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Richard Dawkins, The Economist & bylines

The Economist has a review up of a book about Richard Dawkins' influence, The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy. But it would really be nice to know who wrote something like this: Her argument that the selfish-gene model is being superseded by other forms of evolutionary explanation relies on an overinterpretation of those alternatives. In disputed areas of science perspective matters, and who someone is is a critical part of the information in judging their argument. I'm assuming this book review was written by someone who knows some evolutionary biology, in fact,…

How to make your own robot

Want to make your own robot? You can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. Or, both, if you like. The basic home made robot is a robot because it moves around, and the way that is usually achieved is with two independently powered wheels, a third wheel (or something) to balance the thing, an energy source, some logic circuitry, some sensors, and some sort of remote control. You can learn how all these technologies work, buy the various parts, put them together, program it, and have your own robot. Or, you can just get one of these guys, and you're nearly done. The robot…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jack, Staten Island Academy student

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Jack from Miss Baker's Biology class at Staten Island Academy, to answer a few questions. Jack wrote about his experience at ScienceOnline2010 here and wrote a blog post about video/computer games here. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you,…

Manley: Climate and the British Scene

From the department for historical research. I happened to be in the Oxfam bookshop trying to empty our house, when I looked down and saw this in the pile of new arrivals. It hadn't been priced but they took a fiver for it, which seems fair enough. Its a very British-meteorologist book, you can practically see him puffing on his pipe as he writes it. I am, of course, going to skip over all the nice climate and weather stuff, and look at the climate change, much to his dismay. Manley factoid: he is buried in Coton churchyard. You can read a few pages I've uploaded if you like, but you're…

The Real Threat to the Humanities

Among the side effects of all the asinine hand-wringing over the phony problem of “scientism” is that it distracts attention from the real threat facing the humanities. I am referring to the corporate mindset that has come to dominate many aspects of higher education. That threat is on full display in the current fracas at the University of Virginia, where the Board ousted the popular President, basically because she wasn't moving fast enough to gut the humanities. HuffPo has a useful run-down: Members of the board, steeped in a culture of corporate jargon and buzzy management theories,…

Deflategate: The Final Chapter

The low-level cold I've been nursing for a month now finally exploded into the full unpleasantness of my usual winter illness Saturday, or else I would've been more active following up on my Deflategate article and my ideal gas law post. As it was, for most of the day, I could barely keep on top of clearing comments from moderation. Anyway, a few things deserve more prominent responses than a comment at the end of a long post, so: -- I was in bed during the great Bill Belichick press conference, though I saw some mockery of it come across Twitter. While it may not have played well with the…

Poultry Addicts of the World, Unite!

"It is soooo hard to wait, Mom!" Isaiah is seven years old and when you are seven, uncertainty is torture. He asks me when the mail will get here 20 times a day, and can he go out and wait for the mail truck? I point out that it is 4 degrees F out there, and the mail won't be here for three hours, but he and his youngest brother still go out until the cold drives them back. What's he waiting for? Not birthday presents or toys, he's waiting for the Murray McMurray hatchery catalog to come in the mail. Isaiah, you see, is a poultry addict, and his addiction is all my fault. Last year we…

From the Archives: E-Science, Science 2.0, Open Science

During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from September 3, 2008. There was some nice discussion on Friendfeed that's worth checking out. ===== Some recent posts that got me thinking about various escience/science 2.0/open science issues: First, Christina gets us rolling with some definitions: So I'm asking and proposing that e-science is grid computing - using distributed computing power to do new computational methods in other areas of science (not in CS but in Astro, in bio,…

Social media evangelism

It's that time of the year. Spots for ScienceOnline are a hotter commodity than Justin Bieber concert tickets amongst the pre-teen crowd; The Open Laboratory 2011 has just come out in print; and academics are discussing the utility of social media in full force. This topic has long been an interest of mine; with Shelley Batts and Nick Anthis, I even wrote a peer-reviewed paper on the topic way back in 2008. And it's fresh on my mind, as last week I braved the world of the University of Iowa's Internal Medicine Grand Rounds to discuss "Social Media and Medicine," evangelizing for social media…

