you to quantify the size of social networks on the Internet. This is precisely what Cameron Marlow, a sociologist at Facebook, did at the prompting of the Economist. Marlow looks at the size of social networks on Facebook in terms of friend…

Dick Cheney, ICD, and Anxiety

The implantable cardioverter defibrillator is a device placed under the skin, near the heart.  It delivers an electric shock to the heart when a dangerous abnormal rhythm is detected.  As you might suspect, it hurts when this shock occurs (doctors call it a " href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/542830">short-duration nociceptive stimulation").  Also as you might expect, it can create a great deal of anxiety. Persons with ICDs are liable to be shocked at any time, with no warning at all.   There's an evidence-based review of the subject that is openly available at Current…

Students Across North America Call for Universities to Stop Abetting Access-to-Medicines Crisis in Poor Countries

Chapters of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) are pushing their local universities to sign Equitable Access Licenses (EAL) that would lift patent barriers on drugs developed by university labs. These agreements would effectively increase the access of medicines to poor countries. An article in the the June edition of PLoS reports the latest on this movement ... more specifically how Yale recently signed such an agreement for to allow a generic version of Zerit, stavudine, to be used to treat HIV infections in South Africa. Sol Shulman, a member of the Harvard Medical…

Extra, Extra

There was A LOT of stuff this week. Was this week particularly good for blogging or am I just aware of more blogs and blog posts in recent weeks? Am I paying more attention because of the new networks? Am I just filtering less, and including more in the round-up? Anyway, lots of awesome. Science I've really been enjoying the Replicated Typo blog lately. I particularly liked a recent post on the social sensitivity hypothesis: "Given findings that certain genetic variants will make a person more sensitive to social contact and more reliant on social contact under stress, it proposes that…

Friday Random Ten, 10/2

Dead Soul Tribe, "Goodbye City Life": mediocre prog metal. Not bad, but nothing special either. Dave Matthews Band, "Lying in the Hands of God": I know, lots of people think I'm crazy to like DMB. But I do. And I find this song terribly depressing. One of the members of the DMB was an amazing saxaphone player named LeRoi Moore. Moore's saxaphone play was absolutely fantastic - incredibly skillfull, tasteful, with a huge range. Moore was killed in an auto accident, and his place was taken in live shows by Jeff Coffin from the Flecktones. Coffin is, in my opinion, a godawful…

PZ and the preacher?

A small mob of atheist students (and a confused, deluded mob of hapless Christians) are going to be making a trip to New Orleans to help rebuild homes. This is a wonderful idea, and I commend all of the students, even the misled theistic ones, for making the effort. However, they need money to cover expenses. Not a lot, just $1500, so they are doing an online fundraiser on 16 January. I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but they are asking for donations that will give you a chance at prizes…and the opportunity to ask questions of some poor preacher man in a webcast on blogtv.…

Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience

tags: birds, literature, ornithology, Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience, Jeremy Mynott, book review Not too long ago, this unemployed scientist had the honor of being asked to write a book review for Science. The Science book review editor was looking for a review of Jeremy Mynott's new book, Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience. The editor, who peeks at my blog when no one is looking, noticed that I am a scientist and bird maniac who writes and publishes lots of book reviews on my blog, so he very kindly (and out of the blue) decided to give me a chance to…

Around the Web: OMG still with the librarian angst, Forking the academy and more

Yes, We Should Talk About the MLS On Big Name Librarians The Loon’s job Why am I getting my MLIS? Because I have to. So You Think You Want to Be a Librarian? The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship Your candidate pools Fork the Academy (github as a model for scholarly communcation) Massive (But Not Open) (new online cs degree program) [Expletive Deleted] Ed-Tech #Edinnovation (relates ed tech history as it is often told to how Argo treats the Canadian contribution to that story) Making the peer review process public Why is Science Behind a Paywall? The Delete Squad Google, Twitter,…

Around the Web: Hacking at education, The great librarian identity crisis of 2013 and more

Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall Why MOOCs May Drive Up Higher Ed Costs California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study The great librarian identity crisis of 2013 Q&A: Dan Cohen on His Role as the Founding Executive Director of DPLA The Basic Skills of All Librarians Poaching jobs Is coding an essential library skill? Beyond the Bullet Points: Rock Stars Why I Ignore Gurus, Sherpas, Ninjas, Mavens, and Other Sages Cracking the Code: Librarians Acquiring Essential Coding Skills Research Librarians Discuss New Ways to Support…

