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Should We Start Killing Orcas?

The Times Online caught my attention today with this grizzly headline: "Killer whales face cull after finding taste for rare otters" The article talks about a possible culling of Orcas because a few of them have taken to eating endangered sea lions and sea otters. While there's no information about exactly how close biologists or wildlife leaders might be to agreeing to such a cull, it does say that the idea is being 'discussed.' Well, if there's a debate, here's my side of it. Of course sea lions and sea otters are important. Steller's sea lions have been dying out in the Aleutian Islands…

Where do I find the time to blog?

Well, you know my answer when you see that I am more than a week late with this post on the 15 June question. How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically? Priorities shuffle in relation to time demands, so the last two weeks of grant review have taken priority over substantive blogging, including answering the last two AASB questions. However, this question really gets to the reason that one blogs, given that there are so many interests competing for the time of all…

Women in IT Resource; Technologies That Influence Us CFP

Some interesting things came across my listservs this week; one from WEPAN, another from the WMST-L listserv: a new book on recruiting women in IT, and a very interesting call for papers. Details after the jump. Reconfiguring the Firewall A comprehensive volume authored by three Virginia Tech professors, (published by AK Peters, Ltd.), "Reconfiguring the Firewall" addresses the global challenge of recruiting girls and women into majors and careers in information technology. Written and researched by Carol J. Burger, Elizabeth G. Creamer, and Peggy S. Meszaros, all faculty members in the…

Coralline Algae and Global Warming

Over the last couple of decades, a great deal of research has been done on the effect of global warming on coral reefs. The vast majority of that research has focused on the currently observed and potential future effects of climate change on reef-building corals. Coral, however, are not the only organisms that contribute to building a reef. A group of organisms known as the "coralline algae" also secrete calcium carbonate, and contribute to building up reefs. In a paper available online in advance of publication at Nature Geoscience, a group of researchers report on the results of an…

Casual Fridays: Why most people didn't see this illusion

Just about two weeks ago, I posted this visual illusion (if you haven't seen it yet, make sure to watch it with the sound turned ON): How many flashes do you see? In fact the dot only flashes once, but according to the study I report on in the post, the two beeps are supposed to throw you off. If you are like Shams et al's participants, you would most likely see two flashes, not one. In fact, just 23 percent of CogDaily readers reported seeing two flashes. Much speculation ensued in the comments, but I had a couple ideas of my own, so last Friday I developed a quick study to test two…

Tid Bits

First off, I will be hosting the next Postdoc carnival (What's up postdoc?) here on July 23rd. Email me your favorite blog entry on postdoc life. Next up is a link that I missed in my science publishing linkfest: Revere mouthing off about open-access. One point that he makes has to do with PubMed: It is currently NIH policy -- policy fought bitterly and with some success by lobbyists for big scientific publishers -- that NIH funded research be deposited in the publicly accessible online repository, PubMed Central, within 12 months of publication or earlier. Few scientists do it, and I'd guess…

Giant Blue Earthworms and Friends

Via a circuitous route, prompted by a friend of Zooillogix, Tweet Gainsborough-waring, I found myself looking at the picture below. This otherworldly Australian earthworm, Terriswalkeris terraereginae, not only looks likes delicious candy, but the mucin it releases is luminescent, and it grows up to 2 meters long. I knew Zooillogix readers would want to know more about this fascinating critter but could find almost no information online. Luckily, Dr. Geoff Dyne, Assistant Director, Queensland Section, Australian Government Natural Research Management Team (and more importantly,…

Chem 2.0

The June 25th issue of Chemical & Engineering News has two pieces that talk about ways people are using features of the "new internet" (or Web 2.0) to disseminate and explore chemistry online. Celia Henry Arnaud's article "A New Science Channel" looks at efforts scientists and scientific organizations have made to harness YouTube as a tool of outreach. Organizations like the Museum of Science, Boston and AAAS have taken videos created for museum kiosks and meetings and posted them on YouTube in the hopes that they "go viral" and reach a broader audience. (As AAAS discovered, this can be…

Credit where credit is due (a thought experiment).

