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180 Open Access journals bought by big publisher

Early yesterday morning I received an email from my publisher that the journal for which I am co-editor in chief has been sold. Our journal is one of 180 published by BioMedCentral (BMC), the largest open access scientific publisher. The business model of BMC and other open access publishers is to charge the author, not the reader. BMC journals are online only (there are one or two exceptions) and hence have no page limitations. Charges are for a single article, whatever the length. Color photos, movies and supplementary files are all included in the charge (it is not a page charge,…

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights

As you know, the Program is fully set now. There is a lot of stuff there! So, to help you out, I will post an occasional sample of sessions, organized by time - when they will occur during the conference. So today, I'll start at the beginning, highlighting session that will happen on Saturday, January 16th, at 9:00-10:05am. Letters A-E denote rooms. You will notice that each session has its own page where you are welcome to post questions and commentary. A. From Blog to Book: Using Blogs and Social Networks to Develop Your Professional Writing - Tom Levenson, Brian Switek and Rebecca…

Unfettered access to scientific work via open access publication

"Open Access" is apparently an Idea whose Time has Come: All papers by Harvard scholars accepted for publication as of today will be freely available to the public. The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences unanimously passed a motion last night (February 12) that requires all arts and sciences faculty articles to be made publicly available. Harvard is the first US university to mandate open access to its faculty publications, Peter Suber, open access advocate, wrote on his blog yesterday. The mandate "should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Earth's First Rainforest Unearthed: A spectacular fossilised forest has transformed our understanding of the ecology of the Earth's first rainforests. It is 300 million years old. Repressing Genes: Researchers report that most genes are repressed through a mechanism by which methyl molecules are attached to DNA. The cells of a given tissue can express only certain genes while others are silenced. This process, called gene repression, allows cells to perform specialized tasks that are different among various organs. Previous studies have shown that genes are repressed when methyl molecules are…

Disinformation about Disinformation: L. Gordon Crovitz's Information Age

When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it's L. Gordon Crovitz's "Information Age," the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal. Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns, and this week in the Journal Crovitz tries to backpedal, with the standard trope that his "Who Really Invented the Internet?" article was controversial—"It [became] for a time the most read, emailed and commented upon article on…

I'm a holistic doctor

Ok, I know I've been digging up old posts lately, but it's because I love them so darn much. Thanks for your indulgence. --PalMD That's apparently all it takes to be a "Holistic" practitioner. I've been searching online for their medical board, or for any consistent definition of "holistic medicine". What's involved? Where do I get my training? Is training standardized, and based on good standards of evidence? According to the American Holistic Medical Association: Holistic Medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses care of the whole person - body, mind, and spirit. The…

New and Exciting in PLoS Community Journals

As always on Fridays, there are new papers published in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Computational Biology. I like to take my own picks, and today I pick this pre-publication (there is a provisional PDF online) in my own field: Meta-analysis of Drosophila Circadian Microarray Studies Identifies a Novel Set of Rhythmically Expressed Genes: Five independent groups have reported microarray studies that identify dozens of rhythmically expressed genes in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Limited overlap among the lists of discovered genes makes it difficult to determine which, if…

Ignoring geologist's recommendation had deadly consequences at Lucky Friday mine

Last week's violent rock burst at the Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday mine was just one of several catastrophic events this year at the deep underground silver mine in Mullan, Idaho. Another rockburst occurred a month earlier, and just one day before another incident in which 26 year old Brandon Gray was engulfed in muck as he and a co-worker tried to dislodge it in excavation bin. Mr. Gray, a contractor employed by Cementation, Inc., died two days later. Brandon Gray's death was the second this year at the Lucky Friday mine. In April, Larry "Pete" Marek, 53, and his brother Michael Marek…

Banal Sex

One of H.P. Lovecraft's least successful horror stories is "Medusa's Coil", a 1930 collaboration with Zealia Bishop. The story builds to one of the hideous final denouements that Lovecraft liked to end his stories with. Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me--that horror which he must have learned, as I learned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh. It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside--the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful…

