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Grunty man

[Warning: more boring fitness-related content. This is the penultimate post on such, before moving the misc trivia over to wmconnolley.livejournal.com/. The science will stay here.] Saturday-before-last James E said that the Grunty Fen half marathon was on the 12th; and being a little unsober I signed up online an hour later. Next morning I thought I'd better check that I could actually run the distance, and it turned out that I could. Or at least, nearly. I accidentally ran 20 km instead of 21.1, because I forgot the true distance. Oops. Anyway, that took me 1:51, which seemed fair enough…

“Crazy” is when you start regarding the crazy as normal

I have mixed feelings about this article in Inside Higher Ed on the issue of approving an ICR degree program in Texas. On the one hand, it's clear that the Texas bureaucracy is being cautious and thorough and working its way through their official protocols. Raymund Paredes, the commissioner of higher education, has raised concerns about the proposed program—online graduate degrees in he sciences are problematic because they lack the laboratory component; the proposed curriculum is not equivalent to other graduate programs in Texas; they haven't documented that the ICR is a research…

Keith Windschuttle on Post-Modernism

A week ago, Australian historian Keith Windschuttle gave a talk in Sydney under the heading "Postmodernism and the Fabrication of Aboriginal History". The full text is on-line, highly recommended. "The argument that all history is politicised, that it is impossible for the historian to shed his political interests and prejudices, has become the most corrupting influence of all. It has turned the traditional role of the historian, to stand outside his contemporary society in order to seek the truth about the past, on its head. It has allowed historians to write from an overtly partisan…

Cambridge half; and misc

Today was the anniversary of my glorious 1:36 in the Cambridge Half Marathon. Today, alas, I only managed 1:41 so at that rate Jules will be steaming past me before many more years have passed. I remain fairly confident of out-erging her over the distance though. Here I am with other folk from our rowing club that were running. You'll notice that most of them are female. Maggie in the background, if you were wondering. Onwards, to Brighton. But other things are happening. You'll have to wait just a little longer for my deeply valuable thoughts on the Ukraine crisis; this post is Misc. Last…

Axions and the Problem of EurekAlert

I have a couple of EurekAlert feeds in my RSS reader, because they sometimes turn up interesting things-- I got the Bill Wootters item there, for example, and they had a piece on strontium clocks that I keep meaning to say something about. Of course, there's also some total garbage, such as the kookery from the "Quantum Aether Dynamics Institute" that crossed the feed yesterday (though it appears to have been taken down, to their credit). This makes it difficult to really trust anything I see there that claims to be a really new development. Such as, say, this press release from Buffalo…

If It's Not Boring, It's Not Art

One of the PDF-only studies that I complained about earlier is a hand-wringing report from the NEA on how public appreciation of art is on the decline. As summarized by Inside Higher Ed: Compared to the NEA's 1982 survey, the steepest decline was in ballet, which that year was seen by 11.0 percent of college-educated adults, but in 2008 was seen by only 6.3 percent. Declines were seen in every type of art considered: jazz (from 19.4 percent to 14.9 percent); classical music (33.1 percent to 20.1 percent); opera (8.0 percent to 5.2 percent); musicals (40.5 percent to 32.7 percent); non-…

links for 2009-04-14

EDSBS » Archive » CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS COVERS THE NATIONAL TITLE GAME "Like the tyrant who conjured a territory whole from the aether, so have we on this field two imaginary kingdoms wrenched forth from geographic oblivion. Florida, were it not for the intervention of a few real estate scamsters in the â20, the discovery of insecticide, air-conditioning, and the generous slathering of federal pork upon the stateâs snake-infested swampwaste, would have descended into a kind of Sun Belt Lord of the Flies scenario, I think. I must also admit this may have happened despite all the best…

Wired posts Amy Wallace love/hate mail compiled from Twitter feed

Just a quick follow-up from our last two posts about Amy Wallace's article, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," in Wired magazine about vaccine developer Dr Paul Offit and the anti-vaccination movement: Wired has now compiled Wallace's tweets from the last two days into blog-readable narrative. Only a week after Wired published "An Epidemic of Fear", we've received more reader responses than any other story in memory. Journalist Amy Wallace has received hundreds of messages, weighing in on all sides of the issue, and posted some of those comments on…