Because not every ethical matter involves serious misconduct, or even conscious efforts to grab someone else's credit, I thought I'd describe an utterly mundane scenario and canvass your reactions. Let's say you've worked very hard on a project. You've been part of the organizing from the outset. You've done a lot of thinking and writing and rewriting. You've worked hard to build consensus. You've done loads of personal outreach to try to build a community around the project (including "cold-emailing" people you don't know personally). You've been the dependable facilitator. You've even…

R.I.P. Don Lemmon

Almost two months ago, I posted a rather light-hearted skeptical takedown of a guy by the name of Don Lemmon, who billed himself on his website as The #1 Nutritionist Online. The main gimmicks of the post were twofold. First, I poked fun at his selling of dessicated animal glands, in which he harkened back to a 16th century alchemist and physician named Paracelsus to justify what appeared to me to be a variant of the quackery known as live cell therapy. The second part of my schtick was to feign envy at the success that he appeared to be having over it all, marrying a retired porn star,…

Should Creativity Be Open Access?

Another kind comment from a student reader on one of the older biomes posts: Thanks for posting this! It really helped me get some info for MY "Tropical Dry Forest Biome" project for biology class. I couldn't find any info at the library or on any other sites! So I thank goodness this was here.... You're welcome Haley! Keep up the blogging (and the blogging). So why haven't I written any basics posts in a while? Well, to be honest, much of my time and energy in the past few months has been focused on getting a job in my field. I've recently had to pick up a few shifts doing catering locally…

The worst part is that I'll never get them back

Saturday night, after returning from dinner with friends, I opened the door to my apartment and let my wife in. As I fumbled with the string of icicle lights that run around the room to provide a little illumination, she said "I'll turn on the computer.... the computer isn't here!" Before I could even say "What do you mean the computer isn't here?" I noticed that the back door was slightly open, the lamp was on the floor, and my laptop was gone too. We had been robbed. As the shock set in, I noticed that the cats did not come out to say "hello" as they normally did whenever I walked in the…

Now we've got some big numbers to throw around, too

Only ours are methodologically valid. It's a common creationist tactic to fling around big numbers to 'disprove' evolution: for instance, I've had this mysterious Borel's Law (that anything with odds worse than 1 in 1050 can never happen) thrown in my face many times, followed by the declaration that the odds of the simplest organism forming by chance are 1 in 10340,000,000. It's complete nonsense, of course — their calculations all ignore the reality of the actual events, assuming that everything must form spontaneously and all at once, which is exactly the opposite of how probability plays…

I lose. Or win. It depends. 3:55:53, anyway.

Another in my marathon posts, but! To a new city, Rotterdam. Which is indeed a fairly new city, having been bombed to buggery (by us, mostly, I presume [update: no, I'm wrong, it was the Krauts]) during WW II. Anyway, TL:DR: 3:55:53. Which is one second slower than Amsterdam 2012. Here's my list, in order: * Brighton 2011: 4:20:32. * Amsterdam 2014: 3:58.02. * Amsterdam 2011: 3:57:25. * Rotterdam, 2015: 3:55:53. * Amsterdam 2012: 3:55:52. * Brighton 2012: 3:54:28. * Brighton 2013: 3:46:34. * Brighton 2014: 3:43:42. * Amsterdam 2013: 3:43:06. So if I'd pushed just a tiny fraction harder it…

Embodied Language and Expertise

One of the more sophisticated theories in embodied cognition is Lawrence Barsalou's perceptual symbol systems theory. It is, in essence, an updated version of the "ideas as images" position of the British empiricists, and the mental imagery theories of the seventies1. The basics of the theory are really quite simple. Here's a short description from the abstract of the paper linked above: During perceptual experience, association areas in the brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor…

Why teaching evolution is dangerous

It is so nice teaching biology to adults when there are no (obvious) Creationists in the classroom. It does not always happen that way - I have had a couple of cases in the past - but this time it was really nice as I could freely cover all topics deeply within an evolutionary framework (not always seen in my public notes, though, as I try to gauge the class first and then decide how overtly to talk ebout everything in evolutionary terms). It is always a conundrum. If there is a potential resentment of my lectures, I have to thread carefully. I have to remember that I am not trying to…