ScienceOnline'09: Interview with Miriam Goldstein

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Miriam Goldstein of the Oyster's Garter blog to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I am a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. I write…

Sidr hearsay blogging

Just talked to my mother today and she phoned relatives in Dhaka. Everything is OK, electricity is coming back online. She seemed dismissive of the idea when I asked if it was all well in the rural areas where some of my distant relatives live; it wasn't that big of a deal. On the other hand a cousin married a man whose family is from Barisal. Her husband went to check out the situation (family has estates and properties around the Sundbarbans) which was in the path of the storm, and it wasn't as pretty there as everything had been blasted away and tossed around. The main aim of my call…

Around the Web: The device wars, Feudalism knowledge, The wrong kind of Open Access and more

Seniors, Women Embracing Tablets, E-Readers Open access to scientific knowledge and feudalism knowledge: Is there a connection? I Got the Wrong Request from the Wrong Journal to Review the Wrong Piece. The Wrong kind of Open Access Apparently, Something Wrong with this Inherently... Do More, Own Less: A Grand Theory of the Sharing Economy Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment Has Failed? A way forward on reformatting conferences Five Hard Truths About Blogging Social Media - Oversold and Undervalued Collections are library assets The Internet of things will…

An Innovative Use of Twitter: monitoring fish catch! Now published.

A few months ago, I posted about a very innovative way of using Twitter in science - monitoring fish catch by commercial fishermen. The first phase of the study is now complete and the results are published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 2009; 1: 143-154: Description and Initial Evaluation of a Text Message Based Reporting Method for Marine Recreational Anglers (PDF) by M. Scott Baker Jr. and Ian Oeschger. It is relatively short and easy to read, so I recommend you take a look. The next phase will continue with the program, with…

Welcome to EveryONE

EveryONE? What's that? It is the new PLoS ONE community blog: Why a blog and why now? As of March 2009, PLoS ONE, the peer-reviewed open-access journal for all scientific and medical research, has published over 5,000 articles, representing the work of over 30,000 authors and co-authors, and receives over 160,000 unique visitors per month. That's a good sized online community and we thought it was about time that you had a blog to call your own. This blog is for authors who have published with us and for users who haven't and it contains something for everyone. Just launched, this blog will…

US attacks ... Syria?

Obviously a careful anti-insurgent action, not likely an invasion of Syria. People online think of it as a possible October Surprise. But I think that that at this point, no matter what the GOP tries to do will be only seen as a gimmick to help McCain. Any attempt at an October Surprise by them will be seen as such and will backfire. And I think they realize this. Thus, I don't think this has anything to do with the election, but the military identified with 100% certainty a post, just inside the Syria-Iraq border, from where insurgents organized their attacks, targeted them precisely,…

Strikes a chord....

Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord: It's the most famous chord in rock 'n' roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison's 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follows: It's been a hard day's night And I've been working like a dog The opening chord to A Hard Day's Night is also famous because for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing. Musicians, scholars and amateur guitar players alike had all come up with their own theories, but it took a…

Triangle Research Libraries Network Launches New Search Function

From the Library Journal: The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) pioneered the nation's first consortial online catalog back in the 1980s, and this week, took that legacy a step further with the launch of "Search TRLN", which officials say adds "next-generation search capabilities" to the consortium's combined collection of 16 million volumes. Search TRLN, is a new single-interface discovery tool, enabling users to search across the entire collections of the four member institutions: Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and the…

Get SCIENCE's Influenza Issue - FREE!