When Labour Union Idealism Backfires

I support labour unions. Worker solidarity is the only way to keep wages above the barest subsistence level when you're working for an employer who wishes to maximise profit. I haven't been a union member myself for many years, though. The reason is that there is nothing a union can do for me. On an over-saturated labour market there is no way to organise a large enough percentage of the work-force to get any traction in negotiations with the employers. For each archaeologist who makes demands, there are always ten newly graduated young ones eager to work for peanuts. No union can improve our…

Wexler v. Beckwith on Constitutionality of Teaching ID

Jay Wexler of the Boston University School of Law has an upcoming article in the Washington University Law Quarterly which responds to the arguments of Francis Beckwith concerning the constitutionality of teaching ID. Beckwith is a Discovery Institute fellow and the associate director of the Dawson Center for Church-State Studies at Baylor. He is also a friendly adversary who has posted comments here from time to time. He has argued for many years that it is not unconstitutional for public schools to teach ID in science classrooms. You may recall the brouhaha that erupted between Brian Leiter…

I get email

My criticism of Mark Armitage's "research" published in the ICR "journal" seems to have struck a nerve — he just sent me (and his colleagues at the ICR) an angry letter in which I think he is attempting sarcasm, he just isn't very good at at it. Poor baby. Here it is: I am SO THANKFUL and indebted to Paul Myers for the carefully crafted and dispassionate published critique (above) of my work on the complexity of certain trematodes. I especially appreciate the way it was pubished in a peer-reviewed journal such as Parasitology Research or the Journal of Parasitology (oops - I got that wrong…

Zen sticks

With hurricanes over Czech and Rain in New Mexico and the truely bizarre shuttle flying even though unsafe, is there any time or space for another round of hockey stick wars? No... don't go away, its interesting, really it is! There is an exchange of letters in the most recent Science, between Rahmstorf and von S (et al. (curiously enough I've just noticed that Simon Tett is one of the al.; presumably because of the HadCM3 use)). Sadly "exchange" isn't quite right: just a letter and reply. This is a clear case of where it would be nice to see a more extended exchange to pick at the areas of…

Links for 2011-03-30

No Cox please, we're British... « In the Dark "The problem with Wonders of the Universe is betrayed by its title. The word "wonders" suggests that the Universe is wonder-ful, or even, in a word which has cropped up in the series a few times, "awesome". No authentic British person would ever use the word "awesome" without being paid a lot of money to do so. It just doesn't ring true. I reckon it doesn't do to be too impressed by anything as a matter of fact (especially if its accompanied by awful music), but there is a particularly good reason for not being taken in by all this talk about "…

Michael Shanks on Seed Salon

It is with mixed feelings that I note that Seed has recruited an archaeologist for its Seed Salon dialogue feature ("yesss!"), and that the one they've chosen is Mike Shanks ("nooo!"). Now, why would anyone dislike Mike Shanks? Well, because of, in one word, post-modernism. I read Shanks's dreadful 1987 co-authored book Social Theory and Archaeology, and nothing I've seen of his activities since has suggested that he has become any less of an obscurantist jargon-spewer, academic joker and opponent of rationalist science. He's archaeology's equivalent of Jacques Lacan, whom Noam Chomsky…

Influence of high-latitude atmospheric circulation changes on summertime Arctic sea ice?

Also known as Qinghua Ding et al., Nature Climate Change (2017) doi:10.1038/nclimate3241; published online 13 March 2017 (PDF as submitted). And the abstract: The Arctic has seen rapid sea-ice decline in the past three decades, whilst warming at about twice the global average rate. Yet the relationship between Arctic warming and sea-ice loss is not well understood. Here, we present evidence that trends in summertime atmospheric circulation may have contributed as much as 60% to the September sea-ice extent decline since 1979. A tendency towards a stronger anticyclonic circulation over…

How To Metal Detect Legally In Sweden

A friendly Englishman who recently settled in southern Sweden wrote me to ask how a law-abiding metal detectorist should go about getting a permit to pursue their hobby in this country. The first thing to understand is that the Swedish system makes it effectively impossible to metal detect on a whim while vacationing (unless you're a nighthawk). Paperwork, overburdened county officials and long waits are always part of the process. A sustained metal detector hobby is only really possible if you stick to one or two län counties and establish a good relationship with the County Archaeologist…

Blogger SAT Challenge Revealed!