DonorsChoose: Support My Fellow Bloggers for Now

I can't believe October's here already and it's time again for our annual social media challenge to raise money for US science teachers. Last year, eight generous, erudite, and good-looking Terra Sig readers donated at total of $1,972 to impact the lives of 1,865 students. DonorsChoose.org is "an online charity connecting you to classrooms in need." I wrote about Terra Sig's support last year and you can read my personal statement about Why We Donate to DonorsChoose Projects. For example, my heart was broken last year when I read of a project for students a mere 35 miles from a major state…

Explaining plummeting belief in anthropogenic climate change

Another depressing poll result from one of the more reputable sources: The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones [excellent!] and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures. Why the drop? According to the experts that appear in the Guardian's story, it's the economy and corporate propaganda: Michael…

Water Intoxication Update: Radio Show Stopped, DJs Fired

Earlier this week, a woman who was a contestant (for a Nintendo Wii) in a water-drinking contest died, ostensibly of water intoxication. There has been a lot of debate in the comments as to whether the radio station was culpuable and should be sued. Well, as reported today on Yahoo, the radio station fired the three disc jockeys as well as seven other employees who took part in the contest.The radio show was suspended, and the station has announced an investigation into the exact circumstances of Jennifer Strange's death. It was also revealed that the amount of water that she drank was in…

My Music

Since we now know that a person's music says a lot about what that person's like, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself by sharing some of my music. I can't give you a list of my ten favorite songs (the data Rentfrow and Gosling used in their study), because to be honest, my favorite songs change on an almost daily basis. So instead, I'll give you one song from each of the last ten albums I've listened to. They're not necessarily my favorite songs from those albums, because I was restricted to what I could find freely available online, but I do really like each of these songs. Most…

Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Stouter Women Who Give Birth Earlier

From a Yale press release: Yale University researchers have detected the effects of natural selection among two generations of contemporary women and predict their descendents will be slightly shorter and chubbier, have lower cholesterol and blood pressure and have their first children earlier in life. The predictions, which were made in the Oct. 19 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on an analysis of women who have participated in the famous Framingham Heart Study, that began in 1948. The results illustrate the medical value of evolutionary…

The dolphin with extra fins, 2 years on

AO-4, from the Marine Mammal Science announcement. (arrow added) On October 28, 2006, fisherman that were capturing individuals of a group of 118 bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) near Taiji, Japan for exploitation in aquaria noticed something peculiar about one of the captured individuals. While the vast majority of dolphins have only two front flippers one particular female had a set of small pelvic flippers. Many whales (particularly baleen whales) have the vestiges of hips and leg bones inside their bodies but a whale with external pelvic fins is an even rarer find. A new paper…

Japan quake, tsunami, nuke news 07

Ana's Feed Starting March 21 3PM Radioactive iodine 126.7 times higher detected in seawater near nuke plant - kyodo news Radioactive cesium 24.8 times higher detected in seawater near nuke plant - kyodo news Too early to assess contaminated seawater's impact on fishery product: TEPCO - kyodo news Gov't orders 4 prefectures to suspend some food shipments Tidbits from NHK's morning broadcast: Spraying of reactor buildings and restoration of power remain suspended - all workers remain evacuated form the area Grey smoke from reactor no.3 and white vapor from no.2 are being investigated - both…

Creationism, Accreditation, and Higher Education

ScienceBloging Greg Laden reports that the Texas Board of Higher Education is considering accrediting The Texas Based Institute for Creation Research so it could offer an online course in Science Education. ScienceBlogling PZ offers one solution to stop the inanity (or at least limit the damage if Texas proceeds): I hope Texas scientists can slap that Board into wakeful reality before that meeting, because if this goes through, the trust I can give Texas-trained teachers is getting flushed right down the sewer. And if Texans can't fix this, the rest of the country has to step up and deny…

