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Great White Shark Longevity

Image from www.clker.com. Woodridge, IL, USA --- Great White Shark Opening Mouth --- Image by © Denis Scott/Corbis Scientists have discovered that great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) actually live longer than previously thought (up to 23 years or so). Using radiocarbon age estimates, Dr. Hamady and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution determined the animals can live to the ripe-old-age of 70+ years. These findings mean that great white sharks, like humans, may take longer to mature. It also means that overfishing may pose more of a threat to them than previously…

Be sure to cast your vote!!

The panda bear cub recently born at the Smithsonian Zoo is approaching her 100th day of life. Following Chinese tradition, the zoo will be announcing her name on December 1st. In the meantime, the zoo is asking for your help in choosing her name by casting your vote using the online poll that can be found here. The finalists are: Bao Bao (宝宝): Precious, treasure. Ling Hua (玲花): Darling, delicate flower. Long Yun (龙韵): Long is the Chinese symbol of the dragon; Yun means charming. Combined this represents a sign of luck for panda cooperation between China and the United States. Mulan (木兰):…

Watch Autopsies online

Channel 4 in Britain has created a series documenting what goes on in Autopsies, but even more exciting is that they've made them available online for your viewing...pleasure? I'm a pretty squeamish guy, which is one of the (many) reasons I didn't go to medical school. So if you're particularly grossed out by dead, cut open people then you should perhaps not watch these graphic videos. I'm about to force myself to check out the videos though! Wish me luck ;) Here's a short description from the show webpage: These clips contain scenes of a graphic nature demonstrating disections of the…

3 Quarks Daily Semi-Finalists Have Been Announced!

Sorry to be so late to the announcement party - my stupid, f-cking lovely computer has decided that it doesn't feel like connecting to the internets anymore, so I'm a little hard up for online time. Anyhoo, thank you to everyone who voted for Observations of a Nerd! Thanks to you, my post "Evolution: The Curious Case Of Dogs" has made it to the semi-final round. You can see all the other semi-finalists here. There's some stiff competition in there, notably from fellow generalist sci-blogger Ed Yong, my favorite botanist Margaret, and a slew of scibling like Scicurious, Jason Goldman, and…

Oy, the Passover dinner is going to be awkward this year

It's a standing joke that the most homophobic ranters are likely to turn up in the news some day getting their luggage lifted. As it turns out, though, some of them face a fate that's even sadder. Remember Jonathan Katz, the physicist who briefly held an advisory position with the Obama administration until his online essay declaring that he was proud to be a homophobe made the news? He raved about how homosexuality was simply disgusting and people with "unnatural desires" need to learn to repress them, for their own good and to prevent disease from spreading through the population. Surprise…

What shall we talk about?

This coming January I will have the pleasure of speaking at two discussion at Science Online '09; one on the history of science, and the other about using the web to teach science in college. You can have a look at the wiki pages for both talks here (history) and here (college science), but they will certainly change during the coming days and weeks. I want to make sure the things that I will be talking about with my esteemed colleagues will be interesting and relevant, so if you have any ideas about what you would like to be discussed during these sessions, please chime in via the comments.…

Confession: country music is motivating me

Okay, I need to confess. I usually peg myself as an indie/alternative/progressive/folkie music person. But I am really finding myself working well when I start playing the following playlist (care of the new Genius playlist on iTunes): Online - Brad Paisley Landslide - Dixie Chicks I Feel Lucky - Mary Chapin Carpenter If I had a boat - Lyle Lovett Rambler's Anthem - Yonder Mountain String Band There's Your Trouble - Dixie Chicks Baby, Now That I've Found You - Alison Krauss & Union Station Long Time Gone - Dixie Chicks That's Right (You're Not From Texas) - Lyle Lovett The Fox -…

JCB's Latest Online Feature: Biosights

The Journal of Cell Biology is one of my usual reads. Recently they've been adding extra features to their site that I really appreciate. A few months back they started a podcast, Biobytes, and now recently they have launched Biosights, a series of on online videos about research published in JCB. Incidentally the first clip from Biosights is on Allan Hall's latest paper describing how Cdc42, one of the coolest G-proteins in the cell, controls the axis of the mitotic spindle. (Yes Polarity - that same topic that I was telling you about a couple of days back.) Here is the first eddition of…

Harvard & Open Access

Harvard is to spearhead an Open Access Portal? We'll see after today's vote. From the NYTimes: Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish -- on the Web, at least -- free. Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs. Although the outcome of Tuesday's vote would apply only to…

Even at a conference, you've got to eat!

