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Michael Duffy is at it again

It's only been six months since his previous wrong-headed column claiming that global warming has ended, but Michael Duffy has decided to write another one: Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply. As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where…

Reviewing a couple wee guides to critical thinking.

One of the first things that happens when you get a faculty mailbox in a philosophy department is that unsolicited items start appearing in it. There are the late student papers, the book catalogs, the religious tracts -- and occasionally, actual books that, it is hoped, you will like well enough that you will exhort all your students to buy them (perhaps by requiring them for your classes). Today, I'm going to give you my review of two little books that appeared in my faculty mailbox, both from The Foundation for Critical Thinking. The first is The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking…

Who Dan Dennett think he be foolin'?

I listened to Dan Dennett on the most recent Tech Nation with Moira Gunn (not online yet), and he went on about the ideas proposed in his book Breaking the Spell. Some of the ideas were interesting, though I've read more well developed versions in most of the supporting literature. Nevertheless, Dennett's schtick that those who think that religious people can't analyze their beliefs rationally are being patronizing seems really laughable to me. Most atheists I know have a hard time getting around the fact that many people who are extremely bright (no pun intended in the context of Dennett…

Bird flu: headline news

A serviceable and knowledgeable article by AP's Maria Cheng, lately of the WHO public information office, has just appeared on the wires. Readers of this site won't find much new, but what is interesting are the headlines. Yes, headlines, in the plural. Here are ten different headlines to the same article: What Ever Happened To Bird Flu? (Forbes) After pandemic fear, experts wonder: What happened to bird flu? (Houston Chronicle) After pandemic panic, experts wonder: What happened to bird flu?(Santa Barbara News-Press) Despite panic, bird flu pandemic hasn't appeared (Minneapolis Star-Tribune…

What's under the biodefense rock?

Biodefense laboratories at Texas universities operated for years without a single reported incident of laboratory acquired infection or even exposure. That is absolutely true and it sounds reassuring and it is similar to biodefense laboratores elsewhere. Don't worry. Be happy. But when it comes to claims of safety in biodefense laboratories -- multiplying like mosquitoes after the Bush administration rained dollars on their terrorist obsession -- you need to parse the statements carefully: "without a single reported incident" doesn't mean there were no incidents. It means none were reported.…

Is It a Farm Yet?

I once wrote an essay about my son Isaiah's wish for a farm. He has a farm, of course, but he also dreams of a different one, the one in his imagination. What was funny was that all the adults that saw his wish understood it so very well. Many people tell me how much they want a farm. But other people show me that farms are easier to find than you think, even if they aren't perfect. These are all real people, who I know. As i start our garden design class today, I started thinking about all the farm dreams I've known! I know a man who wanted to start a farm. So he worked and saved for…

In Search of My Rhetorical Penis

tags: gender issues, gender disparity, blogosphere, science blogs, life science blogs Image: Anemi I have been thinking more about TheScientist's recent online article, "Vote for your favorite life science blogs", where they asked this same question of seven of the "top" life science bloggers -- all of whom just so happened to be men. It reminded me of Declan Butler's Nature article that was published approximately two years ago, where he listed the "top" science blogs using some rather ambiguous standards that were inconsistently applied for defining precisely what is a science blog ..…

Pepsigate: Yes, I'm staying

For now, at least. My natural inclinations about this whole mess are probably closest in nature to either Chad Orzel's or Jason Rosenhouse's, so reading them will probably give you a pretty close idea of where I stand. Bora, not surprisingly, has collected a lot of the reaction. I also really like what Christie Wilcox has to say: Let me make it clear, though - I don't blame anyone for leaving. I don't hold it against them. While I may not have had the same visceral reaction they did, I also haven't been here that long. I haven't dealt with this kind of mismanagement and gotten fed up about…