Today's issue of the top-tier journal, Science, has a special online portal to its current issue about influenza, including several excellent articles about avian influenza. This issue is free to the public if you register with them. This issue includes; A complete guide and free access to the 21 April 2006 special issue, including articles on antivirals and vaccines, flu transmission, flu biology, and flu preparation -- along with an accompanying podcast. A collection of recent Science News, Review, Perspective, and Research articles on influenza, the potential for a new pandemic, and the…

Clas Tollin on 12th Century Land Ownership

The former Cistercian abbey of Alvastra in 1639. My brother in arms against pomo nonsense, human/cultural geographer Clas Tollin, has put half the manuscript of his forthcoming book on-line beforehand (fully illustrated, in Swedish). The title is StorgÃ¥rdar, egenkyrkor och sockenbildning i Omberg-TÃ¥kernomrÃ¥det under Ã¤ldre medeltid, "Manorial farms, private churches and the genesis of parishes in the Omberg-TÃ¥kern area in the Early Middle Ages". (These are the Swedish Early Middle Ages, dating from about AD 1100 to 1250.) Hugely useful to me as I'm doing fieldwork and writing about the…

Three Good Albums

Three good albums, listened to in the car when driving to & fro the Djurhamn dig. Silverbullit, Arclight (2004). This is dark and Gothamesque rock, sort of the Cure + the Stooges + Kraftwerk. The band searched high and low until they found a drummer who could and would play like a drum machine. One of the best Swedish records of the decade. Olivia Tremor Control, Black Foliage (1999). The Pet Sounds era Beach Boys discover musique concrète just as the water supply becomes heavily contaminated with mescaline. Completely otherworldly yet drenched in the sweetest vocal harmony. Skip Regan…

Sorted Newsfeed in Swedish

Printed newspaper are crap. The news in them is old, you still get entire multipage sections that you don't want, they use up trees and gasoline, they crowd your mailbox and you have to dispose of them after reading them. And they cost money! News should be read on-line, preferably with an RSS reader. (I use Google's). Now, here's something for my Swedish readers. The country's main newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, currently don't offer a finely sorted selection of thematic RSS feeds. If I want the main international news headings from them, then I have to put up with a load…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The fifty-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Clashing Culture. Archaeology and anthropology, and all from the perspective of mashpi'im! Mashpia (Hebrew: ××©×¤××¢â) lit. "person of influence," pl. Mashpi'im (Hebrew: ××©×¤××¢××â) is the title of a rabbi or rebbetzin who serves as a spiritual mentor in Tomchei Temimim (the Chabad yeshiva), in a girls' seminary belonging to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, or in a Chabad community. Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me, not to the old submissions address. The next open hosting slot is on 19 November. All…

ScienceBlogs Showcase

The forthcoming issue of Seed will include a big spread on ScienceBlogs, and the online version is already up. They got pictures of all the bloggers (with stand-ins for the pseudonymous), and turned a caricature artist loose on us, leading to the motley mob scene at the top of that page. The cartoon will be in the magazine, along with excerpts from some particularly interesting blog posts, which are listed at the lower right of that page. I haven't seen the print magazine yet, so I don't know exactly what form it will take, but I'm happy to see that one of my posts made the list. Given that…

Uncertain Dots 22

After a long absence due to travel (some of which is discussed), Uncertain dots returns! Rhett and I talk about recent travels, how people going into internet-based physics outreach these days would probably do better to make videos than blog, physics in science fiction, celestial navigation, and as always, our current courses. Some links: -- Our Eratosthenes measurement from 2012. -- Divided by Infinity, the best Many-Worlds story ever. -- Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" isn't legitimately available online, but there's a spoilery Wikipedia page about it. -- An old post where I talk about…

New Ant Maps!

Benoit Guenard has been hard at work the past couple years compiling broad-scale distribution data for all the world's ants, and his efforts are now online.Â Here they are- global range maps for all the ant genera: http://www.antmacroecology.org/ant_genera/index.html These maps will be a very useful resource, especially if the myrmecological community participates to add new records and vet the occasional error. One thought, though, is that large umbrella strategies such as this will eventually be redundant with antweb.org. Â Antweb's distributions are built from accumulated individual…

Tune in to the evolution of music & sociability

Yesterday's Sunday Feature on BBC Radio 3 was program about the evolution of music, by Ivan Hewitt. It isn't available online yet, but should be uploaded onto the Sunday Feature page soon, and will remain there for a week. The progam features linguist Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who argues that music is a kind of evolutionary by-product, and anthropologist and cognitive archaeologist Steven Mithen from the University of Reading in the UK, who believes it was fundamental to human evolution. And on NPR, there's an interview with husband-and-wife primatologists Dorothy Cheney and…

