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Hunter Baker Redux

I didn't know that the men's movement had blogs until I received an e-mail this weekend from Vic (aka David) with a link to one. The subject of the blog entry, much to my surprise, was evolution and the ID movement. Is there some connection between the men's movement and the ID movement? Many of the same people who are anti-evolution are also strongly anti-feminist, so I suppose there might be, but it still seems a bit out of place. Unfortunately, the author of this blog has no permanent links to specific posts, so you'll just have to scroll down till you find the title Intellectuals Who…

How blogging has augmented my career

This morning, I once again get to join in with a group of noted journalists, authors, educators, and all-around people-who-do-things-I-can't for the annual advisory board meeting of the M.S. in Medical and Science Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Program founder and current director, Tom Linden, MD, is a Yale- and UCSF-trained physician-journalist with extensive broadcast experience across a series of California television stations. Dr Linden also recognized very early the potential value and pitfalls of…

A moment of navel-gazing about writing a science blog.

All the cool kids were doing this particular round of navel-gazing yesterday and the day before, while I was either dreadfully ill and out of commission or somewhat better and working. (Today was also quite full of work stuff.) However, it's not an unimportant set of questions, and possibly you're curious about the answers, so let's give it a go: 1. Why do you consider this blog a science blog? You know, initially I'm not sure I would have claimed that designation. This started as a blog about what's involved in being a responsible scientist -- so to that extent, the activity of science…

Lynn Margulis blog tour

Lynn Margulis has sent the opening statement for her blog tour below. You should feel free to respond to it, raise other questions of any relevant sort, or say whatever you want in the comments; she'll be along later today to respond to those that interest her. I will be policing the comments, so trolls, please don't bother; serious comments only, and keep in mind that she's only going to respond to a limited subset, so make 'em good. In addition, she'll be available later today in the Pharyngula chat room (channel #pharyngula on irc.zirc.org; if you don't have an IRC client, that link will…

A year of books: 2011

I'm including here a list of all the books I've read in 2011, as well as some commentary on my particular year in reading. I always enjoy when people post these sorts of lists online and actually rather enjoy doing so myself. I've been doing this for a few years now: 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007. If you've posted such a list online somewhere, please post a link in the comments. I'd love to see it! The list of books I'm posting below includes all the books I started in 2011, with the exception of books that I'm currently reading. In other words, it also includes a few books I've abandoned…

Removing the Bricks from the Classroom Walls: Interview with David Warlick

David Warlick is a local blogger and educator. We first met at the Podcastercon a couple of years ago, then at several blogger meetups, and finally last January at the second Science Blogging Conference where David moderated a session on Science Education. 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 background? What is your Real Life job? I've been an educator for more than 30 years, starting as a middle school social studies, science, and math teacher. Every once in a while, I have to remind myself that…

You shoulda been here

It's strange…I was offline all day yesterday. I've been at Skepticon II down here in Springfield, Missouri, and unfortunately, I had no internet access while I was in the meeting, which went on all day Saturday late into the evening, and then, once the talks were over, the socializing began. The party went on at a bar until 1:30am, then moved to a hotel room until sometime around 4am, and then DJ Grothe, Rebecca Watson, and I kept it going until 6am, at which time the lesser two beings conked out, and I was the last one left standing (Rebecca will seethe at that)…when I had to take off to the…

Fact checking The New Yorker's ass!

In High-wire Act: Before agreeing to work on the opera, Albarn and Hewlett made two trips to China with Shi-Zheng. While visiting the city of Yinchuan, in Ninzxia Province, Albarn spent an afternoon lying on the floor of his hotel room recording the sound of horns in the street. There is no "Ninzxia province." Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia. Or NÃngxià or Ning-hsia or Ningsia. Google turns out 5 results for "Ninzxia," one of which is the article in The New Yorker (the others look like purposeful hidden misspellings so that search engines will catch the sites). Not a big deal, but if…

There Once Was A....