Canadian Library Association National Forum: Readings for Digital Strategy and the Government of Canada

I'll be attending upcoming Canadian Library Association National Forum, a kind of sunset conference as CLA reimagines and recreates itself. The idea is to take the pulse of Canadian librarians on the important issues in the library-related landscape. I'll be curating the session on Canada's National Digital Strategy, including presentations by me and two others, Emily Landriault and Bobby Glushko. The details are below.   Digital Strategy and the Government of Canada Presentation speakers Emily Landriault: Open Government and Open Data Bobby Glushko: Cyberbullying and Doxing John Dupuis:…

Openness is Essential Freedom: Interview with Vedran Vucic

Vedran Vucic (voo-tcheech) is a Linux afficionado in Serbia. He and his organization have gone all around Serbia, wired up the schools, taught the teachers and students how to use Linux, taught the teachers and students how to use various online educational resources ranging from blogs to ATutor, etc. Vedran also gives technical support to about 30 Serbian bloggers whose work he also aggregates. He is now putting a lot of energy into persuading scientists, especially the young, not-yet-entrenched ones, to go online and to promote Open Access. It is an uphill battle, but he is persistent!…

Finally, NCCAM actually funds some worthwhile research!

I thought I might start developing chest pain when I read it, but to my shock NCCAM has actually funded some worthwhile research! Even more amazingly, NCCAM described it in a press release! Too bad it supports the contention that acupuncture is nothing more than placebo and that the attention given by the practitioner is what really accounts for much of the perceived therapeutic effect that patients attribute to it. I'll explain. The press release to which I refer leads to a rather interesting study that examines the components of the placebo effect. The article, published online yesterday in…

Stones, glass houses, etc.

John Bohannon of Science magazine has developed a fake science paper generator. He wrote a little, simple program, pushes a button, and gets hundreds of phony papers, each unique with different authors and different molecules and different cancers, in a format that's painfully familiar to anyone who has read any cancer journals recently. The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable. Submitting identical papers to hundreds of journals would be asking for trouble.…

Poor old Watts

Via dubious routes I ended up at the bizarre http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/william-connolley-and-wikipedia-turborevisionism/. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the original version. In what is presumably deliberate irony, he has coined the term "Turborevisionism" to describe his own updating. And it possesses the always-amusing feature of the ignorant trying to talk about wiki: that people complain about the unreliablity of wiki when they are clearly clueless about how it works. So: assuming he hasn't re-revised it (I've kept a copy in the "extended" bit below, so refer to that if you…

Top Science Books: 2016

Here is my selection of the top science books from 2016, excluding those mainly for kids. Also, I don't include climate change related books here either. (These will both be covered in separate posts.) The number of books on this list is not large, and I think this was not the most prolific year ever for top science books. But, the ones on the list are great! For brevity, I'm mostly using the publisher's info below. Where I've reviewed the book, there is a link to that review. Click through to the reviews if you want to read my commentary, but in most cases, you can judge these books by…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Anne Frances Johnson

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 Anne Frances Johnson to answer a few questions. Anne is a freelancer and grad student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where…

Science Roundup: Satellites and Submarines Collide + a World Powered by Hamsters

Submarines collide: In a freak accident, two submarines carrying nuclear missiles, one French and the other British, collided while submerged on operational patrols in the Atlantic early this month, the British and French defense ministries said Monday. Both vessels returned damaged but otherwise safe to their home ports, with the 250 crew members aboard uninjured and with "no compromise to nuclear safety," the defense ministries said in terse statements that appeared to have been agreed upon by the nations. The reference appeared to cover the nuclear reactors that power the submarines and…

Antivaxers are petitioning the White House and Antivaxer-in-Chief President Donald Trump to listen to their demands.