Talk Radio … the horror, the horror

It's a good thing that Minnesota Atheists are making an effort to get on the radio. Have you ever looked at the Christian talk radio programming in your area? It's like a black hole of rampaging stupid, so awfully banal and inane that it's terrifying. I was just sent the program guide for our major Minneapolis Christian talk station — KKMS, AM980 — and it offers a rather creepy view of their perspective. There are some surprises, though. Guess what venue the big time Intelligent Design creationists use to spread their ideas? Tuesday 3:00 Hour - "The KKMS Ministry of the Month" - Dr. John…

Happy Bloggiversary, Jason Kuznicki

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the start of Positive Liberty, by Jason Kuznicki. It is an anniversary that is well worth noting and celebrating. Jason thanks me for the many links I've made to his blog over the last year, and I have tried to send people to his blog as often as possible. But there's a reason for that, and it's because Jason has written so many compelling and thoughtful posts in that time. And for that, I want to thank him. There is a really interesting passage in his post on the anniversary that I want to quote: In part, I've created a persona, which is something I…

Ranking the Unmeasurable

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a story about growing resistance to the US News rankings: In the wake of meetings this week of the Annapolis Group -- an organization of liberal arts colleges -- critics of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are expecting a significant increase in the number of institutions where presidents pledge not to participate in the "reputational" portion of the rankings or to use scores in their own promotional materials. A majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational…

The Funding Issue

Gordon Watts is mad as hell about funding cuts, and blaming petty partisan politics: As far as I can tell, here is what happened: Congress just about finishes the omnibus spending bill. [Snark: exactly how late was this!?] At the last minute Bush says he will veto it unless it comes at his number. [Snark: Presumably this is to prove that he is a fiscal conservative.] Democrats and Republicans in congress go round and round. They do not have the votes to override a veto in the end. Democrats give up and say “he wants it 22 billion cheaper? OK, we’ll do it”. [Snark: how did we not miss this…

When should an ant colony invest in reproductives?

Those of you who were into ants in the early '90s might remember SimAnt, a simulation game where you control the decisions your ants make to steer a colony to dominance over a competing species in a suburban lawn. The game is based, in part, on the optimality equations summarized in Oster & Wilson's 1978 text "Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects".  The book lays out mathematical foundations for determining the investments a colony should place in workers, queens, and males in order to optimize Darwinian fitness over a range of ecological conditions.  If you knew the equations,…

Miscellaneous Dawkinsiana

I sat down and watched both episodes of Dawkins' series, The Root of All Evil? this weekend (because I can!), and I have to say…I liked it very much. I've already commented on the first episode, and if you want to know what's in the second, Dawkins himself has an editorial that summarizes the main points: the pattern of indoctrination of children, the kneejerk rejection of honest criticism, the spreading corruption of education by dogma. It was marvelous to see it all laid out lucidly, in a tidy 50 minute spot. (Hmmm, just the right length that if I wanted to "infuse religion in student…

The reality of fact-checking at daily newspapers: George Will is no exception

Like Carl Zimmer, I can't get past the George F. Will/WaPo climate change denial scandal. Carl's latest piece delves deeper into the nature of journalism and fact-checking at the Post, and I'm going to weigh in with my observations of working at newspapers off and on for the past 22 years. First, contrary to what many non-journalists seem to believe, George F. Will is a journalist. Just because he gets to add interpretation and value judgment to the factual material that serves as his raw material doesn't mean he gets to flout the ethical parameters of the business. In other words, he is…

Air Pollution and Appendicitis

This is an odd one.  A study of 5191 adults showed an association between air pollution and attacks of acute appendicitis. href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/cmaj.082068v1">Effect of ambient air pollution on the incidence of appendicitis CMAJ 10.1503/cmaj.082068 Published online ahead of print October 5, 2009 Abstract Background: The pathogenesis of appendicitis is unclear. We evaluated whether exposure to air pollution was associated with an increased incidence of appendicitis. Methods: We identified 5191 adults who had been admitted to hospital with…

The Failure of Blogdom as a Source of Public Conversation

Two things happened last year when we started to get the Sunday Washington Post. One was that I tried to figure out those crossword puzzles. That's not going so well. The other is that I would read the humor column in the back of the magazine by Gene Weingarten. That's turned out better. I thus feel compelled to share what is the definitive statement on why blogging does not straightforwardly amount to the democratization of public discourse. Or, I should say, does not straightforwardly elevate the value of the public sphere. "No Comment," at this link. And pasted in full below the…