So, the Blogger SAT Challenge has officially run its course, and Dave has posted the question to Cognitive Daily. I'll reproduce it below the fold, and make some general comments. What were the results like? We had 500 people at least look at the survey question, and Dave gives the breakdown: 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 see the question (you'll see it soon…

Links for 2010-08-11

Crowd Sourcing Loses Steam - Newsweek "There's no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature: most people simply don't want to work for free. They like the idea of the Web as a place where no one goes unheard and the contributions of millions of amateurs can change the world. But when they come home from a hard day at work and turn on their computer…

Links for 2010-06-17

The Virtuosi: How Long Can You Balance A (Quantum) Pencil "In this post I'd like to address a fun physics problem. How long can you balance a pencil on its tip? I mean in a perfect world, how long? No really. Think about it a second. Try and come up with an answer before your proceed. What this question will become by the end of this post is something like the following: Given that Quantum Mechanics exists, what is the longest time you could conceivably balance a pencil, even in principle? I will walk you through my approach to answering this question. I think it is a good problem…

New ideas in vaccine design: HSV-2

Lets say Im holding in my hand, a syringe. In this syringe is an experimental vaccine for HSV-2. The dreaded genital herpes. The vaccine is a live HSV virus with one gene deleted, ICP0 (free paper about this virus). When ICP0 is gone, the virus can still establish life long infection (if you get this vaccine, you will be infected with HSV), but the viruses produced from this infection will be extraordinarily susceptible to interferon. This means that rather than getting a freak-out-inflammatory response where your immune system goes nuts when the vaccine virus reactivates (causing painful…

Links for 2009-09-22

blarg? » Can I Get A Witness "Look, if you want to save journalism, if you want to be a journalist, you need to actually perform the act of journalism. The kind of writing that we desperately need, that we may be well-informed and responsible citizens, not these bullshit celebrity-noise puff pieces. Leave that crap to transient rags like Gawker; it's their métier, says so right there on the label, and shouldn't be yours. Go find something out, something important, and tell us. It might be complicated, it might need to be explained at length, contextualized and clarified, sure. It might be…

Links for 2010-09-06

Why do we get Labor Day off? - By Brendan I. Koerner - Slate Magazine "Though President Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, the occasion was first observed on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. A parade was organized by the city's Central Labor Union, a branch of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, a secretive labor union founded in 1869 by a clique of Philadelphia tailors. Historians still debate over whom, specifically, to credit with the idea of a holiday dedicated to the workingman." (tags: history us politics culture society slate) "Some Enchanted…

Amy Bishop UAH case: What role should personality or collegiality play in tenure decisions?

Valued commenter wc just left us a link to one of the most insightful articles to date on Dr. Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville biology professor charged in the shooting deaths of three colleagues where two other professors and an administrative assistant were injured. In today's Decatur Daily, staff writer Eric Fleischauer has an extended interview with UAH psychology professor Eric Seemann. You really should read the whole thing because it provides an inside view of Bishop's personality and relationships. But here is a critical passage: Despite her excellent research…

Pandora Radio and the Music Genome Project (repost)

Science journalist, Steve Silberman, just brought to my attention that Rob Walker at The New York Times wrote an article that last week on the method behind Pandora online radio. The article, The Sound Decoders at Pandora, made me go back through my archives to my own visit three years ago with Pandora founder, Tim Westergren. Tim, together with musicologist Dr Norman Gasser, has applied science to music by cataloging songs based purely on musical attributes (over three dozen criteria) and providing the listener with a program of music similar to one's liking of a band or even a particular…

Dr. Vandana Shiva: Very cool.