Around the Web: What makes academic library patrons tick, The ascendance of expertise and more

New LJ Report Closely Examines What Makes Academic Library Patrons Tick Nate Silver and the Ascendance of Expertise Stables and Volatiles (balancing personalities in project groups) Academic Libraries, Information Literacy, and the Value of Our Values Facebook wants to organise our relationships. What's not to like? PeerJ: An Open-Access Experiment Engaging the Public, Citizen Science and Imperialism Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy Why Tablets? Why Are Physics Classes…

Around the Web: Competing with free education, Redefining the library and more

Competing with “Free,” Part One and Part Two (Re)Defining the Library, Part 1: Why?, Part 2: How? Smoking Gun on Sexism? (scientists are biased against women) What Libraries Should Be: A Values Proposition The matter of credit Report on the International Workshop on Contribution and Scholarly Attribution Please Stop The Social An Introvert's Thoughts on Being A Professional Speaker and Consultant Introverts and the ‘new groupthink’ Not So Fast on 'Open Access' (Historians having second thoughts?) Rethinking What “Academic” Means The disappearing web: Information decay is eating away our…

Around the Web: The ethics of tweetbombs, Canadian copyright, eBook appetizers and more

The tweetbomb and the ethics of attention Did One-Sided Legal Advice Lead To The Terrible Copyright Deal For Canadian Universities? How we use our mobile devices Ebooks and Ereaders: Where do I Start and Which One Do I Choose? Ebooks Appetizer #2: Ebooks in the Library Ebooks Appetizer #3 - Ebook File Types How to Spot the Future Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years Sign the Petition at ebooksforlibraries.com! Massive Open Online Courses: How "The Social" Alters the Relationship Between Learners and Facilitators Why e-books will soon be obsolete (and…

Some local reactions

Our campus has an alternative right-wing rag of a newspaper called the Counterweight, funded who knows how, that throws up horrible little articles that usually sound like the kind of thing that would make Karl Rove and Dick Cheney chortle. They interviewed me recently — yes, I speak politely to even the most conservative students on campus — for a pair of opinion articles of the battling 'he was right'/'he was evil' variety, all on the desecration controversy. You can read them both online. The student who was taking my side framed it as an issue of opposition to political correctness,…

Science bloggers to discuss "GMOs" with Michael Pollan

The Changemakers international online community selected biofortified, a group website devoted to providing factual information and fostering discussion about plant genetics, especially genetic engineering, as the grand prize winner in the GMO Risk or Rescue Competition. This would not have been possible without the leadership of Karl Haro von Mogel, graduate student and blogger Anastasia Bodnar, our Australian colleague David Tribe and the votes of the science blogging community. Thanks all. Here is the announcment: Our entire team is excited to highlight your idea and your efforts on…

Crash the polls!

Once you've voted in the poll that matters, you can go play on this Online Presidential Poll. I'm pretty sure the results won't be binding, so you can vote for me or Immanuel Kant (wait, what? He left off Nietzsche?) John McCain 4% 8 Barack Obama 17% 35 Rev. Jeremiah Wright 2% 4 William Ayers 1% 2 Sarah Palin 0% 0 A Moose 4% 8 PZ Myers, aka, "Pharyngula" 2% 5 Glenn Reynolds, aka, "InstaIgnorance" 0% 0 Immanuel Kant 12% 26 Any member of the PGR Advisory Board 0% 1 Any member of the Texas Taliban 0% 1 Jason Stanley 4% 9 Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate 9% 19 Gary Becker…

