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Music Monday: Year's Best Jazz Album Lists!

(OK, Music Monday one day late...) Science books are an abiding, long term passion, one which has been reflected here on the blog by my compulsive listing of the Best Science Books of the year, 2015 included. This year I'm expanding the obsessive listing franchise to include another abiding passion, jazz music. But I won't be listing individual jazz albums, just other people's year end lists. As for my own year-end list of best jazz album, I'm afraid I don't really buy enough new ones every year to make a list practical. Here goes. These lists are as at mid-day December 22, 2015. I'm mostly…

Report: Treating workers fairly, maintaining safe workplaces good for the bottom line

Fair working standards for construction workers and financial profit for developers aren't incompatible, according to a new report from Texas' Workers Defense Project. In fact, consumers are actually willing to pay more to live in places built on principles of safety, economic justice and dignity. Released this week in collaboration with the University of Texas' Center for Sustainable Development, "Green Jobs for Downtown Austin: Exploring the Consumer Market for Sustainable Buildings" studied consumer attitudes toward sustainable construction jobs and explored the market for certification…

So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school, redux

So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school … A seasonal revisit of some old rumblings* *NB: this discussion should not be construed to be anything but hypothetical ramblings, they do not reflect in any way the official position of any academic institution, department or graduate program, especially not the one I am part of! So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on January 16, 2012 (2) Share on email More » So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school … More…

On the Merits of Postponing Your Alcoholism

The New York Times has a interesting article about the long term consequences to adolescent brains of early drinking. To whit: In experiments conducted by the Duke team, the reformed rat drinkers learned mazes normally when they were sober. But after the equivalent of only a couple of drinks, their performance declined significantly more than did that of rats that had never tippled before they became adults. The study was published in 2000 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Other research has found that while drunken adolescent rats become more sensitive to memory…

New book on the psychology and engineering of traffic

Two summers ago in Paris, I was astounded at the volume of traffic that somehow managed to negotiate the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe without incident. Here's the (poor quality) video I made to document traffic flow there: I learned to drive in my 20s in New York City. Like Paris, New York has a traffic rhythm all its own, where lane markings are mere suggestions. In New York, parking is tolerated nearly anywhere, as long as traffic isn't unduly impeded. I've seen people double-parked, triple-parked, parked on corners, on sidewalks, you name it. Driving into Manhattan several times…

May 28 : a Dark Day for Science and for Christianity as the "Creation Museum" Opens

Today's the day that Answers In Genesis' museum of ignorance, their "looks like, acts like, smells like, and pretends to be, but decidedly is not a science museum," the Creation Museum opens. I'm horrified about this on many levels. As a scientist, I'm horrified about it just like every other scientist who is writing about this. We've got a slickly presented museum that looks like a science museum presenting carefully crafted lies (there is no other word for it) designed to comfort people in their scientific ignorance, designed to deeply instill scientific ignorance in children of a certain…

The $14,615 Head-Spinning Workout

Every now and then I come a cross an advertisement that makes me say "What the #&$!?" I have seen the ad for the ROM machine in the back of Scientific American for some time but I never bothered to read it. Until yesterday. Then I went to their website. Yeow. My head is still spinning. The ROM (Range Of Motion) machine promises a complete workout in only four minutes per day. Yep. Four, count 'em, four minutes per day. It's a bizarre looking device with a central seat, pedals, handles, chrome tubing and what appears to be a large flywheel or friction wheel, all for the amazing price of…

My Open Science presentation at the Subtle Technologies Festival

Faithful readers of this blog may recall that back in March I posted a set of slides I had prepared for a presentation to a class of undergraduate computer science majors, basically outlining what open science is and challenging them to use their talents to make science work better. Usually I don't post the presentation slides I use for my everyday work as a librarian, when I appear in classrooms to talk about how to find and evaluate sources in science or when I talk about science communication. But in this case I spent a fair amount of time preparing and revising this particular iteration…