So, on Sunday and Monday, I had the privilege of hanging out with Dr. Shiva. And she was an absolute joy to host, and I can't tell you how wonderful it is to see students come away both enthused and provoked by the interaction. In case, you're not in the know, Dr. Shiva is: "is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She is one of the leaders of the International Forum on…

Fmr. NYTimes Editor on Exxon and Gas Price Coverage

Is ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson a PR juggernaut who takes advantage of the ideological innocence of general assignment and TV reporters? In his regular column at Portfolio magazine, former NY Times editor Howell Raines observes that market ideology and the absence of an energy beat (see this post), are combining to give the oil companies a free pass when it comes to news coverage of gas prices. Raines was interviewed last week by NPR's On the Media about his column (transcript, audio above). As Raines defines the problem, general assignment reporters--lacking a specialization with the…

Human Eggs for Sale!

The NYTimes has an interesting article on the increasing amount people are willing to pay for donor eggs: A survey published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility, "What Is Happening to the Price of Eggs?" found that the national average compensation for donors was $4,217. At least one center told the authors of the paper that it paid $15,000. Many centers did not respond. Though laws prohibit the sale of transplant organs, sperm donors have always received small payments, and prospective parents in the United States are allowed to compensate women for their far greater…

Rewind: The Dalai Lama Speaks to Neuroscientists

The 2006 Society for Neuroscience Meeting is approaching (in October), and I just wanted to repost this about the Dalai Lama's speech at SFN last year, from the "archives." First, this post is a summary of online accounts from people that heard the Dalai Lama's speech at the Society for Neuroscience; I was unable to attend his talk (blame my laptop!). The Lama's speech was entitled "The Neuroscience of Meditation," it was one-hour long and was followed by a question and answer session. A blog run by Neurodudes posted a 'blow-by-blow' account of the talk. This writeup in Science 'Dalai Lama…

At The Scientist, A Cover Feature on Framing

Appearing as the cover story for the October issue of The Scientist, I've teamed up with my colleague Dietram Scheufele to pen a 4,000 word feature that expands on the Framing Science thesis previously introduced in short articles at Science and the Washington Post. There's a great deal of context and research outlined in this article, so I hope everyone gets a chance to read the full text. (Currently, it's subscription protected.) Allowed the luxury of space, we provide a fuller discussion of the origins and nature of research on framing. We then describe a common set of frames that…

Live Polar Zones

Upon my father's recommendation, I have recently picked up C.P. Snow's essay "The Two Cultures," a mild-mannered examination of the growing chasm between scientific and literary intellectual communities. Despite the fact that Snow's evident bias towards the sciences betrays his claims of existing in the two spheres himself, and despite the unenlightened connections he makes between the Modernist movement's emphasis on alienation and the advent of 'imbecile expressions of non-social feeling," i.e. Nazism, (I find this very unfair considering the scientific community's involvement in say, the…

HBO Series on addiction

On Thursday, March 15, HBO will premier an ambitious series of documentaries entitled Addiction. Although HBO is a premium cable service usually costing an extra $10 or more per month, they are offering their service for free to regular cable and satellite subscribers during the four-day weekend beginning March 15, and all the shows will play at some point during that time. According to the press kit they sent me, you'll also be able to stream the shows from their website. (It's not clear whether all 14 programs will be available in this form. Right now all that's up is a short teaser video…

The glacial pace of sea-level rise

"Flow velocities of ocean-ending outlet glaciers would have to be about 49 km/yr, 70 times faster than those glaciers move today" for Greenland to raise sea level 2 m, says Tad Pfeffer about his new research in Science. That's three times faster than he and his colleagues have ever observed an outlet glacier to move. This doesn't mean sea level isn't rising due to glacier melt. Actually, the oceans could rise more and faster than International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists believed possible. Image from Free Geography Tools There is a nice write-up on the latest and greatest…