Hey, for those of you coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, don't forget to sign up for the dinners! There's one big group dinner on Friday, January 19, from 7 to 10 PM, and a bunch of group dinners on Saturday, January 20, right after the official conclusion of the conference. You know you'll have fun sharing a meal with other conference attendees, some of whom you may only know through the screen. Make a date to meet them in the three-dimensional world. For those of you who really like planning your trips, many of the restaurants in question have their menus…

The Benshi

Randy Olson, a scientist turned filmmaker (his film Flock of Dodos premiered at Tribeca and recently made the Smithsonian blog's list of ten great science films from the 2000s), opened up a new online journal this week where he explores the worlds of science and cinema called The Benshi. The title, as Olson explains, "refers to the tradition the Japanese developed with their silent films in which a humble, friendly little man -- 'the benshi' would stand beside the movie screen with a pointer and explain to the audience who the characters in the film were and what they were saying." Olson…

Power Trio, Holy Trinity? Lady Gaga, Twitter and Google

Consider the realm of influence of Twitter itself, as a Twitterer - if there is such a term. Twitter just celebrated its "5th birthday." Who is the CMO? In just over five years, @Twitter has sent 1,056 Tweets, has 4,675,494 followers, and follows 436 (if you measure "Klout," that's a lot of Klout.) This evening's Tweet was all about Lady Gaga: This is no coincidence. Google, that other multi-billion dollar media giant, happened to air an exclusive interview yesterday with this diva of Pop {"Musicians@Google Presents: Google Goes Gaga"}: Such an intersection of popular culture, online…

The Hold Steady at Brooklyn Bowl 12/2/16

There are only a couple of bands I'd drive a significant distance to see live, and now I've made the trip to NYC to see two of them. I went to see the Afghan Whigs in 2014, and this past Friday, I drove to Brooklyn for a Hold Steady show. And this time, I have a cool picture as a bonus... Me with Craig Finn of the Hold Steady. The origin of the picture, obviously, needs a little explaining. The current set of shows is a four-night stand (originally three, but they added one after the first three sold out) at the Brooklyn Bowl, reuniting with keyboardist Franz Nicolay for the 10th…

Stepping into Second Life

Since I'm an adjunct faculty member at a couple of community colleges, I'm able to delete most of my e-mail with barely a glance. But this one made my jaw drop! Dear Educators: Alliance Library System and LearningTimes are pleased to announce an exciting conference featuring science and virtual worlds. On January 30th we are "Stepping Into Science" and taking the day to explore the possibilities of using virtual worlds to learn about and teach science. The conference will be taking place entirely in Second Life and will feature a keynote and panel discussion as well as small breakout…

Internet as a source of scientific information

Pew Internet and American Life Project just issued a new report: The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science (pdf). It states that: Fully 87% of online users have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept and 40 million adults use the internet as their primary source of news and information about science. The report is chockful of statistics of great importance to us science bloggers. For instance: Each respondent to this survey received questions on one of three specific scientific topics: stem cell research, climate change,…

Quick check-in from NYC

Mrs.Coturnix and I arrived nicely in NYC last night and had a nice dinner at Heartland Brewery. This morning, we had breakfast at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where I ordered my pastry using a Serbian name for the cake, and the Albanian woman working in the Hungarian shop understood what I wanted! I forgot to bring my camera with me today, and Mrs.Coturnix did not bring her cable, so the pictures of the pastries will have to wait our return home. Then, Mrs.Coturnix went for a long walk (it was nice in the morning, got cold in the afternoon), ending up in the Met. I joined my co-panelists Jean-…

Friday Fun: Calling bullshit on social media

I'm still enjoying my informal, semi-serious, so-funny-it-hurts Friday Fun series on the slings and arrows of online social media/networking practices. The first three have been: 5 Signs You're Talking To A Social Media Douchebag 5 Terms Social Media Douchebags Need To Stop Using 5 Things Serious Tech People Need To Stop Tweeting This entry is probably the most serious and, oddly, the only one that doesn't revolve around the number 5. Anyways... Scott Berkun has a though-provoking list of things we should keep in mind when extolling the insane virtues of all that social networking and…

Get into the motion of the OCEAN!

