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SBC - NC'07

Adnaan Wasey and Lea Winerman from the The Online PBS NewsHour are coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference and so is Claire Edwards of The American Physiological Society. Are you? Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference

When did bacon become part of the Cthulhu mythos?

People of a certain age will remember thos "create your own adventure" books — well, Ars Technica has an online version of one, featuring tentacled beings from another plane, bacon, and geeks. It might go over well here.

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants 7

Let's highlight some more of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference: Talia Page is a future astronaut, senior staff at Talking Science, writer for Space Lifestyle magazine, Chief Editor for the Imagine Science Film Festival, and a blogger on Space Cadet. She will be on the panel Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations. Neeru Paharia is a doctoral student who is starting to build AcaWiki, a wiki of open-access long abstracts of peer-reviewed research, which she will present as a demo. David Palange is a student and blogger in the Nicholas School of the…

Discussing science publishing at the pub

Last night was nice. I dragged some buddies to Tavern at Central to hang out with the folks at NatureNetworks Boston. There we chatted with a few bloggers and some of the individuals responsible for NatureNetworks Boston (like Corie Lok.) One interesting tid bit I'd like to share with you - I had a nice conversation with Kathrine (didn't catch her last name) who helps maintain the NatureNetworks site. We talked about recent successes and failures of scientific publishers and web2.0. Right now scientific publishing is in a state of flux, it is not clear how science communication will be…

ScienceOnline'09: Managing your online persona through transitions.

Some quick thoughts in response to the session led by PropterDoc and Sciencewoman. In some sense, this is really just an extension of the problem of managing your public persona as you go through transitions in life. Maybe it's something even deeper than that. Maybe it's a piece of the project of deciding who you are and what kind of person to be. How we present ourselves to other people leaves traces. Our interactions with others create components of the environments that other people live in and respond to. Our words have consequences, and so do the moments where we are silent. Now, we…

The Home Schooling Attitude: Part 1 of 1

This is Part 1 because there is more than one part. But I'm only going to do one of them, so it is Part 1 of 1. There is more than one "kind" of home schooler, home schooling parent, home schooling family, etc., and thus there are multiple attitudes. But a good chunk of the home schooling population, represented by these excerpts from their own rhetoric, are more than a little annoying, and are the reason why we should always be suspicious of home schooling and home schoolers until we see their credentials. Home Schooling Is a Good Choice for Christian Parenting If you want to impart a…

Turf... wars?

I have a very lengthy post in pickle that is taking me some time to work through. Forgive me; sometimes that's what blogging is for, though it's tough on the posting rate. In the meantime, a small thought about improving interaction patterns between scientists and librarians, something I still very much think is necessary for both groups. Cameron Neylon notes in his quick review of the new FriendFeed-based ScienceFeed that the name is not ideal: Finally there is the problem of the name. I was very careful at the top of this post to be inclusive in the scope of people who I think can benefit…

Lott's disingenuous explanation for Mary Rosh

Lott has a long message at his website where he discusses Mary Rosh and argues that when he claimed that he had "not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions", he was not lying: Another misunderstanding in the media is that I was lying as to whether I had ever participated in internet chat rooms. I have never made any general statement that I do not participate in such groups. And, obviously, I did participate under my own name for a substantial period of time. There are however two separate statements, one in an email to Glenn…

Clean Energy Tipping Point

Investment in and development of clean energy seems to be undergoing a transition, and this is reflected in a number of items that came across my desk this morning. Without attempting any serious analysis, here's a brief summary. Clean Energy investments have fallen over the last couple of years, leading some to assert that the transition to non fossil sources of energy is in trouble. But there is an excellent argument that the exact opposite is true. What has really happened is that the cost of implementing new clean energy projects has dropped dramatically, so the cost of investment has…

October Drizzle

October drizzle can be quite photogenic in my part of the world. Here's a view from the bridge to Fisksätra holme. (I just discovered Pixlr, an excellent free on-line image editor that runs in your browser.)

Pimp Me Old Tunes

My lightly tossed-off shot at classical music snobs, and subsequent confession that classical music fails to make much of an impression has led to various people calling me an uncultured barbarian, but also to a surprisingly vibrant comment thread that has included some recommendations of music to try. I might as well roll with that while it's going, so here's the deal: I'm headed out to a conference tomorrow, and will have a couple of dull plane flights and a fair bit of time in a hotel room in which to listen to new stuff. By which I mean old stuff, so pimp me some classical music, subject…

Scientific Publishing

Let's say there's an interesting but somewhat obscure book I'm interested in. Say, Electromagnetic Pulse Propagation in Causal Dielectrics. It's a very technical work about a very specific subject, so the total print run was probably very small. Maybe a few hundred or a thousand or so? I have no idea, but it can't be very large. The library has it, but of the few thousand people in the world who are interested in this sort of thing, a few dozen are here at Texas A&M. The book is already both checked out and recalled; for all I know there's recall requests stacked several deep. Now…