OK, We Really Are All Post-Keynesian Chartalists Now

A while ago, I was pleasantly suprised--and stunned--to read a Marketwatch columnist (the online market site for The Wall Street Journal) point out the obvious, yet rarely recognized, reality that we are no longer on the gold standard. As I noted: One of the key innovations of the last century--and unappreciated, not to mention unknown, by most--is fiat currency: we are not on the gold standard anymore. The total amount of money we can have isn't fixed by how many shiny pebbles we can pull out of the ground. If we need to print more money so we [can] eliminate idle capacity (human and…

The Surprising Viruses in Our Gut

We were just getting used to the idea of our digestive tract as an ecosystem. There are 10 times as many bacteria in our gut as there are cells in our bodies, and the ecological balance between the different types might affect everything from our tendency to gain weight to our general health and susceptibility to various diseases. Now, a Weizmann Institute researcher has exposed a whole new layer of this ecosystem: the viruses – called phages – that infect our gut bacteria. Dr. Rotem Sorek and his team identified hundreds of these phages in the human gut. They were able to find them thanks to…

Science Debate on Science Friday

Tomorrowâs Science Friday radio program will feature a segment on the Science Debate 2008 campaign, which calls for the presidential candidates to devote a debate to science-related issues. You can listen live online from 2 - 4pm Eastern time, or check your local NPR stationâs listings to see when the show airs. Hereâs what we wrote last month about why such a debate is needed and which questions weâd like to see the candidates answer: We here at The Pump Handle are particularly concerned about the way that political appointees in this administration have suppressed, distorted, and ignored…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Fruit Bats Are Not 'Blind As A Bat': The retinas of most mammals contain two types of photoreceptor cells, the cones for daylight vision and colour vision, and the more sensitive rods for night vision. Nocturnal bats were traditionally believed to possess only rods. Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and at The Field Museum for Natural History in Chicago have discovered that nocturnal fruit bats (flying foxes) possess cones in addition to rods. Hence, fruit bats are also equipped for daylight vision. The researchers conclude that cone photoreceptors…

The Best of February

I posted 126 times in February. The Biggest Event of the month, of course, was the release of The Open Laboratory 2009, the fourth annual anthology of best writing on science blogs. And the first book review came out shortly after. The Second Biggest Event of the month? It involves Science! I published a paper and blogged all about it - My latest scientific paper: Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird. Third Best Post of the month? I can't have a month pass by without writing something provocative - Why is 'scientists are bad communicators' trope wrong. There was…

Pulsars, Dark Matter, and the Size of our Galaxy

Alright, startswithabang-ers, Ben, my most avid commenter, saw me online while I was eating breakfast this morning, and pointed me to this new press release. Now, before you get started clicking on everything, the guy who the release is about is Brian Gaensler, who's a really nice guy, lives in Australia, whom I met at the AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting in Austin, TX last month. Bryan's also brilliant. Basically, what he did was he said, "well, we know what the rough density of hot gas in our galaxy is, and we can measure the timing of these pulsars to extraordinary accuracy."…

Climate Change Denialists Scolded by IPCC

But not as severely as they should have been. The IPCC, as you know, comes out with a set of reports every five years. The reports are written by groups of experts. Draft reports are widely accessible to people who register themselves as "experts" and there is no quality control in that process, in order to keep things as transparent as possible. This means that the worst climate change denialists can simply sign up as "experts" and flood the scientists trying to write these reports with irrelevant and stupid comments, thus, I presume, wasting valuable time and effort. But, such is the cost…

NYTimes 36 Hours in. . .The Research Triangle of North Carolina

I enjoy this regular feature in the New York Times where editors put together highlights of specific destinations that can be enjoyed in a day-and-a-half. In this weekend's Travel Section, now online, my adopted home gets the treatment. I've always wondered how locals in each area covered might view the choices. For us, I'd say that J.J. Goode's opening paragraph captures this scientific training and career destination pretty well: TELL North Carolinians you're heading to the Research Triangle, and they'll probably ask "Which school are you visiting?" Yet the close-knit cities of Raleigh,…