AGU Epilogue 3: Presentations now online

Four of the five presentations from last week's American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting panel discussion, "Defining and Protecting the Integrity of Science: New Challenges for the 21st Century," are now online. Peter Gleick President, Pacific Institute (presiding); “The Integrity of Science: Identifying Logical Fallacies, Deceitful Tactics, and Abuse of the Public Trust” (PDF) Judith Curry Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology “Falling out of the Ivory Tower: a Case Study of Mixing Hurricane Science, Politics, and the…

I Don't Like My Philips Shaver

After about twelve years of regular use my Braun 5515 sounded like a chainsaw, so I decided to buy a new electric shaver. Mind you, I had repeatedly replaced all the bits I could: the mesh, often; the knife, several times; once even the accumulator pack. But I figured that having someone replace the worn-out bearings (Sw. lager) of the motor would be more expensive than getting a new shaver. I poked around on the net, looked at reviews and ordered a mid-price Philips HQ7360/17. The two shavers look pretty different. The Braun is designed to move only to and fro along one axis, preferably…

Friday Sprog Blogging: scare-owls.

Elder offspring: Owls in zoos are kind of weird. Dr. Free-Ride: How do you mean? Elder offspring: Well, owls are nocturnal, but zoos are usually just open during the day. Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm, so either the owls are sleeping, or they're awake but they're not too happy about it? Elder offspring: Yeah. Dr. Free-Ride: I guess it's possible that they adjust to a diurnal schedule in the zoo so they don't miss their meals. And I bet a lot of the sleeping ones get woken up by people walking by their enclosures saying, "Whoo! Whoo!" Elder offspring: Who would say "Whoo! Whoo!" to a sleeping owl?…

Goodbye to false balance over vaccines and autism! May you stay gone!

I realize that Chris Mooney is a polarizing figure here on the ol' ScienceBlogs, but I have to give him props for doing a damned fine job handling questions about vaccines, autism, and Andrew Wakefield's utterly discredited 1998 Lancet study, which was retracted by the Lancet's editors last week: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy I wish I could say the same thing for Nancy Snyderman. Although she was mostly right, I cringed--big time--when she insisted that there are no studies that show a link between vaccines and autism. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!…

Laying the cluestick on DaveScot over dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer

I know, I know, I said last time that I probably wouldn't post on dichloroacetate and the hype some of the more credulous parts of the blogosphere are falling for over its being supposedly a "cancer cure" that big pharma is either willfully ignoring or actively suppressing. However, when DaveScot and the sycophants on Uncommon Descent join in with the "cure for cancer" hype and conspiracy-mongering (with apparently only one voice of reason trying to counter DaveScot's cluelessness), it's really, really hard for me to resist the urge to introduce the mutual admiration society over at UD to a…

Best job, worst job

By the time I leave work at the end of the day I feel like I've been run over. I don't do anything particularly stressful or demanding while sitting at my desk but by 3:00 I feel utterly drained. For the past several years my workspace has been a grey cubicle piled high with so many documents that I'm not entirely sure why most of them are important anymore, the constant hum of the computer and headache-induced fluorescent lights slowly wearing me down over the course of the day. Even if I swivel my chair around I can't even look out someone else's window; after 8 hours in my artificial…

Books I'd Like to Read

More for your reading and collection development pleasure. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu (ISBN-13: 978-0307269935) As Wu's sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century--radio, telephone, television, and film--was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive…

The Domestic Apocalyptic Goddess of Doom Summer Reading List

Summer is just about here, and you need some summer reading. Light. Fuzzy. Delightful. Amusing. Perfect for the deck chair or the sand. Nevermind the fact that you are a low-energy, transitioning, cheap, homseteading type, and your deck chair is probably planted on your porch, and the sand is the local playground sandpit - hey, it is summer, you've got to kick back with a book. But what book? The contemporary equivalent of _The Devil Wears Prada_ isn't exactly the stuff of anti-consumerist legend. He may not be that into you, but since really you are both into your garden, who gives…