Once again, there are three new pieces online on our website, each wonderful in its own way. But Haiku just didn’t seem to fit this batch. So, with apologies to the scientists, here are three limericks on the newest Institute research. As before, follow the links to get to our website. (Incidentally, there is some precedent for limerick writing at the Weizmann Institute. The late Prof. Amikam Aharoni, who also wrote some serious stuff on ferromagnetism, was known for his limericks.)   The Quasar There once was a baby black hole That went for a short little stroll It zigged and it zagged…

Around the Web: CHORUS & Share, Traditional librarian angst and more

Joining a CHORUS, Publishers Offer the OSTP a Proactive, Modern, and Cost-Saving Public Access Solution Publishers Propose Public-Private Partnership to Support Access to Research CHORUS: hoping for re-enclosure CHORUS: It’s actually spelled C-A-B-A-L Scientific Publishers Aim To Get Ahead Of Agency Repositories A CHORUS of boos: publishers offer their “solution” to public access All joined with a single voice to praise CHORUS, thus: “meh.” Chapter, Verse, and CHORUS: A first pass critique SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Proposed by AAU, APLU, ARL (proposal here) ‘Federated System’…

Around the Web: Publisher push-back, Mobile vs. Social, Killing the term paper and more

50 Shades of Grey in Scientific Publication: How Digital Publishing Is Harming Science and the response Dr. Fields at the Huffington Post is wrong on open access and another Great Expectations For Scientific Publication: How Digital Publishing Is Helping Science Open access: why academic publishers still add value and the response Academic publishers need better defenders Mobile vs. Social Let’s Kill the Term Paper I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem Who Says Online Courseware Will Cause the Death of Universities? Amazon’s Diminishing Discounts Why scientists should care about…

Around the Web: The end of academic library circulation, Teens & Twitter and more

The End of Academic Library Circulation? Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries Teens join Twitter to escape parents on Facebook: survey Teens slowly migrating to Twitter Academic E-Books: Innovation and Transition Is Facebook Really a Good Business? Who Does Google Think You Are? A tool tells users what the company infers about your interests and age Social Media and Privacy The (Not So) Inevitable Future of Digital Textbooks Social Anxiety (ups and downs of post-pub online peer review) 5 Foundational Principles for Course Design The nine golden rules of…

Friday Fun: Disappointment for scientists as new super-computer fails to go mad

Newsbiscuit is my favourite humour site and has been for a while. The dry British humour combined with OTT story ideas is irresistible. And speaking of irresistible, I just love this one: Disappointment for scientists as new super-computer fails to go mad Scientists at Mal-Tech University, Wisconsin have expressed their immense disappointment at the failure of their new super-computer Off White to show any signs of megalomania. The technological titan went online six months ago has since performed flawlessly, displaying nary a hint of sentience, lunacy or vague curiosity. Project leader…

Testing, testing, testing…is this thing on?

It looks like Pharyngula is back online…at least I'm seeing new comments appear. Now let's see if I can post anything. How about another pointless poll? In a web page for some TV show I've never seen, ABC is asking, "Did Arlene have the right to refuse to vaccinate two of her sons?" (I presume this refers to some fictitious incident in the program). Alas, the anti-vaxing kooks have seized upon it, and the vote is now at: 70% say "YES - The parent has a right to act on their beliefs." 30% say "NO - Her decision put her sone and hundreds of other people at risk for the measles." Wait, measles?…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

It is getting really close! You can see everyone who's registered for the conference, and I need to do only a couple of more of these posts to introduce everyone. David Shiffman is a graduate student at the College of Charleston in South Carolina studying shark conservation. He blogs on Southern Fried Science and tweets. At the conference, David will do an Ignite talk "The Online Community Environmental Action Network: How it can help you and your blog - WhySharksMatter". Katie Lord is the Associate Publisher of American Scientist, the popular science magazine published by Sigma Xi. Andre…

Gazette's Ken Ward Featured on EXPOSE

The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward, one of the few reporters in the country who writes consistently about worker health and safety issues, is featured on EXPOSE: America's Investigative Reports.  The episode entitled "Sustained Outrage" depicts Ward's approach to covering coal mine disasters like the 2006 Sago tragedy: "When other reporters are zigging, I'm zagging," describing his talent for investigating these fatalities well beyond the headline and long after the cameras are turned off.  The 24-minute episode describes how Ken Ward created a database using information from …

Potential abuse of users' privacy in Serbia

Serbia: New Instructions and Law Regulations on Online Privacy: On July 21, RATEL, Serbia's Republican Agency for Telecommunications, posted a Document of Instructions for Technical Requirements for Subsystems, Devices, Hardware and Installation of Internet Networks on their official web site. This news didn't go unnoticed yesterday in Serbian blogosphere and internet community, as many bloggers expressed various opinions as well as disapproval because of the potential abuse of users' privacy. This document of instructions defines technical requirements for authorized monitoring of some…