NPR cancels News & Notes, Day to Day; cuts 7% of staff

Driving home tonight, I learned that NPR is cutting staff and canceling two shows produced at NPR West: News & Notes with Farai Chideya and Day to Day with Madeleine Brand. (Full memo at HuffPo) Farai put up a blog post late this afternoon entitled, We Love You! (And, Yes, We Are Cancelled). I don't know if I'd have the gut and optimism to be so gracious in the face of having my show terminated effective 20 March 2009. The companion blog post at Day to Day certainly lacked this optimism. But Farai has many, many things going in her favor despite this setback: Chideya, who was born and…

First Post

This was my first ever on-line posting, to sci.math in 1988. The world wide web wasn't invented until 1989 so we didn't have links---I added them in 2004 when I posted this to my blog. Kristian Damm Jensen wrote: Consider a string of matching parentheses, i.e. a string of parentheses where each prefix contains more left-parentheses than right-parentheses. Now, given n left- and right parentheses, in how many ways can you order them and still get a string of matching parentheses? "The Invisible Man" replied: Here's as far as I got. Possibly far enough, perhaps…

Whew, The World: Or, GOOD Blog

Maybe it's the upcoming election and the potential change that it portends. Or perhaps it's the Large Hadron Collider, bogged down with electric failures, that has ceded the science-news space to other subjects. In any case, the last week has seen a slew of exciting, weird, and prescient science news too exciting to ignore, and too varied to all discuss in depth. For one, the impersonal blackness of space welcomed a new nation as the Chinese launched their much-anticipated Shenzhou VII spacecraft, manned with three "taikonauts" trained for the country's first spacewalk. Technologically…

Lectures. Huh. What are they good for?

As I prepare my lectures for this semester (Australian universities start the academic year in late February, early March, apart from those poor sods who have summer semesters) I am moved by Moselio Schaechter's little essay In Defense of the Lecture to ponder what propaedeutic use lectures are. Or, in other words, do they help or hinder learning? Years back, I had a friend who ran the Science and Humanities School at a small regional campus of Monash University who often said to me, with his psychology hat on, that lectures are the worst way to teach. I never found them all that helpful,…

Blogger SAT Challenge update (the question revealed!)

The data-collection phase of the SAT Challenge is complete. By any measure, this was the most successful Casual Friday ever. We maxed out the generous 500 responses I allotted for the challenge, the most ever responses to a Casual Friday study -- despite the fact that participants were warned the task would take up to 21 minutes. The survey required participants to enter at least their name before moving on to answer the essay question. The most popular name was "asdf," but no one claiming the name asdf actually wrote an essay. Clearly plenty of participants only "participated" in order to…

A Chinese Christmas and An American New Year

Well, sorry for the long hiatus in blogging, but it was nice to just have a little break and relax for the holidays. Hope everyone also had a restful and safe holidays (of whatever you celebrate--or not!). I just arrived back in the US yesterday, and after another 14 hour flight I gotta admit I'm pretty jet-lagged today. My Christmas was pretty interesting. In China, the native people swarm to American or western restaurants like Starbucks or KFC, so our initial plan to have a quick dinner at Papa John's pizza was de-railed when we saw the line out the door. I was secretly happy because i…

Graham Priest On What Philosophy Is

From what I know of Graham Priest, he's an interesting philosopher. I read his book on intentionality, Towards Non-Being a few months ago, and enjoyed it, and I read his Introduction to Non-Classical Logic a few years ago, and have recommended it. So when I saw that he had written a paper titled "What is Philosophy?" in a recent issue of the journal Philosophy (sorry, it's not online anywhere, and Philosophy is woefuly slow in updating its website), I thought I'd check it out. It was popular in the 20th century to write books with this title, or some variant thereof (I particularly like this…

Rodents can learn to use tools

Traditionally, the use of tools was believed to be restricted to humans and several other primate species, and, like language, was argued to be a major driving force behind the evolution of the human brain. However, this view is now being challenged. For example, in recent years it has become clear that birds have sophisticated tool-using abilities. Now, a group of researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have demonstrated for the first time that rats degus* can be trained to use simple tools. The new study, by Okanoya et al, is published online today in the open access…