TEN YEARS AFTER DOLLY: Less Than a Third of Americans Believe Cloning Animals is Morally Acceptable; Only a Third of Americans Are Clear About the Differences Between Therapeutic and Reproductive Cloning; Less Than a Majority Support Therapeutic Cloning

Today marks the ten year anniversary of the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly, and the anniversary comes as Congress debates various bills impacting funding for embryonic stem cell research (NPR files two reports today, here and here.) Despite ten years of debate over therapeutic and reproductive cloning, Congress has yet to pass legislation providing clear guidelines for research. According to polls, the public still has reservations about animal cloning, and remains unclear about the differences between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Though answers are susceptible to question…

You can be a part of the next generation of AI!

To a biologist, there are only a few key elements that determine if something is alive: it must undergo homeostasis (stable internal state), metabolism (use energy to maintain organization and homeostasis), respond to its environment, adapt over time and reproduce. It sounds like a simple set of rules -- after all, a bacteria can do it. But we, as human beings, have never been able to capture such essence and truly bring machines to life. But such is the quest of many computer scientists that seek to create "artificial life," or AI. The goal is to design a digital genetic code that can…

How are we going to address this problem?

I've been on about the history of science quite a bit lately (see here, here, and here), and as I've aired my gripes one point in particular keeps coming up again and again. For various reasons the development of science (particularly those connected with evolution) in Victorian times has been extensively studied. There is still work to be done, but generally speaking there is an immense body of literature on science during the 19th century. This is particularly the case with geology & paleontology, associated sciences that came into their own during the 1800's and were important to the…

Lying about Rachel Carson

As part of its ongoing war on science, Quadrant Online as published a piece by J.F. Beck accusing Rachel Carson of constructing an elaborate tissue of exaggerations and lies. In his piece Beck is only able to come up with two alleged lies by Carson. First, Beck claims that Carson said that DDT was the product of World War II weapons research: Carson's suggestion notwithstanding, DDT was not a product of World War II weapons research, having been first synthesised in 1874. But Beck is lying. Here is what Carson actually wrote about the development of DDT: DDT (short for dichloro-diphenyl-…

Rally to Restore... Something

I was there! Not that it was easy. We decided to park in VA (in the parking garage of the National Science foundation - totally by accident) and take the metro in, but evidently the entire world had the same idea; the metro was about a 2 hour wait, and the bus stop had like 3 buses worth of people, and only two buses scheduled in the next hour. So we decided to walk the 6 miles to the National Mall, with less than an hour before the thing started. I was at Obama's inauguration two years ago, and there were screens and speakers all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, but apparently Comedy Central…

Animal Rights Extremists Target UCLA Researcher

On Saturday, animal rights extremists torched the car of a scientist at UCLA--just one more incident in a long streak of violent threats and wanton destruction of property. LA Times columnist Tim Rutten gets it right when he states: No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for…

What do you need to take your blog to the next level?

At ScienceOnline 2010, I'm going to be leading a workshop entitled Blogging 102. It's supposed to be a session to help established bloggers to improve their craft. The next question is, what do bloggers need most in order to become better bloggers? One possibility is "more technical skills." There is no doubt in my mind that if I had more skills, I'd be a better blogger. One area where I'm woefully inadequate is programming. My blog has a lot of interactive content -- movie demos, audio demos, surveys, and polls. But a lot of psychology requires interaction to work: we need to measure…

Today's Rant: Scientific Journals

OK now time for some real blogging (I.e. rant). Things I hate about journal publications. 1) Supplementary Data. You see a neat paper, you downloaded of the website and then as you go through the text you bump into "see supplementary data". Now I don't really mind this, however I hate that journals do not append the data to the end of the pdf file. Now I understand not everyone wants the hard copy of 2345 two hybrid reactions, but for most cases the 2 or 3 supplemental figures are crucial. It drives me mad. I get a paper emailed to me and half the data is missing! What is worse is if the…