I've never been a huge fan of the We The People (WTP) website, which was set up during the Obama administration to allow people to petition the White House and, if they receive a sufficient number of signatures on their petition, receive an official response from the White House. While I applauded the sentiment of wanting to provide people an online means of petitioning the administration and like that a petition receiving 100,000 signatures in 30 days would receive a response, I was disappointed by the results. For one thing, although 321 of the 323 petitions that reached the threshold have…

Chateau D'Yquem: Because It's There by Thomas Levenson

While I get to finishing my post on the much-ballyhooed ScienceOnline'09 winetasting, I'd like to share with readers a fantastic wine essay by MIT Professor of Science Writing and multiply-decorated journalist, Thomas Levenson. Tom also writes The Inverse Square Blog where each post includes at least one illustration as beautiful as his writing. Tom is also author of the upcoming book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist, currently scheduled for release on 4 June 2009. I had the lovely pleasure of sitting between Tom and Rebecca Skloot…

‘Atheism is the new fundamentalism’ by Debate - Intelligence Squared

A live debate is coming up at 6:45 GMT…I think that means in about half an hour. The topic is one that irritates me greatly: "Atheism is the New Fundamentalism". Arguing for the motion is Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, and Charles Moore. former editor of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. I know nothing about either of them. Against the motion, the godless have once again fielded their A team: Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. I forecast another rout in favor of the heathenish barbarians with prestigious academic appointments. It will be streamed live at the intelligence2 site…

War, rape and group selection

Fortune favours the brave; but the brave are motivated by favours of another kind: If courage makes it significantly more likely that small bands of tribes-men will win military confrontations with their neighbours, its overall advantages can easily outweigh its risks, a mathematical model has shown. Some men who carry genetic variants that promote bravery might perish because of them, but the ones who survive may win more battles through their greater daring. The resulting opportunities for rape and pillage can create a net evolutionary benefit. The study is published in The Proceedings of…

Don't Forget BirdNote This Holiday Season

tags: BirdNote, BirdNote calendar Image: BirdNote calendar. In these difficult economic times, it is unusual to get something for nothing. However, there is one thing that you can get for free: BirdNote. BirdNote is a 2-minute radio program that combines the rich sounds of birds into stories that illustrate the intriguing and sometimes truly amazing ways of birds. BirdNote premiered in February 2005 and runs seven days per week on a roughly a half dozen National Public Radio stations. For years, I have advertised BirdNote in Birds in the News because I strongly believe in their mission,…

Ideas for development: Playlists on LoveFilm / Netflix [SciencePunk]

So here's a modest proposal for film rental / streaming companies like LoveFilm and Netflix: why don't you have shareable playlists like Spotify? You see, I was reading Time Out's 100 Best Horror Films and I thought, there must be loads of these lists out there, on all kinds of criteria, for all kinds of audiences. Why isn't there a button at the end labelled "ADD THESE TO MY LOVEFILM"? There are buttons to tweet it, Like it, add it to Reddit, Dig, and a dozen other aggregation sites, but none that actually serves the purpose of the list: getting these films in front of my eyes! I don't…

Diane Beers to appear on NPR's Diane Rehm show about Animal Rights on Monday

Yesterday, I heard the announcement on NPR for Diane Rehm's Monday show and recoiled in horror as it appeared she used the terms "animal welfare" and "animal rights" interchangeably. Unfortunately, these two terms apply to philosophical opposites. It is like interchangeably using the terms "WWII history" and "Holocaust denial", or "climate science" and "global warming denial", or "evolutionary biology" and "evolution denial" (aka Creationism in its various stripes including Intelligent Design Creationism). What is common to all these pairs of terms is that one is legitimate line of work…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Sheril Kirshenbaum is a good friend, a marine biologist and a former SciBling. She blogs at The Intersection, has co-authored "Unscientific America" and written the forthcoming "The Science of Kissing". After proclaiming she'd never do it, she succumbed to Twitter as well. At the conference, Sheril will co-moderate the session "Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging)…

Tweetlinks, 10-24-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): Open Source Science Commons ScienceOnline2010 Hotel information is now up. No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund RT @eroston "Dangerous article for not saying--whatever US thinks--temps are rising and industry is responsible": Survey Says: Americans Not Worried About Global Warming Journalists sink in The Atlantic article…