Trust and Language

Last year, at ScienceOnline09, it appears that the overarching theme of the meeting emerged, and it was Power, in various meanings of the word. This year, looking at the titles and descriptions of the sessions on the Program, the keyword of the meeting will be Trust. Again, in various meanings of that word: how do you know who to trust (e.g., journalists, scientists and press officers), and how do you behave online in order to be trusted. The debate over recent hacking of e-mails concerning climate change also hinges on the trust and how language affects the perception of who is trustworthy.…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Male Reindeer Inflate Their Air Sac To Make Sexually Enticing Hoarse Rutting Calls: A group of European scientists have determined that a male reindeer's air sac, influencing vocal sound and neck contour, may contribute to his sexual prowess and reproductive success. The results of this research have recently been published in Journal of Anatomy. Laying Sleeping Sickness To Rest: The parasite that leads to sleeping sickness can be lulled to sleep itself using a newly discovered pathway, according to research published online in EMBO reports (http://www.nature.com/embor/). Trypanosoma brucei…

Occupational Health News Roundup

For the Christian Science Monitor, Marilyn Gardner writes about pregnant women who stay on the job until the day their babies are due (or even until the minute they go into labor) and start working again soon after their babies' births, because they're unable to take more time off. The Family Medical Leave Act allows new parents 12 weeks of leave - but it's unpaid leave, and the requirement only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. Gardner explains: Call it the American way of maternity. Eighty percent of pregnant women who work remained on the job until one month or less before…

A New Regulatory Czar?

OMB Watch is reporting that the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Chaired by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will soon hold a confirmation hearing on Susan E. Dudley. nominated to be Administrator of the White Houseâs Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The office, part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), oversees all of the Administrationâs regulatory (or anti-regulatory) activities. There's lot's more information on Ms. Dudley, and on OMB's latest shenanigans, at OMB Watch's website Dudley Watch. Genevieve Smith, at the American Prospect…

Esoteric Order of Sherman

I've written before about the prolific and many-talented Norm Sherman: a podcaster, multi-instrumentalist, song writer, singer and comedian with a truly unique voice. Several unique voices actually, thanks to his ear for accents. He occupies a position in geek-orientated on-line music and podcasting similar to that of George Hrab, another one of my favourites. But while Hrab has six albums to his name, the younger Sherman has two so far: his eponymous 2007 début and now the new The Esoteric Order of Sherman. Both of Sherman's albums are musical comedy, but where the first one is mostly…

Catching up with Rabett Run

As with In It for the Gold, Eli Rabbet's Rabbet Run is another quality blog that can't be just marked as read. So I have no other option but to settle down for a bit of focused reading and catch up on Eli's latest 19 posts! (Eli, if you are reading this, you might want to update my entry in your blogroll to the new ScienceBlogs address!) His latest is about the recent reports of a decline in oceanic absorbtion of airborne CO2 emissions. I am planning an article about that too, it is important news, so will leave it at that for now. Next, is a rather graphic examination of his toilet (no…

Lets just cure/prevent deafness while we are at it.

Lets play a game. Think of a human disease.  Any disease.  Viral, bacterial, genetic, acquired, anything. Im pretty sure that no matter what disease you just thought of, there is a scientist, somewhere, trying to use a virus to cure/treat that disease. As I was doing my rounds on PubMed, looking for cool new research, I stumbled upon this paper: Canalostomy as a Surgical Approach for Cochlear Gene Therapy in the Rat. I couldnt find this article online, so I searched PubMed for more info on using GMO viruses to treat deafness. NOH MAH GAWD.  There are SO MANY papers!  A handful: Cochlear…

Brussels Declaration

Should the future Constitution of the European Union make reference to Christian values? The Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel among others thinks so. Or should it be founded on secular liberal principles? I among others think so. To that end, I have just signed the Brussels Declaration on-line. We, the people of Europe, hereby affirm our common values. They are based not on a single culture or tradition but are founded in all of the cultures that make up modern Europe. We affirm the worth, dignity and autonomy of every individual, and the right of everyone to the greatest possible freedom…

Greatest Hits

John over at Stranger Fruit had a post recently on his most popular entries. Summing up, he found that controversial issues in science and religion drew the most attention. I've had a look at my Google Analytics as well, checking out the data for my old site since the present one has been on-line for less than a month so far. In order to get anything interesting out of the exercise, I had to disregard two hugely popular entry categories: a) blog carnival hostings, b) entries with sex-related words in them. As I've mentioned before repeatedly, any post mentioning words relating to sex, porn or…

The Patriot Act and Political Posturing

The Patriot Act, the most misnamed legislation in history, was used last year to levy a $10 million fine on Paypal, owned by Ebay, for allowing their clients to use the service to send funds to online gambling sites. What does this have to do with stopping terrorism? Not a goddamn thing. But it's yet another reason why this law should be repealed, and why we should throw out of office everyone who voted for it - which would be virtually everyone in Congress. In the Senate, only one Senator, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voted against the bill. And yes, that includes John Kerry, who is now…

A movie review.