Bayesians Say the Cutest Things

The Dutch book argument of Bruno de Finetti is an argument which is supposed to justify subjective probabilities. What one does in this argument is gives probabilities an operational definition in terms of the amount one is willing to bet on some event. Thus a probability p is mapped to your being willing to make a bet on the event at 1-p to p odds. In the Dutch book argument one shows that if one takes this operational meaning and in addition allows for the person you are betting to take both sides of the bet, then if you do not follow the axiomatic laws of probability, then the person…

Clock Quotes

Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging. - Nina Berberova

Now, this is passion....

...which I totally relate to. Can you guess which candidate they support? If you like one of their signs (e.g., 'Elizabeth For First Lady' one), they have set up a Cafepress store where you can buy them (as well as buttons, stickers and other stuff):

U.S. history

I need to pick, buy and send a book on U.S. history to an old friend in Belgrade. It should be an objective, academic book, 600+ pages, not more than $50 used at Amazon. Is there such a thing and if so, what shall I get?

I WANT

So, I kind of have an obsession with small and miniature versions of things. I saw this car in a parking lot yesterday, and I just couldn't help snapping a pic. I WANT THIS CAR. It's a baby car! Isn't it ADORABLE? Someone should buy me a car like this. Seriously.

FDA moving on Plan B

Suddenly, the FDA has decided to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive. They've imposed an age restriction—you must be 18 or over to buy it—but it's a smart move in the right direction, and it's about time.

Science Online 2012: Library and librarian sessions

With the final countdown underway and the conference less than a week away, this post follows my post on library people in attendance at Science Online 2012 from a few weeks ago. And I'd like to start off with another best-tweet-ever, this time Marieclaire Shanahan retweeting Colin Schutze: + they'll be fascinating! RT @_ColinS_: #Scio12 Newbie Tips: You will meet more librarians in one day than you thought existed in the world. And that's long been one of my goals, to promote the integration of librarians into faculty and researcher conferences and social networks. And Science Online has…

China Not That Excited By Overpriced Appliances that Do What Sun Does Anyway

I think the first time I really seriously reconsidered the American ubiquity of the dryer was when I was in college, and a friend of mine made a list of ten things she considered hysterically funny about Americans. Number 3, after paying more money for milk with the fat pulled out and something about our worldview, was that we consider it perfectly normal to buy an enormous box at great expense to do precisely what the air will do for you anyway. Put that way, and with her performance of "American justifying why they need a dryer," it was pretty humorous. It isn't like I even had one much…

Apple Pulls Anti-Gay App

Following an online petition and a wave of complaints, Apple has removed a so-called "gay cure" app from its App Store. Launched last month by Exodus International, a ministry that encourages gay people to seek "cures" for their homosexuality, the app triggered a huge outcry from Two Wins Out, a nonprofit group with the stated goal of fighting anti-gay religious extremism. Read the rest here

Study finds dozens of health, medical organizations take soda company money

After years of alarming increases in child and adult obesity and billions spent to treat related medical problems, one might think health organizations and soda companies would be on firmly opposite sides of the fence. But a new study finds that a surprising number of health groups accept soda sponsorship dollars, inadvertently helping to polish the public image of companies that actively lobby against obesity prevention efforts. “To be honest, it was really shocking,” study co-author Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, told…

Around the Web: What is the Internet of Things and other reports relevant to libraries and librarianship

I'm always interested in the present and future of libraries and higher education. There's a steady stream of reports from various organizations that are broadly relevant to the (mostly academic) library biz but they can be tough to keep track of. I thought I'd aggregate some of those here. Of course I've very likely missed a few, so suggestions are welcome in the comments. I've done a few similar posts recently here, here and here. What Is the Internet of Things? Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia's Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums Project Information…

The Generation Clash on Facebook

Jim Buie asks: I received a query from CBS News technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg about "the older generation" on Facebook. Do you have a story to share about your experiences on Facebook, particularly in relation to teens, many of whom call us over-40s "the creepies"? Or do you know teens or twenty-somethings willing to say how they feel about parents and geezers coming online and inspecting their Facebook profiles? CBS News will sort through the responses and may seek to interview some of the respondents. Post your responses at the link below: http://www.togetherwhileapart.com I have…

Nigerian T-Shirt Scam?

The t-shirt deal is starting to look like a Nigerian scam. The original offer was that I would get some free printed t-shirts from Ooshirts.com if I advertised about their site. Now have a load of this: Do you have an American credit card? ... I know that you're getting the sponsorship amount off your order, but our site automatically charges every customer one cent as a security measure no matter what their total. Even my boss has to do this when ordering with the company card. I should have mentioned this earlier but did not think of it at the time. It's a feature that some people find…

Quantized Poker?