Scifoo - Day 2 - Science Communication

A big topic of conversation at Scifoo seems to be the future of scientific communication. I have renounced using the term Open Access, this term has been applied to so many different aspects of scientific publishing that it is utterly worthless. It's a buzz word. It's cool. But what does it mean? And instead of talking about the practicalities, much of the conversation is ethereal. We need to define the real issues. What scientists want. What scientists need. How does science publishing impact the lives of scientists, both as a producer of scientific data and as a consumer. After a session on…

My Friday with Darwin

OK, people, this is too cruel. I was gone all day yesterday, traveling to the Twin Cities for this Darwin Day event, and the site gets 37,000 visits. Are you all trying to tell me it's better when I'm not around to clutter it up? If I take off for a week will traffic climb to Daily Kos-like proportions? (There was a link from fark that might actually explain the sudden surge.) Anyway, I'll give a quick summary of what I was up to yesterday. I started with a 3 hour drive to Minneapolis, which was very exciting. High winds, blowing snow, near whiteout conditions. The weather was bad enough that…

Convert a dive light into LED

This is not really physics stuff. Well, it could be, but I am not going to take it that way. This is just a post that I consider to possibly add to the usefulness of the internet. When ever I want to do something, I always search online first. Suppose I want to make one of my dive lights into an led - if someone has done it that will help. So, I am super pumped up. I am getting ready to dive the Oriskany (off the coast of Pensacola) soon with some of my old dive buddies. Will I need a light? You bet. Do I think led lights are awesome? Oh, yeah. Do I want to spend tons of money on a…

Time to Riot!

The Riot for Austerity came about this way. In 2007, after the release of the IPCC report, and a number of books drawing attention to climate change, a friend of mine and I were discussing our frustration that no political organization was considering any kind of emissions cuts that even resembled those necessary to limit the damage from climate change. In fact whenever we discussed the 90+% emissions cuts required to give us the best chance of a reasonable stable climate, the immediate reaction was "that's not going to happen!" Stealing a great line from George Monbiot's wonderful book…

Birds in the News 182

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Sandwich Tern, Sterna sandvicensis, photographed at the Bolivar Ferry, Texas. Image: Joseph Kennedy, 4 August 2009 [larger view]. Birds and Technology Rather than searching for weird weather or enemy missiles, some satellites are helping researchers to track -- and predict -- the spread of deadly diseases. With the pandemic spread of H1N1 swine flu and the continued advance of the H5N1 avian flu, scientists are anxious to better predict the spread of infectious diseases and are looking for new tools wherever they…

Birds in the News 55 (v2n6)

Male magnolia warbler, Dendroica magnolia. This image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Pamela Wells. Click image for larger view in its own window. Birds in Science Spring is the season for flashy mates, at least for house finches, Carpodacus mexicanus (pictured, right). It is only later in the year that the females choose based on genetic diversity, according to new research from two scientists at the University of Arizona. Their 10-year study of a colony of 12,000 finches in Montana has revealed the seasonal dynamics of finch attraction and thereby resolved an…

Open Lab Entries So Far: Five Days Left!

There are only FIVE DAYS left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far - almost 700 of them, with more coming in each day. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy the last four annual collections…

'Virtual' Communication During Social Distancing: How We Change When We Know We're Being Seen

Social distancing due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the threat of COVID-19 has meant online communication is more popular than ever, with even casual parenting groups discovering the previous enterprise video conferencing tool Zoom. But how will that affect communications? Have you ever met someone who is stiff in person but great on camera or the other way around? Neuroscientists study brain and behavior and in a recent study found that a person's gaze is altered during tele-communication if they think that the person on the other end of the conversation can see them. People are very…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Despite Their Heft, Many Dinosaurs Had Surprisingly Tiny Genomes: They might be giants, but many dinosaurs apparently had genomes no larger than that of a modern hummingbird. So say scientists who've linked bone cell and genome size among living species and then used that new understanding to gauge the genome sizes of 31 species of extinct dinosaurs and birds, whose bone cells can be measured from the fossil record. Human Pubic Lice Acquired From Gorillas Gives Evolutionary Clues: Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas several million years ago, but this seemingly seedy connection does not…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Massage After Exercise Myth Busted: A Queen's University research team has blown open the myth that massage after exercise improves circulation to the muscle and assists in the removal of lactic acid and other waste products. --------------- Kinesiology MSc candidate Vicky Wiltshire and Dr. Tschakovsky set out to discover if this untested hypothesis was true, and their results show that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscle after exercise, and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid from muscle after exercise. Spontaneous Activity Found In The Idling Brain:…