So I saw EXPELLED this weekend. My review is two words: Thats it? Thats it? Thats what caused a humagiganitisoid blagosphere hubub? OMG it was so boring! I got bored 15 minutes in, started cleaning the apartment while watching. Made it to 45 minutes in before just paused it and watched a documentary on Animal Planet 'Growing up Walrus' (really good, btw). Forced myself to watch another 30 minutes of EXPELLED, left to go see a documentary about Mardi Gras with some friends 'The Order of Myths' (really good, btw). Finally watched the rest of EXPELLED. EXPELLED was boring. I understand now…

AAAS Establishes Early Career Award in Public Engagement

The announcement of this award is an important step towards greater recognition of the need for public engagement on the part of scientists and their institutions. AAAS should be commended for their commitment to leadership in this area. Details below and here. It will be interesting to see the criteria by which nominations are judged. As I noted last month, how public engagement is ultimately defined, its goals and outcomes, remains an open question. (See also this comment.) There is more major news on this front coming in August including the launch of a new blog, and a special issue…

Gene Silencing Makes Female Mice Less Horny

RNAi, or RNA interference, is a rapidly developing and powerful tool to achieve gene silencing (turning a gene "off"). Gene silencing shows what happened in a system or organism when that gene is no longer functional. In a recent study, described in a story in Technology Review, female mice lose all interest in sex when a specific gene in the brain is silenced. (More, including a video of the un-horny mice, below the fold!) The mating behavior of female mice is heavily influenced by the hormone estrogen--up-regulation of estrogen provokes "lordosis," where the females arch their spines in…

SciComm Innovations at the Chemical Heritage Foundation

As I have traveled across the country over the past year giving talks on new directions in science communication, one of my recommendations to science institutions and organizations has been to launch blogs and podcasts as important strategic communication tools for engaging with audiences and stakeholders. There are a number of challenges a science organization faces when launching a blog. The first is staff time. In order to do a blog properly, you need to have a skilled staff person dedicated to the site at least half time, preferably full time. Moreover, to do a blog well, this staff…

43,000 Scientists: Bush Puts Schoolchildren At Risk

The American Geophysical Union just issued a press release in response to Bush's comments about intelligent design. It's not online at their web site yet, so I've posted it here. (Update: It's on line now.) This is not the first time that the 43,000 members of the AGU have spoken out against creationism. They protested the sale of a creationist account of the Grand Canyon in National Park Service stores, and condemned the airing of a creationist movie about cosmology at the Smithsonian Institution. But this is the first time they've taken on the President. American Geophysical Union 2 August…

Review of George Lakoff's "Whose Freedom?"

Over at The Quarterly Conversation, I've written a review of George Lakoff's book Whose Freedom? In case my personal politics haven't come through in my CogDaily posts (and I do make an effort to assume a neutral perspective here), you'll get a good sense of my views in this review, where I point out that though Lakoff's invocation of cognitive science in support of his claims is problematic, Steven Pinker, Lakoff's most vocal critic, is guilty of similar overgeneralizations: If Lakoff's cog sci-based explanation of how the Republicans spun their way into power is this unconvincing, then one…

Never underestimate your students

As I've mentioned, I have my upper division classes write openly on the web about the subject of the course. It's good practice for being comfortable with discussing the world of ideas outside this little sheltered realm of academia, but I've always had one reservation: the internet is a cruel place, and I feel a bit protective of my students, so I send them off with lots of warnings and reassurances that I will defend their open expression of ideas and they don't have to worry about differences of opinion affecting their grades. I've had students with whom I greatly disagree get online and…