I like poker and I like quantum computing and lo and behold here is a paper with both: arXiv: 0902.2196 Title: Quantized Poker Authors: Steven A. Bleiler Poker has become a popular pastime all over the world. At any given moment one can find tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of players playing poker via their computers on the major on-line gaming sites. Indeed, according to the Vancouver, B.C. based pokerpulse.com estimates, more than 190 million US dollars daily is bet in on-line poker rooms. But communication and computation are changing as the relentless application of Moore'…

An ugly pointless poll

It's become standard in the US for polling places (real polling places, not the online kind) to hand out little "I voted" stickers after you've made your contribution. This is a totally meaningless act; the stickers aren't used to actually track who has voted or not, they're just there to make you feel good and allow you to display to everyone you meet that you've done your civic duty. Unfortunately, when the bureaucracy gets their hands on this trivial little detail, they can't leave it alone. It's got to be made more elaborate; it's got to become an ideological statement. So the state of…

Tuesday Tidbits

Anak Krakatau erupting as seen from Rataka Island. Image taken by Marco Fulle of Stromboli Online. I frequent the Astronomy Picture of the Day website run by NASA on a daily basis. Yet somehow today I didn't check the site until well into the evening and was greeted by one of the best astronomy-volcano images I've seen in a while. Marco Fulle of Stromboli Online captured this image of Anak Krakatau erupting (in 2008 or 2009 ... its unclear in the caption) with Ursa Major rising over the volcano. There have been quite a few volcano-related images on APOD, but alas, they don't have a "volcano…

Impeach Bush Yard Signs: Update

The style="font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;"> Impeach BUSH Yard color="blue" size="5">Signs color="blue" size="5">.org site is back online.  It was href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/09/impeach_bush_kerfuffle.php">shut down for a few days because it was hosted on a site that got the Internet bandwidth from the County government.  Now it is on a private server.

What Belief System Most Closely Matches Your Own values?

tags: religion, belief system, ethics, values, lifestyle Here's my results from Belief-o-matic, an online questionnaire that uses a series of 20 questions to help identify your belief system; What did this quiz tell you your belief system should be?

Circadian Meditation?!

How does one fisk a medical quackery when there is no attempt whatsoever to explain what it is all about - not even a string of New-Age mumbo-jumbo, nonsensical, vaguely English-sounding words. All it says is: Buy The Book. Yeah, right... Related: Circadian Quackery

Should Steve buy the iPhone

I need a new phone and it just so happens that the new iPhone is coming out very soon. So the question is... http://killersurvey.com/survey_code.php?sqs=1&id=677"> Here's some stats that might help you decide: Feel free to leave comments telling me why not to buy it as well ;)

Joy of Science - Books

See Bill Hooker's comment about finding books for the course here. Bill's comment got held up a day or so in junk comments because of all the links in it. Sorry, Bill! But this would be helpful for anyone trying to find/buy the books.

Haven't Bought Open Lab Yet? 20% off of Lulu purchases thru Monday 6/13

Looking for a great Father's Day gift? How about the gift of Open Lab? Get it for 20% off if you buy it by Monday, June 13. Click the graphic below to head straight to the Lulu page for the 2010 edition of The Open Laboratory.

Gender Difference in Skepticism?

Are women less skeptical than men? Follow that link to find Stephanie Zvan's analysis of the recently reported study that is making its way around the Internet. Stephanie seems to buy into the study uncritically, you know, like chicks tend to do ...... NOT!

Friday Deep-Sea Picture (05/18/07) Challenger Report Illustrations

These beautiful illustrations are from the Challenger Reports available online. The first is of the very large, deep water, pycnogonid sea spider, Colossendeis gigas. The second (below the fold) contains Octopus levis and Octopus bermudensis both new species described on the expedition. The last contains at center a gastropod from the genus Xenophora that glues other shells onto its own shell as it is produced. Around the edge are various species from the genus Natica.

New York Times adopts medical establishment line on personal genomics

The NY Times has an article entitled "Buyer beware of home DNA tests" that adopts the paternalistic party line of the medical establishment: taking DNA tests without a doctor's advice is hazardous to your health. Remarkably, the article acknowledges that qualified genetic counsellors are few and far between and that "most practicing physicians lack the knowledge and training in genetics to interpret [DNA tests] properly", and yet still suggests that customers should "take the findings to a qualified expert". Begging the question: which qualified expert should customers be taking their test…