Visa Horror Stories

Last night we hosted another instalment of our monthly "book"club at our place. It's an excuse to meet up for a nice evening of food and drink. Note that the word "book" is in quotes because we alternate each meeting between reading a book and watching a movie. As you can tell from the photos, last night we watched a Russian movie entitled Ballad of a Soldier. Capping a growing trend, members of the Whitehead institute outnumbered the folks from the Harvard Medical Campus for the first time in our bookclub's three year history. Now not only are most of our club members biomedical scientists,…

600,000 Violent Deaths in Iraq

The Washington Post reports on a new Lancet study on excess deaths in Iraq. (Though it buries it on page A12.) A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. ... The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated…

Growing a Brain in a Dish

Source. That doughnut shape decorated with bright green spots, some connected by red pathways, amidst sky blue neighbors could be an artist's creation, but is the result of a creative scientific attempt to grow an active brain in a dish, complete with memories. Really. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh published this stunning study in the journal Lab on a Chip {the full paper can be accessed here.} When I first learned how to grow cells in a lab, the technique of tissue culture, the idea of even growing brain cells was a far-fetched dream, much less brain cells capable of forming…

FDA to regulate genetic tests as medical devices

It looks as though the FDA is swooping down on the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry in a serious way, sending formal letters to five companies informing them that their tests will be regulated as medical devices: WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration is issuing regulatory letters to five genetic test makers, the first sign that the government is cracking down on companies that claim to use DNA samples to predict inheritable diseases. The FDA letters notify each company that their tests are considered medical devices and therefore must be federally approved as safe and…

So...where can I get a copy of “Revolve”?

Jason brings to my attention an eye-opening article on the bible-publishing business: The popularization of the Bible entered a new phase in 2003, when Thomas Nelson created the BibleZine. Wayne Hastings described a meeting in which a young editor, who had conducted numerous focus groups and online surveys, presented the idea. “She brought in a variety of teen-girl magazines and threw them out on the table,” he recalled. “And then she threw a black bonded-leather Bible on the table and said, ‘Which would you rather read if you were sixteen years old?’ ” The result was “Revolve,” a New…

Islamic Creationism in the News

From the NCSE: The phenomenon of Islamic creationism was addressed by two major newspapers, The New York Times (November 3, 2009) and the Boston Globe (October 25, 2009), in the wake of a recent conference at Hampshire College on evolution in the Muslim world. (Webcasts of the conference presentations will be available on-line by November 15, 2009, according to the conference website.) The Globe's article began arrestingly, with the news that the Arabic-language version of Al Jazeera's website -- a major news source in the Middle East -- triumphantly misdescribed the recently described early…

Explaining Science With Jesse Dylan and Richard Bookman

One of the hardest parts of the day job is trying to explain why the commons works for science to people. I find that I have to start by explaining what science actually is, how science works, and how that doesn't take advantage of the possibility of the internet, which means I have to explain the possibility of the internet, and on and on. The smarter the non-scientist, ironically, the harder this can be - because the smart non-scientist frequently has a hard opinion about science and the internet. "Just get it online and everything will be fine!" is a common refrain. Several months ago, I…

Breaking news? ID can't detect design.

The "ID Report" has a post up full of "breaking news": "So much is happening nowadays in the ID controversy..." writes Denyse O'Leary. For instance, she sez "Ann Coulter, who had kind words for the ID guys, has been accused of plagiarism, but Talking Points Memo (no friend of hers) did not find the smoking gun, after a staff day working on it." First of all, this alleged news is from ... July 7, 2006. But that isn't what's so egregious. What's so egregious is that, what they found is roughly what IDolators believe to be the smoking gun that proves the existence of God! Josh Marshall…

MythBusters - I was so wrong about the see saw

I made a gamble and my gamble failed. It really wasn't my fault. In the preview, they showed this huge barrel thing dropping on a see saw. It looked something like this: (I could search for 30 minutes for a picture of this online, or just draw it) At first glance, this looked JUST like that video of the pile driver shooting the skydiver up in the air. You can see how I would make that mistake. To make up for my mistake, I will give a very simple analysis of the see saw myth. The basic idea is that something comes down, hits the see saw and sends the other thing flying up. If I assume…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Sam Dupuis