EuroTrip '08 - Belgrade, fish soup

I was kicking myself all day yesterday because I forgot to take my camera with me for most of the day. First, my mother and I went to the bank to do some business which, of course, made us hungry so we stopped by a bakery and got fresh djevrek (no, although it looks like a sesame bagel, it is not - it is much lighter and crispier). Mmmmmm.... Then we went to the main building of the Natural History Museum and made some contacts there. The Director was at a meeting, but the secretary is smart, hip and on-the-ball and will be a great contact for the future as they try to design a new website…

New and Exciting in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology

There is new cool stuff published last night in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, including: Here is a write-up: Do Abstinence-Plus Interventions Reduce Sexual Risk Behavior among Youth? And this is the actual paper: : In an extensive search for existing abstinence-plus studies, the researchers identified 39 trials done in high-income countries that compared the effects on sexual behavior of various abstinence-plus programs with the effects of no intervention or of other interventions designed to prevent HIV infection. All the trials met strict preset criteria (for example, trial participants…

London's congestion charge and Seattle's affordable transit

In 2003, the city of London took a dramatic step in the battle against traffic congestion: It implemented a congestion charge of £5 for those driving private vehicles into an eight-square-mile central congestion zone on weekdays between 7am and 6:30pm. The fees were increased twice, and since 2011 have stood at £10. Drivers purchase day passes online, and a camera network and a license-plate-recognition system allow for enforcement and penalty collection. Motorcycles, bicycles, taxis, and buses are exempt from the charges. An essential aspect of London's system is that it invests the revenue…

First question!

Dave, one of my online chessplaying buddies, asked me this question (edited for appropriateness): Now this speeding up of the expansion of the universe: Do I understand correctly that one of the theories to explain why relates to "dark matter"? In real simple terms, what in the dark blue blazes is dark matter, and why and how (and I think the "how" is what keeps you boys up late at night) does it cause this increase in speed? So Dave gives me the opportunity to, first off, make the distinction between dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is, quite simply, matter that doesn't emit…

May Pieces Of My Mind #3

This writer knows what glass cutters are for but doesn't know what they look like. She's having somebody behead plastic dolls with one. You know suits of armour? Almost all are Early Modern LARPing costumes for festive tournaments. Not Medieval, not used in battle. Not having any teaching gig this semester is straining my finances. But I also miss belonging. Really enjoyed lunch & afternoon snack with colleagues at the Swedish History Museum today as I was there to look at finds. Trying something I should probably have done many years ago: looking at a form letter when writing a job…

Towards a Social Theory of Sites We Haven't Found

Jean François Revel once wrote, "Let there be no discussion about methods except by those who make discoveries". As may have become apparent at one time or another on this blog, I don't share a number of the ideals prevalent in current academic archaeology in Sweden. Post-modernism has become unfashionable, so my resistance to that movement is no longer very controversial. But my disdain for "theoretical archaeology" is still something that sets me apart from many university-based colleagues. Now, most archaeologists are not university-based, so my opinions are in fact in tune with the…

The sense of being stared at ...not

Time was when I wouldn't have cared much if my alma mater had invited a New Age quack to give a lecture on the university's dime. That was then. This is now. Under the very clever headline of "Pitching Woo-woo," Vancouver's online newspaper, The Tyee tells us that the University of British Columbia last week provided a platform for Rubert Sheldrake, he of the "sense of being stared at" theory of telepathy. How sad is that? The thing that really gets my goat is that UBC is trying very hard to be a top-rate research school. Its new tag line is "Canada's Leading Edge." The university has…