Whale poo, and climate change, and microbes... oh my! (repost) [We Beasties]

[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com] A recent paper published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (I have no idea what the B means, but maybe one of you can clarify with a comment) draws an enticing connection between whale excrement and climate change.  Because this study involved whale poop, it even made the mainstream news.  The folks at MSN were even nice enough to provide an areal photo of what it looks like when a whale goes to the bathroom.  I have been lucky enough to experience this first hand on a whale watch when a whale shared the…

Raising the barriers: restricting access to scientific literature will hurt STEM education

This morning, I learned that congress wants to reverse the advances made by NIH and go back to restricting access to scientific publications. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (New York) and Congressman Darrell Issa (California) are co-sponsoring a bill to restore the limits on public access to NIH-funded research. I've written many times before (here, here, here, and here) about the challenges that community college faculty and students have in getting access to scientific papers. In an era where the economic benefits of educating students in science are well-known (1), the idea of crippling…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE - articles with embedded interactive 3D structures

There are 19 new articles in PLoS ONE today. But first, you need to look at the new Collection of articles - Structural Biology and Human Health: Medically Relevant Proteins from the SGC - in which you can see the protein structures in 3D, turn them around, zoom in and out, and do other manipulations of the embedded object, right there inside the articles. Read more about it in: A New Method for Publishing Three-Dimensional Content: A new method for electronic publishing of articles with text linked to its interactive three dimensional content is described. The method is based on a single…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Fast food workers may have just received a huge boost, thanks to a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board. Steven Greenhouse reports in The New York Times that the board’s general counsel has ruled that McDonald’s is jointly responsible for labor violations at its franchises — “a decision that if upheld would disrupt longtime practices in the fast-food industry and ease the way for unionizing nationwide,” Greenhouse writes. The article reports that of the 181 unfair labor practice complaints filed against McDonald’s and its franchises in the last 20 months, the board’s counsel decided…

Knockin' boots and breakin' hips

A recent story detailing an outbreak of sexually-transmitted diseases has gotten a good deal of attention from news outlets and blogs. The reason it's newsworthy is because the individuals affected aren't teenagers or single twenty-somethings; they're senior citizens. So, let me point out the obvious: even "old people" have sex. This sometimes uncomfortable fact of life was driven home to me when I was just a teenager myself, when my grandma was discussing the difficulty she had showering (she'd just had surgery). Someone had asked whether grandpa was much help, and she mentioned that…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology and PLoS Pathogens this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: I Am Not a Scientist, I Am a Number: Imagine a time when you and your complete scholarly output--papers, grant applications, blog posts, etc.--could be identified online and in perpetuity and returned in a variety of easy-to-digest ways. While ego comes into it as a driver to make this happen,…

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law led to sharp increase in homicides

In 2005, Florida legislators passed the nation’s first “Stand Your Ground” law, expanding legal immunity for residents to use lethal force when they believe they’re being threatened. A decade later, a new study finds that Florida has experienced a significant increase in homicides, while states without such laws have not. “From a public health perspective, we were shocked that in a given area, rates of people dying changed so abruptly and in such a sustained way,” study co-author Douglas Wiebe, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of…

Hulme

Somewhat against my will, I find myself obliged to post about Hulme, if only to stop people arguing on other talk pages. Come and argue here, folks :-(. Anyway, KK pointed me to two Hulme pieces, and I'll take those as my texts: * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8388485.stm * http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574571613215771336.html My immeadiate reaction is that these are both about science-n-politics. Which immeadiately says the the hacking incident has told us nothing interesting or new about the actual science. Which in turn is one in the eye for the septics, who…

Why don't people pay attention to the future of their own world?