Obligatory Reading of the Day: Opening up Scientific Culture

Why are so many scientists reluctant to make full use of Web 2.0 applications, social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and commenting capabilities on some online journals? Michael Nielsen wrote a very thoughtful essay exploring this question which I hope you read carefully and post comments. Michael is really talking about two things - one is pre-publication process, i.e., how to get scientists to find each other and collaborate by using the Web, and the other is the post-publication process, i.e., how to get scientists to make their thoughts and discussions about published works more public.…

Science Blogging at Duke

Duke University, after years of being behind the curve, is now striving mightily to establish itself as a leader in online science communication. As a recent news article shows, the school is activelly encouraging its students to keep blogs and make podcasts. I have already mentioned Sarah Wallace and her blog about genomics research in Chernobyl. Nicholas Experience is a blogging/podcasting group working on environmental science (OK, Sheril is their most famous blogger, but she did it herself, without being prompted by the Nicholas Institute). At the Howard Hughes Precollege Program…

Open Access this week

First, I'd like to thank Darksyde for placing the discussion of Open Access science publishing on the front page of DailyKos. If you are a registered user there, go ahead and add your 2 cents to the conversation. Matt at Behavioral Ecology Blog explains RSS, what it is, how it works and how to use it to get science news. Recommended. Greg Laden is a Linux advocate. While I am not, I understand that, though Open Source and Open Access are not the same thing, they do go hand in hand in a way. Something to think about... Bjorn Brembs provides me with some useful advice and ideas. My…

What's Your Sarah Palin Name?

If I had been unlucky enought to be born to Sarah Palin (who besides being McCain's VP candidate, is clearly < sarcasm alert > a towering intellectual giant with a talent for naming babies < /sarcasm alert >), I would have been named .. McCain Fortress Palin That's when I give this online name generator my pseudonym, GrrlScientist. Here's what I got when I left the "enter your name" space empty; Knife Pile Palin But I like to fake out these name generators, just to see how they work. Most of them will give you a name, regardless of what name you give them, and the generated name…

Iscream, and You?

It's been two of those weeks in a row, and what works best to fix that? Iscream, that's what! You Are Chunky Monkey Ice Cream Truthfully, you're too spazzy to be chunky - you cheeky monkey! What Flavor Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Are You? Don't forget that 25 April is Ben and Jerry's annual "Free Cone Day" which is the anniversary of their opening day. These free cones are a special "thank you" to their customers. So what special iscream did you end up being? I took the liberty of figuring out PZ Myers' special iscream flavor (below the fold) .. it's too perfect, indeed, it's soooo…

What Kind of Pirate Arrr You?

[Note: the previous quiz screwed up the formatting for my entire blog, so I substituted this quiz in its place. Please accept my apologies for messing up this entry. Also keep in mind that my readers are not crazy; they were responding with their results to the original quiz] Arr, as a parrot-lovin' scientist, I thought I should learn more about me own secret pirate identity, and blimey, there I am! How about you, matey? You scored as Captain Jack Sparrow. You are definitely quirky and often mistaken for mad but if anyone is truly paying attention they can see there is method to your…

More Anti-Fun Busybodies at Work

This time it's Chuck Humphrey. He's filed a Federal suit, attempting to act as a "private attorney general" (his words, not mine), against a range of companies who run fantasy football leagues. The companies include CBS, Disney (which owns ESPN), and others. See the actual complaint here. He is trying to end this "online gambling". Now, most people probably don't know who Chuck Humphrey is, but I do. He used to be a regular in the poker newsgroup. He was one of the investors in a poker tournament called the Tournament of Champions, which went belly up before the poker boom hit. He's an…

Who ya gonna read?