Open Notebook Science

I know, I know, many people are still skeptical, but opening one's lab notebooks is a part and parcel of the new world of Open Science. There is an opinion piece about it in Nature (also available on Nature's Nautilus blog). Attila Csordas added some very important points today, reminding everyone of the global nature of scientific collaboration. The few pioneers who have opened their notebooks do it in different ways. Jean-Claude Bradley's group uses both a blog and a wiki. Rosie Redfield's group has one central blog plus each student's own blog (see them here, here, here and here).…

Open Access Policy for York University Librarians and Archivists

On October 1, 2009 librarians and archivists at York University Libraries voted unanimously to adopt the following policy: York University Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists Librarians and archivists at York University recognize the importance of open access to content creators and researchers in fostering new ideas, creating knowledge and ensuring that it is available as widely as possible. In keeping with our long-standing support of the Open Access movement, York librarians and archivists move to adopt a policy which would ensure our research is disseminated as widely as…

Friday Blog Roundup

This week, bloggers look at whoâs making decisions about coal: At Gristmill (home of David âcoal is the enemy of the human raceâ Roberts), Ted Nace explains how a bureaucratâs change of one number in a spreadsheet can lead to 132 fewer new coal plants being built, but Tom Philpott warns that Appalachian coal will be mined anyway â and shipped to China. Keith Johnson at Environmental Capital explains how Kansas has become Big Coalâs new battlefield, and the role of state courts and officials in determining who wins. At Appalachian Voices, jdub reacts to Hillary Clintonâs remarks about…

Saturday roundup

More fascinating topics I didn't get around to: Orac disses a report linking Ipods to autism. Really. He also has the low-down on snake oil salesman Kevin Trudeau's unbelievable new book. You think having a few people on a blog deny the germ theory is bad; it's even worse when an author who'll sell millions of books does so. Carl Zimmer has an excellent post discussing circuits and evolution, and even touching on network theory. Joseph wonders about the gender gap in academic medicine. The Bad Astronomer asks, is the government trying to kill us? Dr. Charles gives the details on a…

ScienceOnline09 - Alternative Careers

If you look at the Program carefully, you will see there are three sessions specifically addressing the question of alternative careers at the ScienceOnline09. Here they are: How to become a (paid) science journalist: advice for bloggers - This session is moderated by Rebecca Skloot and Tom Levenson: Bloggers are bloggers because they like to write. But writing a blog is not the same as writing for a newspaper or magazine (or radio or TV). Most science bloggers have a background in science, not journalism. So, how does one become a science journalist? We'll ask some journalists for advice.…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Social Interactions Can Alter Gene Expression In Brain, And Vice Versa: Our DNA determines a lot about who we are and how we play with others, but recent studies of social animals (birds and bees, among others) show that the interaction between genes and behavior is more of a two-way street than most of us realize. Playing A Game Shows How Personalities Evolved: Why do some of us always do the right thing while others only seem to be out for themselves? Research by the universities of Exeter and Bristol offers a new explanation as to why such a wide range of personality traits has evolved in…

Weblog Awards 2007

Yes, Weblog Awards are up again. Not everyone's favourite (as opposed to the Koufaxes), as they are easily freeped and one can find candidates who should not be there, i.e., blogs that have not written anything factual in years, e.g., right-wingers in political categories, pseudoscientists in science categories, medical quacks in medical categories, etc. So, the voting at Weblog Awards (which you can do daily) is more voting against than for in many categories. But there are certainly worthy finalists in many categories so it's worth your time to try to remember to vote. Here are my…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (SciBlings in North Carolina)

There are 88 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 96 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Abel PharmBoy is a good friend of mine and a great blogger on Terra Sigillata. He "writes on natural product drugs and dietary…

KITP: colourful extragalactic globulars

and we continue our lesson on extragalactic globulars, with a trifectaduet of talks and an emphasis on colour: red or blue, it is like South Central here sometimes remember, red is metal rich or old blue is metal poor or young... except the reds are actually probably younger than the blues so it is metal dominated, except for really young clusters Steve first then Jay PS: our summary 20 minute talks have an interesting habit of actually lasting 60-90 minutes. I blame that rude chap in the front row who keeps interrupting the speakers with stoopid questions... as usual the multimedia video…