Ignite talks at ScienceOnline2010

Ignite-style talks are very, very energetic. They last 5 minutes each and the slideshow is set to automatically change slides every 15 seconds. Thus, one cannot be slow or go over time. These kinds of talks can be very funny, yet also very powerful. At ScienceOnline2010, we will have an Ignite session on Saturday night, at the Radisson Hotel during the banquet/dinner. Here is the lineup of speakers and topics: "Why Triangle is Better than Silicon Valley" - Wayne Sutton "My "Little Black Book" of Scientists I Love" - Joanne Manaster "Crowdsourced Chemistry - Why Online Chemistry Data Needs…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Endangered Shortnose Sturgeon Saved In Hudson River: For the first time in U.S., and probably global, history a fish identified as endangered has been shown to have recovered -- and in the Hudson River, which flows through one of the world's largest population centers, New York City. Multiple Dimensions Shape Our Perception Of Mind, Harvard Study Suggests: Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual's ability for self-control, morality and planning;…

Science 2.0: What every scientist needs to know about how the web is changing the way they work

This is a great looking afternoon here in Toronto on Wednesday July 29th, organized by Greg Wilson and taking place at the MaRS Centre: Science 2.0: What every scientist needs to know about how the web is changing the way they work. The event is free, but registration is required. Here's an outline of the presentations: Titus Brown: Choosing Infrastructure and Testing Tools for Scientific Software Projects Cameron Neylon: A Web Native Research Record: Applying the Best of the Web to the Lab Notebook Michael Nielsen: Doing Science in the Open: How Online Tools are Changing Scientific…

UNC Nobel Laureate on the importance of information access to scientific research

This is today: A Conversation with Dr. Oliver Smithies Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 2007 Nobel Laureate Moderated by Dr. Tony Waldrop, Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Monday, March 30, 2009 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Room 527 Health Sciences Library Light refreshments to follow Join us for a chat with Dr. Oliver Smithies about the importance of information access to scientific research, especially his own. Audience participation will be encouraged. Don't miss this opportunity to have your questions answered by Dr. Smithies. You may also submit…

The hook-up culture

Amanda is in the middle of reading Michael Kimmel's Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and has posted the first, preliminary review, with some very interesting explorations by the commenters as well (I guess the MRAs did not get there yet to ruin the discussion). The review is focusing on the societal gender roles as the cause of the hook-up culture as well as the perception of it as being negative. Much younger, sarahmeyers looks at the setting for the hook-up culture and identifies her own - highly urban, career-oriented, highly-connected (online and offline). Possibly…

Scitable

Maxine: Nature Education, a new division of Nature Publishing Group, has launched Scitable, a free online educational resource for undergraduate biology instructors and students. Scitable, which currently covers the field of genetics, is built on a library of overviews of key science concepts compiled by Nature Publishing Group's editorial staff. Scitable's evidence-based approach explains science through the lens of the scientific method, with links to milestone research papers. Topics of investigation include: ⢠Chromosomes and cytogenetics ⢠Evolutionary genetics ⢠Gene expression and…

Science in the 21st Century

Bee and Michael and Chad and Eva and Timo and Cameron will be there. And so will I. And many other interesting people. Where? At the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ontario) on Sep. 8th-12th 2008. And it will be fun. This is the blurb of the meeting: Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these…

A kick-ass Conference: Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity

Unfortunately, due to the Murphy's Law of conference dates, I will have to miss this fantastic meeting, because I will at the time be at another fantastic meeting, but if you can come, please do - registration will be open online in a few days. Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity The conference theme is about bringing scientists and humanities scholars to talk about ways that science is changing human life. November 8th, 9th, and 10th, the National Humanities Center will host the second ASC conference. And the program features a Who's Who list: Thursday, November 8th Frans de Waal Martha…

I'm In The Minority ..

Are we becoming a nation of pajama-wearing web-surfing loners? (Orphaned image). Zogby International and 463 Communications recently polled 9,743 Americans online regarding their attitude towards the internet. They found that a significant minority of equal numbers of men and women would consider the internet to be a surrogate significant other: 31% of single political progressives and 18% of single political conservatives felt this way. Wow, amazing, huh? I didn't know that so many Americans found 3.5 inch floppies so attractive! But weirdly, only 11% of Americans said they would implant…

Senses Challenge

Do your eyes deceive you? Can you really trust your senses, or do they sometimes deceive you? Take this quiz to find out! It's a lot harder than you think. This quiz also includes an explanation for each question that helps you understand how your brain is "tricked" by your senses. My score: 14/20. I guess all that Anatomy and Physiology teaching served me well! (i got 19/20 on the second try -- that line graphic is tricky). I found it interesting that a crying baby is so danged loud (I thought my perception was simply a measure of my own annoyance level) -- nearly as loud as a pop concert…