Glenn Beck: He's Not a Propagandist, He's Crazy

When rightwing CNN host Glenn Beck went Full Metal Godwin on Al Gore, I figured this was just garden-variety rightwing agitprop. But this post at Slacktivist about the "Left Behind" apocalyptic book series, by way of ScienceBlogling Josh, convinces me that Beck is just a flat out nutjob. From an interview between Beck and 'apocalyptic' writer Joel Rosenberg: It's clear throughout the interview that CNN host Glenn Beck is more than a casual observer of LaHaye's books. He's a true believer. Consider this odd rant about EZ-Pass -- it's not the work of a tourist or outsider, but of a PMD […

Oregon Court Reinstates Regulatory Takings Law

Those who are interested in eminent domain and takings law will be interested in this. The Oregon Supreme Court has reversed a lower court and upheld Measure 37, a law passed in that state by referendum that required the government to compensate property owners not only for the seizure of property but also for the reduced value of their property that might result from regulatory law. Last year, a state judge had struck down the measure in what was surely one of the strangest decisions I've ever read. Measure 37 said the following: (1) If a public entity enacts or enforces a new land use…

Summary of Best Science Writing of 2006 Book Signing

So I went to the book signing last night for the Best American Science Writing 2006, and it was really interesting so I want to plug this book. In attendance were Jesse Cohen, the series editor, as well as authors Paul Bloom, Dennis Overbye, and Johnathan Weiner. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but Dennis Overbye wrote about a convention for time travelers at MIT. Johnathan Weiner wrote about a weird syndrome of combined neurodegenerative diseases that occurs in a cluster on Guam -- possibly because they like to eat bats. My favorite, however, was Paul Bloom -- a psychology…

Oh M'Gosh! Black Cohosh Squashed and That's No Bosh!

A new study of 351 women aged 45-55 and suffering from perimenopausal hot flashes found the taking the popular dietary supplement black cohosh (Popular? Well, now I wouldn't say that. Alcohol, cigarettes and anti-depressants are popular. I don't see anybody spending a billion or two on media ads for this stuff...) was no more effective than placebo in reducing the number of episodes per day. The yearlong study of 351 women suffering from hot flashes and night sweats found that those given black cohosh got about the same amount of relief as those who took a placebo. And those groups saw…

The Guilty Language of Offsets

In NewScientist today, there is a little article that describes the different types of carbon offsets you can purchase. It's not too informative and I much prefer articles with a little more of a critical eye, such as this 2007 piece in BusinessWeek or this piece from the NYTimes blog on confusing carbon labels. (By the way, be sure to check out the UK offset parody Cheat Neutral). Truth is, I have been bored by carbon offsets for ages (ever since I did my master's related to carbon trading--back in 2002, when they were still calling it 'carbon sequestration' and the concept had not yet…

The Seattle Times puts MRSA database on-line and gets results from the state

I'm sure everyone else thinks the big news today is the announcement by the Washington State Health department requiring hospitals to report MRSA cases to the state. I think the cool news is their on-line database. We'll get to that a bit later. What is MRSA? MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a serious pathogen that causes skin infections and greater damage if it enters the body. The Seattle Times report - a quick summary For the past three days the Seattle Times has been running a series on hospital-acquired cases of MRSA. According to the report, 6…

Links for 2010-12-03

Cocktail Party Physics: books, books, books galore! "A couple of weeks ago, an editor asked me to name my favorite science book from 2010 for a year-end round-up her magazine was putting together. My incredulous response: "You mean you want me to pick just one?" Because let's face it, 2010 has been a banner year for popular science books. [...] The steady stream of science books hasn't stopped, either, so I thought I'd highlight just a few of the new offerings (mostly math and physics related) that came out this fall -- just in case you're looking for the perfect gift for the science…

What is Open Access and How Should We Pay for It?