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Sam Dupuis from the Science of Sorts on My Mind blog (and yes, he is the son of John Dupuis, if the last name sounded familiar to you), to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? Glad to…

Donald Trump Eats His Enemies

Eating your enemies is a time honored method for winning. It is rarely used by American politicians or their supporters. Here is how you eat your enemy. I'll use a generalized example based on several events during the GOP debates. Moderator: Mr. Trump, you've said 'bla bla bla bla'. Alternate Candidate, what do you have to say to Mr. Trump about this? Alternate: Yada yada yada. Donald Trump: [smiling, nodding giving thumbs up] I agree with all that. More typically, a politician in this situation would find a way to separate themselves form Alternate Candidate, playing off the moderator…

GcMAF and an unscrupulous quack, profiled by the BBC

A week ago, I noted that one of the stranger and less credible conspiracy theories promulgated by quacks and their believers was still going strong nearly three months after the first death that triggered it, the death of autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, apparently by suicide. Basically, three months ago, Dr. Bradstreet, who has long been a fixture in the "autism biomed" movement and a frequent speaker at autism quackfests like Autism One, was found dead in a river from a gunshot wound to the chest, an apparent suicide. A recent story about the investigation into Dr. Bradstreet's death included…

ANNOUNCEMENT: Get ready for the NEXT year's Science Blogging Anthology and Conference

2008 Science Blogging Conference Not to be bragging, but the '07 Science Blogging Conference was a great success, and most attendees voiced their approval of Chapel Hill as a permanent venue for the event, so Anton and I are starting early in planning for the next one. There are rumors of a mid-summer equivalent event to be held on the West Coast (Seattle or somewhere there) which would be great - more the merrier - but we will also try to find some way to help a few West-Coasters make their way to North Carolina in winter as well. We pored over all of your feedback forms and read all the…

Christopher Monckton files a questionable affidavit

Via Ed I see that Christopher Monckton, the fake expert in climate change who has been repeatedly told by Parliament to stop calling himself an Member of the House of Lords,, claims he's the inventor of a magical disease cure of HIV, MS, flu and the common cold, and recently a birther, has now submitted an affidavit (read here) pushing his bogus birther stats argument. The only problem? I think one could argue he's now opened his factually-questionable statements to legal scrutiny. From his affidavit: I am over the age of 18 and am a resident of the United Kingdom. The information herein…

Rock Stars of Science, part deux: coming to a GQ near you

The second edition of the Rock Stars of Science is now out online, and in the November 23rd ("Men of the Year") edition of GQ magazine. As Chris Mooney notes, this is a campaign funded by the Geoffery Beene Foundation, working to raise recognition of scientists' work (and scientists, period, since roughly half of the American population can't name a single living scientist). Part of the campaign is to make science noticeable and "cool;" I'll quote from the press release: ROCK S.O.S⢠aims to bridge a serious recognition gap for science, observes journalist Chris Mooney, co-author of the…

Science 2.0 (repost)

I think I have a profile on Friendster - I don't know, I haven't checked since 2003. I have bare-bones profiles on MySpace, LinkedIn and Change.Org and I will get an e-mail if you "friend" me (and will friend you back), but I do not have time to spend on there. I refuse to even look at all the other social networking sites like Twitter - there are only so many hours in the day. But I am interested in possible ways of making science communication more interactive and more Webby 2.0, beyond just blogs. Pedro, Carl and Phillip have recently written thoughtful posts about this topic as well.…

Science 2.0

I think I have a profile on Friendster - I don't know, I haven't checked since 2003. I have bare-bones profiles on MySpace, LinkedIn and Change.Org and I will get an e-mail if you "friend" me (and will friend you back), but I do not have time to spend on there. I refuse to even look at all the other social networking sites like Twitter - there are only so many hours in the day. But I am interested in possible ways of making science communication more interactive and more Webby 2.0, beyond just blogs. Pedro, Carl and Phillip have recently written thoughtful posts about this topic as well.…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jason Hoyt

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 Jason Hoyt from Mendeley 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 philosophically)? I am from the San…