I believe that most of my readers are very environmentally-conscious people. After all, how could you stand reading the ravings of a clearly tree-and-animal-hugging girl like me unless you had a soft spot for things that are green. So you all might like to know about a brand new, volunteer-based conservation group called OCEAN: the Online Community Environmental Action Network. Here's what OCEAN's creator, David Shiffman, had to say: I am proud to live in a time when more people care about protecting the environment than ever before. However, even with all of the amazing people working in…

The future of science publishing at SfN

Jake Young has written an excellent summary of a panel discussion he attended at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. I encourage you to read the whole thing, as it presents a fascinating interplay of the forces at work in academic publishing. But if Jake's synopsis is too much for you, here's a quick summary of the issues involved: The current "market-based" scholarly publishing system is primarily paid for by governments: Researchers and libraries get grants, and the grants pay for subscriptions to journals. This system limits access: not everyone has access to libraries, and not all…

John Barnes, Gaudeamus [Library of Babel]

In some ways, John Barnes's metafictional novel Gaudeamus is the proximate cause of the huge backlog in my book logging. I was more-or-less caught up at one point, but then stalled on this book, unable to think of what to say about it. I'm still not entirely clear on it, but I'm just going to bang some stuff out so that I can finally get the damn thing off my desk. I should start off by noting that Gaudeamus is definitely the work of the Good John Barnes, responsible for One for the Morning Glory, and not the Evil John Barnes who wrote Mother of Storms. That's a critically important…

So Just What Is Nature Doing???

Maxine Clarke commented on this blog: It might be an idea to read the Nature site before you opine. As I mentioned at the blog from which you found this information, Nature's mission statement was updated years ago and is available at the "about the journal" page free access. See http://www.nature.com/nature/about/index.html What has changed is that we have put in a correction to the original mission statement written in 1869. Try coming over and reading the source first, "then" write your post ;-) This is puzzling...surely if Nature had already updated its mission statement, it would not…

Online Prescription Records

Roy, writing at Shrink Rap, has a post about the prospect of online access to prescription records in the State of California.  The attorney general is proposing a database of all prescription records, that could be accessed by doctors and pharmacists.   href="http://psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.com/2008/06/online-access-to-prescription.html">Online Access to Prescription Medication History Posted by Roy at 8:02 AM I saw a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs5-2008jun05,0,2974326.story">headline this morning that the California attorney general is moving to provide…

HuffPo FAIL boat: Salmonella edition

Me: HAI GUYS! U NEED TO EAT GUD FUDS LIKE EGGS! EGGS ARE GUD AND CHEEP! LOL! YAY EAT EGGS U GET ABS LIKE ABS LOL! News: Salmonella outbreak in eggs, Massive recalls Me: FUUUUUUUUUU...... News: lol. But thats not the only reason I bring this up. SciBlogs 'special' friend, HuffPo, scavenged an article from AP, which noted that one of the reasons why this salmonella-in-eggs recall is so epic, is because the US government doesnt require hens be vaccinated against salmonella. I thought this was neat info, and it turns out the eggs I normally buy do vaccinate their hens ($2.35 a dozen -0.35…

Ubuntu for your parents, uncles and aunts. No tech support anymore!

During my visit to India last month, I promised myself that I would accomplish one important task. I would do everything in my power to eliminate the tech support role that I was playing to my parents. You see, my parents had inherited (ah, sweet pun) a desktop computer from me and in my absence had taken the help of local young men who gleefully installed Microsoft Windows software (pirated, of course). Pirated software, you must realize, is like getting a new pair of shoes with godawful bugs in them. They bite and you can't ask for help from the seller or go to a qualified doctor. My…

Techbros are hilarious

No, really, they are. Hipster libertarians are the new street mimes, so enjoy them while you can before everyone gets tired of them. The latest example is this silicon valley entrepreneur, Rob Rhineheart, who has written a paean to his lifestyle. It starts with a complaint about the horrors of alternating current. The walls are buzzing. I know this because I have a magnet implanted in my hand and whenever I reach near an outlet I can feel them. I can feel fortresses of industry miles away burning prehistoric hydrocarbons by the megaton. I can feel the searing pain and loss of consciousness…