Thank to Hank, who spotted this. If you go to Nature's upcoming climate publication, there's an online quiz they're using to decide who gets a freebie: https://www.sunbeltfs.com/forms/nq/subscribe.asp. At one point it asks what climate-related blogs you read. Naturally, only the finsest quality blogs are listed. There are three blogs: _Bright Green Blog _Real Climate _Stoat _Other (please specify) As Hank notes, "Bright Green Blog" -- the Christian Science Monitor's effort -- ended on "February 16, 2010 [a]fter 22 months and some 500 posts". So, despite their ability to drink prodigous…

Weekend Diversion: Things That Look Like Other Things

"Appearances are often deceiving." -Aesop While the Louvin Brothers might tell you that something else is more deceiving than appearances, as they sing Satan Lied To Me,there's an internet site out there I've just discovered that celebrates creativity in deceptive appearances. For your enjoyment, I present Things That Look Like Other Things! Some of my favorites are: floor pillows that look like pancakes, complete with pats of butter, a light fixture that looks like an ice-cream cone, perfect for your fluorescent bulbs, kitchen utensils that look like household and garden tools, a…

Your Nearest Archaeological Site

Here's an idea for bloggers with an archaeological bent. I'm thinking of putting together a one-off carnival about people's nearest archaeological sites. You go to the nearest site you're aware of, snap a picture of it and explain (in as many or few words you like) the site's significance and life-history in a blog entry. Then you send me the link, and when I've got a fair number, I put them together in a link-fest, plug it on Reddit & Co, everybody votes for it and we all get a traffic spike. You don't need any formal qualifications to contribute. Sound like fun? Please leave a comment…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The fiftieth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Yann Klimentidis' Weblog. Archaeology and anthropology, and all about Belqas, a town in the north-western corner of the Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt. Belqas comprises in its jurisdictions the well known resort of Gamasa. Belqas is also known for its natural gas fields in the region of Abu Mady. Belqas remains a mainly agricultural region, although it supports some industrial activities such as sugar, rice and plastic factories. Belqas has a very old secondary school which is known to graduate good highly qualified students. This school…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Almost Diamonds. Archaeology and anthropology, and all dedicated to a future merger of the Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment with the Backyard Bard! The Vaishnava Center for Enlightenment (founded 1994) is an organization based in East Lansing, Michigan. It is a signatory to a wide range of public resolutions and petitions and works towards creating awareness on certain issues, such as promoting harmony and dialogue between Hindus and Muslims. The Backyard Bard is a Christian theatre company based in Melbourne, Australia. It…

Late Night Radio Appearance

I'm going to be on the Harry Browne show tomorrow night between 10 and 11 discussing the Kelo case with guest host Jim Babka. This time, Herb Titus really will be on along with me and I'm told he has an interesting take on this issue so it should be a fascinating discussion. I'm actually going to be in a hotel room out of town tomorrow night when I'm on the show, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity. Harry Browne, for those who don't know, was the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000. So even though he won't be hosting tomorrow night, it means a lot to be on his…

Semi-Formal Friday: Driving Habits

Dave Munger does Friday polls calling them "Casual Fridays," but then, the usual run of posts at Cognitive Daily is a lot more serious than my usual standard. So I'll call this a "semi-formal Friday" poll, sort of the khaki pants and blue blazer of the online research world. I'm also too lazy to set up poll software for this, so I'd like to ask you to leave your answers to the following questions in comments: 1) When driving between two places you regularly visit, do you: a) Always take main roads (highways or major surface streets), even if there is traffic. b) Usually take main roads, but…

links for 2007-12-30

Crooked Timber » » Science, and anti-science, in action The saga of the peppered moth as an example of evolution in action. (tags: biology experiment politics science) Some Road Songs The official government list of songs that mention highways. (tags: music travel US silly society culture) Matthew Yglesias (December 28, 2007) - Predicting CW (Culture) Why political betting markets aren't interesting or useful. (tags: US politics economics) Reason Magazine - The Amateurs' Hour "Whatever Keen (or I) may believe the future holds, it's not society's job to ensure that journalism…

Who's the Oldest Science Blogger?