Differences in brain activity of conservatives & liberals

Research suggests that liberals and conservatives have different personality traits and "cognitive styles": while liberals are more intellectually curious and tolerant of ambiguity, conservatives have a greater desire to reach decisions quickly and are more consistent in the way they make those decisions. A new study, published online today in Nature Neuroscience, suggests that there may be a neural basis for these differences in cognitive style. The study provides evidence that there are differences in the way the brains of liberals and conservatives respond to situations involving…

A new Cretaceous plesiosaur, Nichollsia borealis

The skull of Nichollsia borealis. Update: As Nick has aptly pointed out, this plesiosaur is going to need a new name. The genus name Nichollsia is occupied by an isopod, arthopods once again trumping prehistoric creatures. I wonder how many times this has happened; I'm sure an interesting review paper could be written if all the changes could be tracked down. According to a press release issued by the University of Calgary (and adapted for ScienceDaily and redOrbit, with another summary at Palaeoblog), Patrick Druckenmiller and Anthony Russell have just released a paper describing a…

Think Japanese March 18 æ¥è®ç³»è«¸å®æ´¾

Source. In a matter of hours, it will be exactly one week since the devastating earthquake struck Japan (Friday, March 11, 2011 at 12:46:23 AM (EST)). In honor of the victims and their families, let's think Japanese and offer whatever we can to help them through this tragedy so that they can emerge strong and resilient. Each of us has our own way to extend our thoughts to those in need. I have included below a number of ways, including the chant of Nichiren Buddhism (in the spirit of "think Japanese") that has touched my life, as well as a number of practical ways to give. æ¥è®ç³»è«¸å®æ´¾…

Stealthy librarian stories

My Stealth Librarianship Manifesto post from last month continues to gather comments and page views, albeit at a slower rate than before. Of course, that's very gratifiying to see. If you haven't checked in on the post in a while, there are probably a couple of new comments with librarians' stories that you might want to check out. To keep the idea going, I've decided to have occasional posts highlighting "stealthy librarian" posts and articles I see around the web. These are posts that highlight facutly/librarian collaboration in teaching or research, librarians integrated with business…

What Is Lab Lit?

From January 30, 2006, a look at the "new" genre and the hype around it... Lab Lit is all the buzz these days. Nature magazine had a recent article on it. Blogosphere is abuzz - see Hedwig's take on it. SEED magazine has a contest. This is what they are looking for - it explains what they think Lab Lit is: We are not looking for traditional Sci-Fi--we are looking for fiction that reflects the significant role science plays in our culture; fiction that uncovers the rich narratives in science; and fiction wherein scientists are fallible and human. We are looking for Science-In-Fiction,…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Today in Mother Jones, reporter Stephanie Mencimer writes a great piece previewing an upcoming Supreme Court case that could transform how pregnant women are treated in the workplace. In fact, the case has attracted the attention and support of some very strange bedfellows. Mencimer writes: It's a rare day when pro-choice activists, anti-abortion diehards, and evangelical Christians all file briefs on the same side of a Supreme Court case. But that's what happened recently when the National Association of Evangelicals, Americans United for Life, Democrats for Life of America, and the National…

Guest Blogger: Charles Darwin

In honor of the old man's 200th, Myrmecos Blog is proud to feature Charles Darwin writing prophetically about the problems posed by social insects for his theory of natural selection.   The passage below is from the first edition of On the Origin of Species, and in it Darwin anticipates the same answers- kin and group selection- that later generations of biologists converged on to solve the riddle. Not bad for a barnacle taxonomist... No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,âcases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could…

Autism Update

title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS has an open-access article describing the current state of knowledge of the genetics of rel="tag">autism.  The authors looked at information from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange and two other databases; one from the University of Michigan, the other from the href="http://www.iancommunity.org/">Interactive Autism Network (IAN) Research Database.  Their findings indicated that most cases of autism can be explained by one of two mechanisms.  The concluded that most cases arise from spontaneous mutations, with a…

Inescapable trade-offs?