More politics, but since it is cunningly disguised as a reply to mt's Twitter rant, I think I may get away with it. You should go off and read mt's post, for context. But not for content; much as I like his take on the science I can never agree with his take on the politics. Here's a sample: One reason for the buckling of democracy is the stealing of people's time and emotional energy in high stakes marketplace hypercompetition. Democracy can be preserved or restored only if & when daily life is secure. A key reason to support Universal Basic Income1 or similar ideas. A calm and…

Christianity Today Botches Bloggingheads Brouhaha

You are probably familiar with the Bloggingheads website. The site, founded by Robert Wright, features conversations between various bloggers, journalists and scholars on whatever issues it amuses them to talk about. The site has long featured scientists among its participants. Two recent dialogues hurt that relationship. The first featured historian Ronald Numbers palling around with YEC Paul Nelson. Numbers seemed mostly uninclined to challenge Nelson on some of his more dubious pronouncements. Even more egregious was the dialogue between John McWhorter and Michael Behe, in which…

GlaxoSmithKline to buy Sirtris

Just a little blurb in my local paper this morning that is making a big splash in the stock market: international pharma giant GSK is purchasing Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. for an estimated US$720 million. Glaxo plans to bolster its pipeline with Sirtris's experimental biotechnology treatments targeting aging-related diseases. In early trading, Sirtris shares gained 81.6 percent to $22.21 while Glaxo shares added 19 cents to $43.92. Apparently I should've gone immediately from my morning bathroom newspaper reading to my online stock purchase website. Instead, you get a…

"Stiff Nights" Falls on Hard Times

I should probably create a new blogpost category just for erectile dysfunction dietary supplements adulterated with authentic or synthetic analogs of prescription phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors (e.g., Viagra, Cialis). However, FDA has already created a page for this earlier this year after dozens of companies have been identified as putting real drugs into their erectile dysfunction products. Do the brains behind these companies not realize that FDA is now monitoring every erectile dysfunction supplement for all manner of PDE5 inhibitors? Apparently not: For Immediate Release: Nov. 5…

Perfection, Symmetry, and Chaos in Science and History

Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion ...continuing from Sidebar 2a (you might read that first before continuing on below) All of the above (Sidebar 2a) interested me in its own right but truly startled me when set beside a simultaneous set of little essays on-line about Stalin and the bomb. Lawrence Weschler discusses a tale Solzhenitsyn told about applauding for Stalin. At a Communist Party meeting, Solzhenitsyn wrote--and here I abbreviate the longer telling of the story--that everyone stood…

The Unholy Wars and Flagrant Bigotry at the LA Times

Yesterday, the LA Times ran an opinion piece that is nothing short of appalling. The column in question was titled, "Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining". Sadly, that remarkable headline does appear to very accurately reflect the content of the column. The LA Times apparently decided, for reasons passing understanding, that it was a good idea to give Charlotte Allen the opportunity to present a ~1300-word long explanation of why she doesn't like "atheists." Just so we're clear, that's how she presented herself - not as someone who doesn't like some, many, or most atheists, or someone…

Math Confuses Princess: I Read It In Seed

One of the perks of being a Scienceblogger is getting a free subscription to Seed Magazine. Last week, issue 11 August 2007 arrived, and I happily began sampling its good stuff. There's a new feature this month called "Incubator" that tries to "capture the multifacted nature of science itself - from the minutia of the bench, to the personalities behind them, to the oversized ideas that propel us forward." One item included in the new feature is Workbench, a photo of a "scientist's natural hangout". The inaugural, and annotated, full-page photo is of the desk of 3rd-year grad student…

Could video games be the new humanitarian ambassadors?

One of the challenges we faced with our new blogosphere initiative, Silence is the Enemy, was how to mobilize people to do something about the plight of rape victims. It's not that people don't have empathy for rape victims; it's that the experience of living in a war-torn nation where rape and murder are routine facts of life is so foreign and horrifying to us, we tend to tune it out. Part of the way to deal with this is to give people a clear mission - something simple they can do; in our case, donating to Doctors without Borders (as I am for the month of June), or writing to Congress, or…

Was Johnny Ball really victimized by environmentalists?