Cobb County does something right

Cobb County, Georgia is infamous for its efforts a few years ago to slap a warning sticker on biology textbooks, which might have given the impression that it's full of southern yahoos. However, intelligent people and godless people are everywhere, including Cobb County, and they now have another claim to fame: a local atheist, Edward Buckner, used the opening invocation of a county board meeting to deliver a godless homily. It's not bad; you can hear it online. He spoke for all the people who do not attend church, and who do not want their government interfering in religion, and decried the…

Fatal work injury that killed Gerald Thompson was preventable, MN-OSHA cites DSM Excavating

Gerald Lyle Thompson’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Minnesota OSHA (MN-OSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, DSM Excavating. The 51 year-old was working in June 2015 at a construction site for Ryland Homes in Lakeville, Minnesota. The initial press reports indicated that Thompson and his brother were installing drain tile inside a 6 to 8 foot deep trench. Thompson was trapped at the bottom of the trench when the soil collapsed onto him. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. Inspectors with MN-OSHA conducted an…

Not an “accident”: Timothy Winding, 50, suffers fatal work-related injury in Claycomo, MO

Timothy Todd Winding, 50, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, December 30 while working at Ford Motor Company’s Kansas City assembly plant located in Claycomo, MO. Fox4KC reports: He was part of a crew of contractors who were working to retool the plant for a new line of Ford trucks. While working on a body marriage machine, "a safety rod broke on the decker and crushed the worker.” “Several of the workers FOX 4 spoke to Tuesday say that this is not the first time that machine has broken, and say they were worried something like this was going to happen." KCTV5 says Winding's…

Climate Change Items

A few climate change related items I know you will be interested in, especially since you will want to be very current for the big event Tuesday. There is now a new profession: Extreme Weather Architect. (Hat tip: Paul Douglas) You may hear again and again that climate change is over, that warming has stopped. This is wrong in many many ways, and I've written about that here. Dana Nuccitelli has this important piece as well: We haven't hit the global warming pause button. Also, see this brand new item for a detailed discussion of how surface warming varies across time. You've heard of the…

Do wireless routers degrade over time, and if so, why?

I really dislike the commentary on Slashdot. It is worse than reddit in a way. Well, not really, but it is very annoying that an interesting question can be raised, and then seven thousand geekoids feel that it is very important for the world to read their own stupid little joke about the question. If someone provides actual information or rephrases the question usefully or anything like that, then it is lost in the sea of irrelevant yammering that is Slashdot. So, yesterday or so, acer123 posted this: "Lately I have replaced several home wireless routers because the signal strength has…

Newsflash: people still stupid about STDs

Okay, so it's just an MSNBC survey (aided by none other than Dr. Ruth), but geez, when will people ever wise up about sex? MSNBC.com and Zogby International asked online readers to share some intimate details about their personal lives, and more than 56,000 adult men and women -- one of the largest responses ever to a sex survey in the United States -- revealed that many are playing a pretty risky game. Just 39 percent of people who took the survey always ask whether a new partner is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or other STDs. Nearly one-third said they never check on a…

Kickass Archaeological Sites Register On-Line

With its extremely late urbanisation, Sweden doesn't have much of an archaeological record compared to Italy or China or Peru. But we keep really good track of the stuff we have: active organised surveying for ancient monuments has been going on for over 70 years, aided by the fact that Sweden has no trespassing laws and affords land owners no ownership to archaeological remains. Sweden's National Heritage Board has been placing its sites and monuments register on-line gradually over a period of years. At first, it was only accessible to professionals, offering a crappy map and working only…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: A Review Is In

I'm trying not to be Neurotic Author Guy and obsessively check online reviews of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog every fifteen minutes. I've actually been pretty successful at it, so successful that I didn't notice the first posted review at Amazon until my parents mentioned it to me. It's a really good one, though: I'm at the point know where I could answer some of the most basic questions that his dog has, but I remember a time when I couldn't and when the questions the dog asks would've been exactly the questions that I would have had. Pretty much every time a statement by the author…