Irreticences

I found this wonderful word (below) in a book by the amazing and incomparable Virginia Woolf, entitled Mrs. Dalloway. As soon as I read this word, I was certain that she had invented it for her own purposes, and a quick look in the online dictionary revealed that she had. So dear readers, this is perhaps the first time this word has been formally defined on the internet; Irreticences (ir-RET-uh-suhn-ses) [Latin ir- not reticÄre; to be silent] n. outspoken, to speak freely; talkative; voluble. lack of restraint. Usage: I can't keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as they marched up…

How Nerdy Are You?

I displayed this quiz result on my original blog for quite a long time, until I decided it was having a negative impact on my social life, whereupon, I removed it. However, because I no longer have a social life, not any sort of life whatsoever, I realize it probably wouldn't hurt to put this quiz result back, especially because I can ask all of you to tell me how nerdy you are! Did you know the identities of the two men whose pictures were shown in the quiz? Why do you suppose they didn't show a picture of Darwin and ask you to identify him, instead? I guess it is because he is probably…

Save the Earth, help a student, party down with the nerds

It's a busy busy day today. It's Earth Day. I'm going to spend a little time this morning with a community group helping clean up part of the town. It's a new student registration day at my university—this afternoon, I advise and help next year's freshman figure out what courses to take. Tonight is the Geek Prom! Right after registration, we have to rush to Minneapolis; I hope we make it in time for the Grand March at 7PM. Chuck Olson of the vlog Minnesota Stories is going to be taping the Geek Prom, so you might get a chance to watch us nerds online later this week…but come on, if you read…

Chief Scientist in the State Department

Prof Nina Fedoroff is to become Chief Scientist at the State Department and science advisor to Condoleezza Rice Good week for Nina, she got the National Medal for Science yesterday Prof Fedoroff is a prominent biologist and an advocate of genetic engineering of plants and animals, in particular for food crops to improve yield and nutritional quality. She is the author of Mendel in the Kitchen A very interesting, shorter article on the issue appears in the current issue of Penn State Science Journal, here is a link to the online version The most interesting point she makes is on how little…

How much is that doggy in the window?

Pet cloning is back! Pets are funny things. Some owners find their pets to be closer than some human friends, other owners never really bond with their pets at all. BioArts, a California biotech company, founded by ex-CEO of the now defunct Genetic Savings & Clone, is counting on the strength of those human-dog emotional bonds . I've had several pets during the course of my life; dogs, cats, fish, scorpions, spiders, frogs, turtles, gerbils, and a hermit crab. Some pets were really easy to train and live with and some - well, let's just say some were more challenging. So, I…

What are the Potential Social and Ethical Implications of the $100 Laptop?

That's the topic for the most recent Schubmehl-Prein Prize for Best Essay on Social Impact of Computing. The Schubmehl-Prein Prize for best analysis of the social impact of a particular aspect of computing technology will be awarded to a student who is a high school junior in academic year 2009-2010. The first-place award is $1,000, the second-place award is $500, and the third-place award is $250. Winning entries are traditionally published in the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers and Society online magazine. The winners of the 2009 contest are published in the most recent…

Who is Your Daemon?

Everyone is talking about The Golden Compass -- a movie that I had no idea was being made or released or even premiered this past weekend -- a movie that is based on a series of books that I've never read and have only vaguely heard about. But my readers have fixed that literary oversight for me because you have sent the entire "His Dark Materials" trilogy to me, and I plan to start reading it as soon as I get a couple book reviews finished in the next few days. (Oh, I also plan to see the movie as soon as I've finished reading the first book). But a quick look around the internet has yielded…

South America chokes as Amazon Burns

"South America chokes as Amazon Burns" is the headline on an online Independent news article. Apparently the annual practice of fall burning to clear forest land so we can eat hamburgers and get fat has spun out of control this year. The world's largest forest has become a bit of a "tinder box" due to drought conditions thought to be a result of climate change. Vast areas of Brazil and Paraguay and much of Bolivia are choking under thick layers of smoke as fires rage out of control in the Amazon rainforest, forcing the cancellation of flights. Satellite images yesterday showed huge clouds…