Medicine and Brain Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. This week's Medicine & Health photo was kindly submitted by one of our own bloggers, the Neurophilospher. Brain & Behavior. The blurred colors of plastic Easter eggs. From Flickr, by josef.stuefer Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Gaetan Lee Reader comments of the week: On the Medicine & Health channel, Orac discusses a contentious issue, sure to become more prominent as more parents buy into anti-vaccinationist…

Open Lab 2007 reviewed in Nature

Today's issue of Nature contains a short review of Open Lab 2007, and the article includes a brief mention of my contribution to the book: The editor of this second anthology of the best scientific communiqu's from the blogosphere thinks blogs offer new ways to discuss science. The Open Laboratory 2007: the Best Science Writing on Blogs (Lulu.com, 2008) takes the curious approach of using dead tree format to highlight the diversity of scientific ideas, opinions and voices flowing across the Internet. Every year a different guest editor - here Reed Cartwright, a blogger and genetics and…

Links 4/30/11

Links for you. Science: More deconstruction of the "tyranny" of excessive reviewer demands for more experiments Armadillos Can Transmit Leprosy to Humans, Federal Researchers Confirm Other: Female physicians make less money than male doctors, here's why (truly, no good deed goes unpunished) Health reform will drive up ER visits, like it did in Massachusetts (Romneycare beats no care, but it still sucks) Policy in an age of post-truth politics (while I don't buy the notion that we're in some 'new era', the political strategy is dead on target) A Book Store. That's Right. Book, Singular. The…

Radio, blogs and The Book

Well, as I said before, the end of the Conference/Anthology whirlwind is also a return to my Dissertation writing (and a lowering of my output here). But I had to procrastinate just a little bit more - I just gave a very pleasant 30-minute interview for the Asheville (NC) community radio station about blogging, science-blogging and everything else (including the Conference and a pitch for the anthology), as a part of their Tips For Political Bloggers series. The interviewer is Paul of the Brainshrub blog. It will appear on his site next Monday morning and will air on Monday evening - I…

Stuck in Vegas? Go to Red Rock Canyon

No, the Denialism Blog is not my personal travel blog, although it might seem that way lately. I was in Guatemala last month, where I encountered dirty hippies and woo, and learned about a new religion called new age. This week, I was at the Consumer Electronics Show doing a consulting gig for a large software company. CES is amazing--140,000 attendees, 2,700 exhibits. It's like being at the biggest Best Buy evar. I saw a 150" HD plasma television, with pandas on the screen, the smallest bluetooth headsets imaginable, neat location-aware devices, etc. Perhaps the most difficult…

HuffPo flops again

Whenever the Huffington Post brings up a science-related issue, I just cringe. It's Jim Carrey or Deepak Chopra or some other celebrity incompetent babbling out some nonsense — it's like the site editors have no B.S. detectors at all. Well, now they've really done it: they've got some quack named Kim Evans piggy-backing on the recent concerns about a pandemic to offer her own remedies: Got the swine flu? Treat it with an enema. And great dog in heaven, they've got another quack touting chiropractic as a treatment for swine flu. Of course, it's not just the liberal-leaning Huffpo — every day,…

Science of Harry Potter

Both Eva and Anne-Marie have started a series of posts about the Science of Harry Potter, focusing on the genetics (i.e., patterns of inheritance) of wizardry vs. muggleness. Anne-Marie has already moved on to the second part of her series, on dragons. It will be interesting to watch what these two come up with over the next few posts in their series. I have to say that I have been too busy and have yet to see the new movie (The Order of the Phoenix), but will try to see it soon. Also, my two copies of the book #7 will arrive in Chapel Hill on the 21st and I am wondering if I should buy a…

Global Heating Will Cook People, Too

Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, according to James Lovelock, a leading expert who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism. Lovelock warned that as the climate warms, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million. Given the dire situation we face, Lovelock urged people to drop the phrase "global warming," which has cosy connotations, and instead start to think of it as "global heating." He also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the…