Derek Lowe's doing a lunch thing at the ACS meeting, and in passing mentions the age of his blog: As the longest-standing chemistry blogger (perhaps the longest standing science blogger, for all I know), I'm glad to have a chance to speak. I was just telling a reader by e-mail that when I started this site in 2002, that I wasn't sure how much I'd find to write about. But (for better or worse) the material just keeps on coming. . . Derek's blog pre-dates this one by a few months-- I specifically cite him in the very first Uncertain Principles post, so he's got me beat. I wonder, though, if…

Uncertain Dots, Episode 9

In which Rhett and I chat about the hot new discovery of primordial gravitational waves (maybe) very briefly before segueing into talking about LIGO, and Cosmos, and why "theory" is a terrible word, and the memorization of constants, and standardized tests, and time-lapse videos. You know, as one does. Miscellaneous items: -- I'm a little pixellated, as if I'm concealing my identity. I forgot to shut Kate's computer down, so it may have been doing online backups that chewed up bandwidth. -- The von Neumann quote I butcher at one point is "The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even…

links for 2008-04-08

Administrating « Confused at a higher level "Why did I say yes to the Dean when he asked whether I would take on this position? He made the request/offer to me a week after calling me to let me know I had tenure -- he claimed that this gave me a fair shot at saying no." (tags: academia society culture science physics math education) College Isn't Worth a Million Dollars :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, and Views and Jobs Squabbling over how much more a college graduate earns than a high-school graduate. This completely ignores quality-of-life issues. (tags:…

Social wasps reap the benefits of individualism

A sampling of face patterns in Polistes fuscatus paper wasps Polistes fuscatus paper wasps sport a bewildering array of facial markings.  Why is this? A new paper by Michael Sheehan and Elizabeth Tibbetts in the journal Evolution suggests natural selection may favor rare patterns, leading to a proliferation of diversity.  Sheehan & Tibbetts performed an elegant experiment on 18 groups of 4 foundress queens, painting three wasps with one pattern and the remaining one with a different pattern.  Regardless of the details of the actual face markings, the rare pattern consistently…

Iridium!

I have a project for you, since I know practical physics is pretty popular around here. This one involves orbital dynamics, optics, and astronomy. The required experimental apparatus is just your eyes, a clock, and an internet connection. There are these satellites orbiting overhead by the name of the Iridium constellation, working diligently to provide various communications services to its customers. We're not so interested in that. What we are interested in is the fact that these satellites have highly reflective mirror-like antennas which reflect sunlight down to the earth. With a…

Happenings in the Quantum World: December 22, 2007

Superexchange in optical lattices, factoring 15 in a linear optics quantum computer, quantum plagarism peaceful resolution, silicon and gallium arsinide quantum computers, and quantum mumbo jumbo in support of the ideas popularly known as God. Superexchange demonstrated in an optical lattice by Immanuel Bloch's group in Germany. Quantum leaps: Brisbane Times and UQ News Online report on Andrew White factoring 15 with a linear optics quantum computer. The preprint for this paper is arXiv:0705.1398. I didn't check, but I bet they got 15 equals 3 times 5. A resolution to the quantum…

Freakish Horseshoe Bat Photographed for the First Time

A Maclaud's horseshoe bat (being held in a glove) poses for the ladies... For the first time, scientists photographed a Maclaud's horseshoe bat in the forests of Guinea in West Africa. These bats had not been seen in the wild in over 40 years. The featured photo was snapped by German biologist Natalie Webber, who found 16 horseshoe bats living in a remote cave complex. "Our rediscovery is good news insofar as the species is still there and as we have shown that the distribution range appears to be somewhat larger than previously known," said Jakob Fahr, a German ecologist who headed up the…

Your Guide to Alien Life

I'll admit, I was a bit surprised when Popular Mechanics got in touch with me a while back about writing a story about aliens. I had always associated the magazine with people who knew how to take their car apart down to the last bolt and put it back together again. (Me, I gush with pride if I can change a wiper blade.) But they've actually been making a big push into science reporting, and they wanted me to look into what scientists are learning about life on other planets. I ended up focusing specifically on how life on Earth (and in labs) can guide the search for aliens. That's an angle I'…

Slouching Towards Total Video Immersion

NOTE: I'VE SET UP A FLASH VERSION OF THIS TALK HERE. DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME VERSION I DESCRIBED IN THIS POST. Recently I gave the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, in which I talked about new developments in evolutionary biology. They sent me a DVD of the talk, and I got a lunatic notion in my head that I would figure out how to get all Web Two-Point-O-Ee and post the lecture online. They told me to go ahead as long as I put a watermark on. Ever eager to waste time, I slowly figured out how to do that on QuickTime. Then I uploaded it to blip.tv,…