Because the three-dimensional world has had me in a headlock (and a heat-wave), I'm tardy in passing on the news that ScienceBlogs is hosting a new blog, Next Generation Energy, that is slated to run from July 9 to October 9. On this blog, Seed editors, ScienceBlogs bloggers, and outside experts will be discussing future energy policy and alternative energy solutions. Among other things, the folks at Next Generation Energy will have a weekly question they'll try to answer from their various perspectives. This week's question asks for predictions about the viable non-oil (and non-corn-…

Star Trek Space Jump

While I am still fresh on the Space Jump topic, let me take it to the extreme. Star Trek extreme. SPOILER ALERT But really, is this a spoiler alert if it is from the trailer of a movie that has been out forever? Of course, I talking about the latest Star Trek movie where three guys jump out of a shuttle and into the atmosphere. So, in light of the Red Bull Stratos jump, how would this jump compare? First, my assumptions: This Star Trek jump is on the planet Vulcan. I am going to assume this is just like Earth in terms of gravity and density of air. The jumpers in Star Trek have on stuff…

Suicide bombing is not about religion, it's about foreign occupation

The opening of Sam Harris's End of Faith, like several essays he wrote at HuffPo, focus on suicide bombing. He argues that suicide bombing is absurd, and only exists because of religion. A footnote to EoF acknowledges that suicide bombing was first deployed on a large scale by the Tamil Tigers, who were not fighting a religious war, but rather were part of an ethnic and nationalistic conflict. He waves this objection away at HuffPo by writing: "it is misleading to describe the Tamil Tigers as 'secular' ⦠While the motivations of the Tigers are not explicitly religious, they are Hindus who…

Brazil, the case of triracial white people

One of the problems with human genetics where it resembles economics are the ethical issues involved in experimentation. Luckily for science, but unluckily for individuals, medicine offers many "natural experiments." But in the area of population genetics and history analyses of pedigrees or family based studies centered around particular traits and genes have limitations of scale. Luckily for science again, and unluckily for millions of Amerindians and black Africans, Latin America offers a cornucopia of possibilities when it comes to exploring the outcomes ensuing from admixture between…

What does it mean that a nation is 'Unscientific'?

If a publisher offered me a contract to write a book under a title that would be something like "Unscientific America", how would I go about it? I would definitely be SUCH a scientist! But, being such a scientist does not mean indulging in Sesquipedalian Obscurantism. Being such a scientist means being dilligent, thorough and systematic in one's reasearch. And then being excited about presenting the findings, while being honest about the degree of confidence one can have in each piece of information. I was not offered a book contract, and I do not have the resources and nine or twelve months…

No, COVID-19 Vaccines Do Not Cause Infertility - Not Getting It Might

Despite claims of anti-vaccine activists no different than groups that used to claim vaccines cause autism, COVID-19 vaccines do not impact fecundability—the probability of conception per menstrual cycle—in female or male partners who received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The prospective study instead indicates that COVID-19 infection among males may temporarily reduce fertility— an outcome that could be avoidable through vaccination. Lead author Dr. Amelia Wesselink, epidemiologist at  Boston University School of Public Health, and colleagues analyzed…

How We Learn What Matters

When Aaron Newton and I conceived _A Nation of Farmers_ we began each chapter with a framing image from World War political posters about food, energy and gardening. We wanted to bring home the point I make in writing in _Depletion and Abundance_ - that at critical moments in our history, including times of war or great economic strain - ordinary daily acts are transferred from the private sphere into the public one. That is, the act of eating, or buying clothing, or travelling from one place to another becomes not a "personal choice" but part of one's basic participation in civil society…

The “Terrible Texts” of the Bible

Here's your quiz for the day. Who wrote this? There is no theistic God who exists to take care of you or me. There is no God who stands ready to set aside the laws by which this universe operates to come to our aid in time of need. There are no everlasting arms underneath us to catch us when we fall. Or this? When people question this theistic God in the light of the constant pain and trauma found in the normal course of human life, the pious rhetoric of theism's defenders becomes almost incoherent. One hears hysterical talk about free will, about how God allows us to bring pain upon…

"Clinical research" on dichloroacetate by TheDCASite.com: A travesty of science

I hadn't planned on revisiting this topic again quite so soon, but sometimes a piece of information comes up that's so disturbing that I can't ignore it and can't justify delaying blogging about it by very long. So it is yet again with the strange and disturbing saga of dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecular chemotherapeutic drug with a novel and scientifically interesting mechanism of action that could lead to a whole new class of chemotherapeutic agents and that has shown considerable promise in rat tumor models but has not yet been tested in humans. Not to belabor the story, which has…