Those wacky Russians

Maybe "wacky" isn't the right word — if you read through this collection of Russian jokes translated by Mark Perakh, you might find some are fairly funny, others are completely opaque and strange, and others drop with a leaden thump. One common seems to be finding a kind of morose humor in misery. Having a strange sense of humor is the only way I can explain this: Pravda, the Weekly World News of Russia, has an article explaining Intelligent Design creationism, which fits right in with their usual fare of UFOs, girls in swimsuits, devils, and muscular bronze stallions with weird human…

035/366: Trike Rack

Another fall day, another holiday closing at the JCC. I was home with The Pip for most of the day, which was the usual mix of fun, exhausting, and puzzling. For example, while I offered several times to go out to a playground before lunch, he refused. But then insisted that we walk to the store to buy... something. I got this picture with my phone: The Pip's bike in the rack at the Co-Op. Because it amused me to see a bike rack with just a little red tricycle in it. We did go to a couple of playgrounds later, and I shot some video that I'll use for physics-y stuff at some point. But this…

How much better are cameras?

Cameras, CCDs, prisms, grisms, etc., are all some of the instruments that can go on top of telescopes to help us see things better. We haven't really increased the size of telescopes so much as we have the quality and ability of the apparatus that go atop them. Take a look at various pictures I've stolen off the web, all taken by (avid) amateur astronomers in different years. The pictures are of M81 and M82, two galaxies in a group that make up possibly the nearest cluster of galaxies outside of the local group. (The closest is either the M81 group, the Centaurus group, or the IC 342 group.)…

Sandefur on Amar

Timothy Sandefur has the first in what will be a series of posts by all of us at Positive Liberty about Akhil Amar's new book, America's Constitution: A Biography. Sandefur was kind enough to buy copies of this book and send them to me, Jon and Jason so we could all read it and comment on it. I'm still only about 1/4 of the way through the book so it may be a while before I add much of substance to the discussion, but I agree with Sandefur's overall endorsement of Amar's work. There are areas where I strongly disagree with him, but there is no question that he is among our finest…

Holiday Shopping Suggestion

A friend of mine who is an excellent writer and critic, fellow blogger and social scientist, is trying to make ends meet by enhancing sales at the family business. Distracted by other things, I didn't know about this until this morning. Welcome to Howling Pig, the uncommon soap company for uncommon people. Our soaps (and stuff) are for those who know that life is not just about getting by, soap is not just about getting clean, and smelling good is the best revenge. Each of our scents is unique, evocative, and memorable, created with passion to engage your senses and inspire your soul. We…

Washington DC meetup!

Hey, everyone, I said I was going to be in Washington DC this weekend, with the notorious Phil Plait. We've compared notes and figured out our schedules, and are ready to announce a time and place for a general meetup: 9pm, Saturday, 10 November at the Senators Sports Bar at Holiday Inn on the Hill (here's a map). There may be some other infamous bloggers on hand, too — we'll invite them, but well, you know, this is going to be a gathering of High Nerddom, and it may be a bit intimidating to normal people. Now go vote for Bad Astronomy for Best Science Blog. He's behind that front for…

Important World Cup Updates

The US managed to survive yet another appalling lapse of officiating and beat Algeria 1-0 on a goal in stoppage time. Simultaneously (in some frame of reference), England beat Slovenia 1-0. With South Korea advancing yesterday, countries with current or forthcoming editions of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog are 3-0 when it comes to advancing past group play. Meanwhile, France, where rights have not yet sold, was eliminated. I'm also happy to report that Spanish translation rights have been sold, and a translation is in progress, so Spain can go into their final group play game without…

Page Numbers!

This is clearly the result of my earlier blog post. Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class. Rather than add page numbers that don't correspond to print books, which is how page numbers have been added to e-books in the past, we're adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book's print edition. We've already added real page numbers to tens of thousands of Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle…

Rescued from the spam-file (kind of).