Bill Hooker has taken Nature editor Maxine Clark to task for her claims about the open access status of the online features offered by the Nature Publishing Group. Maxine points to the various free online services offered by Nature -- including Nature Precedings, Nature Reports, Nature Network, Scintilla, and the journal Molecular Systems Biology -- in claiming that Nature has "many open access projects and products". Bill disagrees. You should read his entire post, but the punchline is that Clark is redefining Open Access to fit Nature's model and to be used as a marketing device. A big…

The Zitteliana pterosaur special

Long-time readers will recall my few articles about the Peter Wellnhofer pterosaur meeting [see links below], held at the Bayerische Staatssammlung fÃ¼r PalÃ¤ontologie und Geologie (Bavarian State Palaeontological Collection - BSPG) in Munich in 2007. The meeting, organised by Dr Dave Hone, was attended by most of the world's pterosaur workers, and was planned to be the first in a series of regular events (the next pterosaur meeting is due for 2010, and will be held in Beijing). The plan back in 2007 was to produce a special tribute volume of the BSPG's in-house technical journal (Zitteliana…

Sex or love: When your partner is unfaithful, what hurts the most?

Imagine you learned your romantic partner was unfaithful to you. Would you be more upset if he or she had sex with someone else, or if they had fallen in love with someone else? Several studies have found that the answer to that question depends on the your gender. Women say they would be more upset if their partner was in love with someone else, but men say they would be more upset if their partner was having sex with someone else. Why the difference? There are a couple explanations. One relies on natural selection: It's important to men to know their genes are being passed on, so sexual…

Grad School Fosters Depression; How to Fight It

The Feb. 20th Chronicle Review has a set of articles about grad school life. The statistics on how grad school cultivates and enhances depression and mental illness are, well, depressing. But if you are or ever have been a graduate student, you knew that already. Studies have found that graduate school is not a particularly healthy place. At the University of California at Berkeley, 67 percent of graduate students said they had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54 percent felt so depressed they had a hard time functioning; and nearly 10 percent said they had considered suicide…

Watch Your Shoes! Interview with Suzanne Franks

Suzanne Franks, better known online as Zuska is a SciBling you do not want to make mad with mysogynist sentiments! At the second Science Blogging Conference in January she co-moderated a panel on Gender and Race in Science: online and offline. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real World job? Well, right now I have no Real World Job because chronic migraines make it impossible for me to hold down a job. My education includes a PhD in biomedical engineering and…

Around the Web: Cults of librarian personalities, Undergrads as first class citizens and more

Cults of Librarian Personalities Let's upgrade undergrads to first-class citizens Libraries and the informational future: some notes Librarians Respond to DPLA Launch Marketing Libraries Is like Marketing Mayonnaise The Sibyl of Cumae (OA/costs of schol comm) A matter of emphasis (librarians must read this post) Send Me the Check That You Would Have Sent to Consultants This Year Mash-Up This! Science Communication’s Image Problem Social Media for Science Outreach – A Case Study: The Incubator Blog at Rockefeller University Ebook anxieties increase as publishing revolution rolls on (2nd hand…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, August 9

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring seven recent ScienceBlogs posts with you, well, these would be the ones to choose. "Extra Special K?" This just in: treatment-refractive depressives respond reall well to...ketamine!? "Where's the threshold for action?" Kevin Vranes on why overwhelming scientific consensus alone isn't enough to spur action. "In the Beginning There Was .. The Big Bang" Artist and biologist John Kyrk has created flash animations of biological events great and small. "Cabinets of Curiosity" Because 'wunderkammer' is just about the best word there…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - a cop-out again, and 15 minutes late...

I was in the middle of writing a serious review of a paper meant for Friday Weird Sex Blogging, when reading this paralized me (hopefully only transiently and I will finish it by next week). So, when in trouble, I can always go back to Physics Of Sex and see if Buzz has someting new up. And he does. Is the Select Comfort air mattress good for sex? To answer that question, a good scientist performs an experiment. The Brownian motion of bar-hopping is something you need to know about if you are single and on the dating scene (thank FSM I am not, and hopefully never will have to be again). And…

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