A Universe of Black Holes: VII

Final day of the "A Universe of Black Holes" workshop with a session: "Modeling Black Hole Accretion and Outflows" - all MHD sims today... Chris Reynolds (Univ. of Maryland) starts with - The temporal variability of model accretion disks Had to miss this. Go check it online, Chis gives fab talks. Julian Krolik (JHU) "The Bardeen-Petterson effect in magneto-hydrodynamics" Krolik demonstrated large Reynolds stress... cf " Alignment of supermassive black hole binary orbits and spins" - Miller & Krolik 2013 Jim Stone (Princeton) "New magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of radiation pressure…

Ten Years Of Portable Internet Access

My 2006 smartphone, a Qtek 9100 On 2 February 2006 I took delivery of my first smartphone, or handdator as I called it in my diary – “hand computer”. On the following day I got the machine on-line. It was a Qtek 9100, with a slide-out mechanical keyboard that I still really miss, a tiny screen, a stylus and a crappy camera. Since then I've had portable Internet access. I was already a self-described “net head”, and a particular reason for me to get a smartphone was that I'd started blogging a few weeks previously: I wanted to be able to post no matter where I was. On 8 February, for…

What Will Michele Bachmann Do Next?

As you know, Michele Bachmann, Congressperson for Minnesota's Sixth District, has announced that she will not seek re-election to her seat in Washington DC. Bachmann almost lost her re-election to challenger Jim Graves last year. I'm convinced that had the election been held a few weeks later, Graves would have won. Recently, internal polling data from within Bachmann's campaign became known, and showed that as of a couple of weeks ago Bachmann was actually behind Graves. Bachmann's response to this polling was an ad buy; the Bachmann campaign started up early with local ads, clearly…

Radical Transparency

This article is almost two years old, but it is perhaps even more current today than it was when it first appeared: Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business. ----------snip----------- The…

Gosh - I am so cheap!

I guess I am the cheapest of all my sciblings - better get me while I am still alive, as I appear to be pretty worthless as a corpse: $3540.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Sidr strikes

Sidr is currently officially a Category 5 cyclone, and is about to make landfall in Bangladesh…and has also finally made the top news story at CNN. You can get more timely info from a Bangladesh blog and the Bangladesh online news agency.

New Seed Article

My new Seed article is now online. I wanted to use the neuroscience of learning to draw some connections between a lot of different things, from mirror neurons to Algebra teachers to Toyota factories. Take a look, and tell me what you think.

Not that the godly can't share our opinion of those two things, of course

Julia Sweeney has audio samples from her new CD online—and gosh, she seems to have the same opinions of Intelligent Design and Deepak Chopra that I do! It must be something correlated with godlessness…like brains. (Thanks to Hank Fox)

Long article on Lancet studies in Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine

Eli Rabett has some extracts from a 5,000 word article by Dale Keiger on the Lancet studies that appeared in the Johns Hopkins Alumni Journal. Keiger says that it will be available online in a few days. Update: Here it is.

Ontario Library Association conference presentation: Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government Science

As I mentioned last week, I did a presentation at the recent Ontario Library Association Super Conference using my work on Canadian science policy as a case study in altmetrics. Here's the session description: 802F Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government Science: An Altmetrics Case Study The gold standard for measuring scholarly impact is journal article citations. In the online environment we can expand both the conception of scholarly output and how we measure their impact. Blog posts, downloads, page views, comments on blogs, Twitter or Reddit or Stumpleupon mentions…

Science Bloggers: Help a Biology Teacher!

On the heels of David Warlick's session on using online tools in the science classroom and the student blogging panel, here is the opportunity for some of us (that means YOU!) to actually do something about science education online: Elissa Hoffman is a high school teacher and she has started a blog for her AP Biology class at Appleton East High School in Appleton, WI. She would like it to be a platform with which she can introduce her students to current science research and scientists. One of the things she'd really like to do is find people who'd be interested in "guest blogging" on…

A survey on Lottâs honesty

kuro5hin has a story on Lott/Rosh. There is even an on-line poll. At the time of writing the results were: John Lott is.. .. a fraud. 50% .. a good researcher who made some mistakes. 5% .. victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy. 13% .. transgendered. 30% Of course, the results from an on-line poll like this have no more scientific validity than Lott's 98% statistic. Blogroots also mentions the unmasking of Rosh. The High Road (a pro-gun message board) has a discussion on Lott. I think this comment is interesting: My problem with Lott now is his "the dog ate my…

A brief fable about a pharmaceutical company for the benefit of believers in "alternative" medicine

Here's a little thought experiment for proponents of "alternative medicine." Imagine, if you will, a small pharmaceutical company. Founded in the 1970s, it has starts out with only one product, a drug that its founder thought to be a very promising anticancer agent. So enamored of this particular drug was the founder of the company that he left a job with an academic medical center, founded his own clinic, and then his own research institute and company to manufacture the new drug. After first having painstakingly isolated the substances that make up his drug, he later started to synthesize…