Remember how David Bellamy claimed that his TV career was ended (something that happened in 1994) because of an article he wrote in 2004? Now Johnny Ball is making similar dubious claims of persecution: But his bookings have dropped by 90 per cent over the past year and the 72-year-old has blamed this on harassment by extreme environmentalists who object to his dismissal of climate change as "alarmist nonsense". Mr Ball, father of TV and radio presenter Zoe, told The TES a website featuring pornographic images was posted online bearing his name, while another blogger stated he "should not be…

Whale poo, and climate change, and microbes... oh my! (repost)

[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com] A recent paper published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (I have no idea what the B means, but maybe one of you can clarify with a comment) draws an enticing connection between whale excrement and climate change.  Because this study involved whale poop, it even made the mainstream news.  The folks at MSN were even nice enough to provide an areal photo of what it looks like when a whale goes to the bathroom.  I have been lucky enough to experience this first hand on a whale watch when a whale shared the…

An Integrin Is Identified as a Co-Receptor for HIV

The New York Times reported yesterday that "scientists find new receptor for HIV," referring to a paper published online in Nature Immunology on Sunday by Arthos et al. This is basically correct, although it would be more accurate to call the new receptor a co-receptor, since the infection of a cell with HIV still depends on the primary receptor, CD4, in combination with either CCR5 or CXCR4. The newly-identified co-receptor, just like the other HIV receptors, is a protein located on the surface of white blood cells (T-cells, specifically). HIV, like any other virus, can only replicate…

Scrubbing the Kitchen Floor

Whenever I go back home to see my mom, I usually spend some time visiting with her cousin D., who lives in the house across the street from my mother's house. D. has spent a good many years taking care of his elderly mother, my great-aunt. I have known D. all my life. As a child growing up, he was one of my elders. As a young adult, coming back home now and then for visits, I often didn't know what to say to him when our paths would cross, thinking I didn't have much in common with him. Now we are both intimately involved with the care of our elderly mothers and this brings us a…

Qigong in science class?

A reader of this blog reports: My children went to a [public charter] school in which pseudoscience was taught to them. However, it was something more insidious than "intelligent design." It was Qigong taught as science. One of my daughter's classmates fell unconscious while she was performing these exercises. Then the Qigong instructor ran to the victim and began moving his hands over her body, telling the students that he was healing her by moving his hands over her which was mainpulating body energy or "Chi." I assume that the girl was OK in the end ... but, this gives one pause. What…

What does it mean to be "anti-vaccine"?

"Anti-vaccine." I regularly throw that word around -- and, most of the time, with good reason. Many skeptics and defenders of SBM also throw that word around, again with good reason most of the time. There really is a shocking amount of anti-vaccine sentiment out there. But what does "anti-vaccine" really mean? What is "anti-vaccine"? Who is "anti-vaccine"? Why? What makes them "anti-vaccine"? Believe it or not, for all the vociferousness with which I routinely go after anti-vaccine loons, I'm actually a relative newcomer to the task of taking on the anti-vaccine movement. Ten years ago, I…

The Greed of The Humane Society of the United States

tags: humane society of the united states, HSUS, H$U$, news report, investigative journalism, animal rights, animal welfare, animal shelters, streaming video Where do all those millions of dollars of charitable donations to the Humane Society of the United States go? If you think H$U$ uses those monies to help improve the lives of animals, think again! Seven Things You Didn't Know About the Humane Society of the United States: The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a "humane society" in name only, since it doesn't operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 14 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales: Scales are collections of tones that divide octaves into specific intervals used to create music. Since humans can distinguish about 240 different pitches over an…

StoryBlogging, AIDSblogging and more....

[Slightly edited post from May 04, 2006] Collecting stories has become a really exciting endeavor lately. While writing down people's stories has been done since time immemorial, on stone tablets, clay tablets and papyrus scrolls, the modern technology allows more people to record oral and written histories than ever before. Everyone can now write, make an audio or video recording, and publish their life stories. We can tap into the wisdom of the elders and preserve their memories for posterity. The history will not be written only by winners, and, gasp, by semi-automated textbook-writing…