Swine flu: how not to report a fatal outcome

I hate to take off on the press. I do it every once in a while, but not often. The slow and agonizing demise of the main stream press has major consequences for keeping the public informed about issues both big and small. It's also a personal tragedy for many dedicated professional journalists. Still, while newspapers-as-we-knew-them aren't dead yet, they are at least moribund, and like the famous definition of a statesman as a successful politician who is dead, there is more than a bit of a tendency to endow the working press with some virtues it doesn't have now and in general never did.…

The Fetish in relation to Skepticism

I was just glancing through the blog of Katheryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, a book about people who were wrong about stuff, often big stuff (for example, she talks about individuals who spent decades in jail owing to false convictions). Meantime, I'm working on posts related to the falsehoods and "Everything you know is wrong" series. And, as I do this, I'm thinking about a way in which people get things wrong that is often overlooked or, perhaps, not recognized as a specific category of irrational thinking. This has to do with the idea of a fetish.…

Bloggers Bioblitzing Across the Sphere

From Ontario to Greece to Panama, what are participating bloggers finding out in the field? This thread will be constantly updated throughout the week, blog carnival style, compiling all of the bioblitzes that are being conducted. Please contact me if you have something up; I'll make sure I add it to the list. Don't forget to check out all of the participant's photos at the Flickr group (over 300 photos now). For info about the Blogger Bioblitz, follow the links: Read more about the blitz Visit the forum See submission guidelines Join the Flickr group Find a field guide online Download a…

A quick history of tree-climbing dinosaurs

The idea that non-avian dinosaurs might have been able to climb trees is (I assume) not all that familiar to people outside the field of dinosaur research, but within the field of dinosaur research it has become an increasingly familiar idea within recent decades. Thanks to the discovery of such theropods as Microraptor and Epidendrosaurus, we do now have small forms exhibiting some features suggestive of a tree-climbing (or scansorial) way of life. Perhaps surprisingly however, the idea that dinosaurs might have climbed trees goes back a long way, and well pre-dates the dinosaur renaissance…

Join Us in a National Grassroots Movement to Enhance Science Education Through Outreach Satellite Networks

As a founder and organizer of the upcoming inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, I'm in frequent contact with a wide range of teachers, students, innovators, community leaders, entrepreneurs and decision makers in science and technology across the country. One thing that I continue to learn from these experiences: There is a growing need out there, even a grassroots desire, among average Americans to understand and connect in meaningful ways with the vast array of science and technology impacting their lives today -- provided that this information is presented to them through…

Power outage

I'm sitting here in the dark and freezing. No, not really. It's not dark yet and it's hot and humid. But I have no power, except what's left in this laptop. Can't connect to the net because I use wifi at home and the router is electrical (if I get really desperate I'll crawl up to the study and huddle in back of my desk and connect with ethernet but I don't think even I am that much of a slave to being online. Actually I am, but I'm too tired). So what happened? Mrs. R. and I are sitting here together, each of us reading, on a very warm, sort of sunny Sunday afternoon and we hear a tremendous…

West Nile Virus in your kidneys? Really?

Long time readers may have noticed that the subject of West Nile Virus (WNV) pops up periodically here (and here, here, here, here, here). It's more than a passing fancy. I was professionally involved in public health measures around West Nile after its introduction to the US in 1999 and have maintained an interest, even though flu occupies much (too much) of my time. WNV is a mosquito-borne flavivirus of birds that occasionally infects humans (in this sense it is like bird flu, although only in this sense; bird flu is not passed from birds to humans via mosquitoes). The resulting infection…

Where is science blogging going? I don't know.

Blake Stacey, who is a good guy to have by your side in a firefight, has a wonderfully complicated post on this thing called science blogging. He's mostly stating the obvious: it's anarchic, it's very hard to pull out, say, introductory material on a specific topic in science, there are problems of accountability, we don't produce anything as coherently useful as a basic textbook, etc. Well, yeah. This is a general problem with solutions that bubble up from the ground rather than being defined from above — they do something very, very well, but it usually isn't the something that a planner…