Gearing up for scio10: Online Reference Managers

We're just about set for a fabulous session on citation/bibliographic/reference managers at the upcoming Science Online conference. The session wiki page is here, so you can hop over there an add questions or suggestions if you'd like. John Dupuis and I are moderating and we'll have the following folks there talk about some of the most popular options: Kevin Emamy (CiteULike) Jason Hoyt (Mendeley) Trevor Owens (Zotero) Michael Habib (2Collab) John has a lot of experience with EndNote and we both have a lot of experience with RefWorks. The main point, though, is to have a great conversation…

Agoraphobia Service Monkey Lawsuit Rejected; Seizure Alert Ferret Kicked Out of Mall

Today was a big day for non-canine service animal news, which I keep tabs on here as part of ongoing follow up to my New York Times Magazine article, Creature Comforts, about the use of non-canine service animals (which include ducks, monkeys, horses, goats, and at least one kangaroo).  The biggest news is that a court in Missouri has rejected the discrimination case filed by Debby Rose, who I featured in my story. She was forbidden to bring her Macaque monkey Richard into local businesses, despite the fact that she says he's a service monkey trained to help with her agoraphobia (Richard…

Road to Nirvana

Driving in India is a unique and beguiling experience. There are many lessons to learn, and in the end of it all, you will attain Nirvana, the quintessential Indian state of non-being. Roads in and around Bangalore are like earth's oceans during the Cambrian period; an explosion of unpredictable shapes and forms slither around; cars of various sizes and personalities, bullock carts, plastic eating cows, buffaloes that shamelessly shit in the middle of the road, cyclists carrying shipping containers, mopeds on a death run, and colorful pedestrians dodging predatorial vehicles. Bangalore…

Arkansans…are you aware of the shame brought on your state?

These are the words of Clint McCance, a school board member in the Midland school district of Arkansas. He was a little bit annoyed that people in his school were wearing purple in remembrance of students who had been bullied into suicide. Being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then don't tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die.…

Are you being watched?

Since I am divesting myself of the occasional political whine, here's another. The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have assessed over 70 countries for their protection of privacy, both online and generally. The worst nations are Russia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. Yes, that's right, the least private nations include the two supposedly most democratic nations. They have a map: While I was less surprised to find France as a poor performer, I was unpleasantly surprised to find my own country as rating poorly and…

Developmental Psychology blogs?

A reader asks: I've been reading Cog Daily for about 4 months now and have always found that I am particularly fascinated with entries dealing with developmental psychology, such as the latest one regarding the logarithmic-like representation of numbers in young children. I was curious as to whether you knew of any [credible] blogs or highly active websites that are dedicated to the field of Dev Psych (don't worry, I will still read Cog Daily!). I'm currently finishing up my BA in Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and plan to go the route of developmental clinical psychology, come grad-school. I…

They Don't Call Em The 'Ivory Towers' For Nothing

Well, it seems Facebook just wasn't cool enough for the aspiring Ph.D... Heard of Epernicus? According to the tagline, it's 'Where Science Meets.' Only you have to be invited. In fact, you must 'use the name under which you publish, if applicable', so the webhosts can review your request and determine whether you're worthy of an invitation. The idea is simple. A social networking site to connect with others in your field and share information on research, honors, pedigree, and publications. There's even a blog. I can see this being useful. Of course, profile photos, chat, and email…

Casual Fridays: Are Mac owners like Prius owners?

A few days ago I noticed a comment on an online forum: "Prius owners are just like Mac owners." As a Mac owner and Prius owner, I felt that this comment needlessly stereotyped me. Were they implying that there was something wrong with me? That I was superficial? That I thought I was better than other people? On the other hand, as a Mac owner and a Prius owner, wasn't I confirming the stereotype? Perhaps there is something to this stereotype, and Casual Friday may be just the time to find out. I've created a brief survey that asks you a few questions about your car, your computer, and your…

links for 2008-01-08

Matt Thurling on the concept of science.TV « Pimm - Partial immortalization "Science" seems to mean very things to scientists and non-scientists, which complicates the project of communicating about science. (tags: science-communication) Recognition and Alleviation of Distress in Laboratory Animals Available to pre-order, or to read for free online. Looks like good empirical research to guide humane use of animals in research. (tags: research-with-animals) Periodic Tabloid » The Great Debate? Chemical Heritage Foundation president Tom Tritton posts his science policy questions to the…