Left by a self-proclaimed "fitness specialist" and "trainer of personal trainers" (along with all manner of contact information) as a comment on this post: Isn't it amazing that someone like Darwin is celebrated for his thoughts. Evolution is bunk! I am not a creationist either. But to evolve an animal had to make a conscious decision. An example: a fish had to decide that land was the next place it was going to make its home. How many fish had to make that decision and how many realized they would have to die before their gills evolved into lungs? Yet there are people who actually believe…

Best Buy will Sell Linux Computers

The Asus Eee Laptops being sold by Best Buy come featured with an Intel Celeron M Processor, 512 MB of DDR2 memory, 7" widescreen display, 4GB solid state drive, built-in webcam, and the Linux operating system. Weighing in at only 2lbs, the laptop is great for day-to-day traveling. The hardware might not seem much, if you're used to the high demands of a Windows-based PC, but for Linux, 512 MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive is plenty. You won't be using the laptop for much server-based work or playing any 3D accelerated games, but that's not what the laptop is about. It's about having e-mail…

Skloot, "Immortal Life" Featured on "Fresh Air" Today

Be sure to catch Fresh Air whenever it airs in your local market to day, or catch the podcast. Rebecca Skloot is on today, talking about her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which, as I hope you know, is released today. And I hope you pre-ordered your copy already. Fresh Air is on at 3 pm and again at 7 pm in Philly - can't wait! UPDATE: Terry Gross may just be the perfect person to interview Rebecca Skloot, who is wonderfully telling the story of Henrietta Lacks, and of how she came to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks. If you don't get to listen to Fresh Air on the radio,…

Hey Canada

Since Canadians seem to have an obsession with American health care policy (a nation of Ezra Kleins?), I thought I would pass along this weird Intrade screenshot: OK, I assume my liberal readers have cleaned themselves up after seeing that screenshot. I check Intrade as part of my "morning reads" and I really don 't know what's going on here, the health care prices have been between 20 and 50 for all of 2010, and usually between 30 and 40. Perhaps a speculative bubble driven by the magic of Obama's voice? Or Democratic staffers with "inside knowledge" starting buy up shares because they knew…

#scio10 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Session: Engaging Underrepresented Groups in Online Science Media

Next weekend at ScienceOnline2010, I'll be co-moderating a session on encouraging scientists and science trainees from underrepresented groups to participate in social media. I will be working with Damond Nollan, a social media specialist and Web Services Manager at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). Damond is the author of the aptly-titled blog, In The Mind of Damond Nollan. The whys and hows are what we hope to discuss in the outline below. The reason for calling this the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Session stems from the fact that this conference has been held for the last four…

Never Say Goodbye: Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly

tags: Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly, Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis, Joel Sartore, National Geographic, image of the day Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis) 4,300 (Estimated 300 wild and 4,000 captive). Image: Joel Sartore/National Geographic. [larger view]. Wikipedia writes; The Palos Verdes Blue butterfly is a small endangered butterfly native to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwest Los Angeles County, California. As its distribution has been proven to be limited to one single site it has one of the best claims to being the world's rarest…

Friday Fun: The Top 10 Types of Douchebags in Tech and How NOT to be one

This one's pretty funny, but in a painful way. I'm sure this one rings true for a lot of people out there. I like Number 8: 8.) Self-Entitled Social-Media HotShots Who You Are: Your license plate reads "SCLEXPT". You spend all day teaching computer illiterate people how to create a facebook pages and twitter logins and you mock anyone who doesn't spend three hours a day updating their FB status or tweeting photos of their lunch. You have about as much "expertise" as 24-hour online certified priests, but tout your "knowledge" like a peacock on parade. What's the Remedy: Make somebody money…

ConvergeSouth - it is apolitical

When Ed announced that Elizabeth Edwards is coming to ConvergeSouth to lead a session about buidling online communities, a bunch of Republican commenters on his blog announced they are not going to show up because of her and found it hard (some, not all of them) to be persuaded that the conference is apolitical and that Elizabeth Edwards has more than one aspect to her - she is not just a Democrat, she is also a mother, a cancer survivor, a book author, a wife of a famous person, and an early adopter of online technology. In the end, Elizabeth herself showed up in the comments and explained…

Yum, genetically engineered plants!

Here's a good science blog you can help: Biofortified, a group blog on plant genetics and genetic engineering (and, by the way, Sb's recent addition, Pamela Ronald, is part of the team). They are in a contest to win a small cash grant and an interview with Michael Pollan, and this group is thoroughly deserving — Biofortified is kind of the Panda's Thumb of plant genetic engineering. Unfortunately, they're in second place right now, trailing an anti-genetic engineering, industry sponsored site, and they need more votes to win. You can help out! To do so, though, is a little more cumbersome…