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Faitheist wins Templeton prize

Another year goes by, and yet again the Templetonians have failed to throw a million pounds at me. I feel the same way I do when they announce the Powerball lottery winners and my ticket isn't among the winners — of course, I never buy lottery tickets anyway, but that just makes the analogy even more perfect. The word for the seething emotional and intellectual turmoil I'm feeling right now is…"meh." So this year the Templeton Foundation has made the cunning decision to suborn somebody already sympathetic to their cause and with a respectable scientific reputation: an astronomer who doesn't…

Today's Technology Dump

Latest TWiT episode has Brewster Kahle speaking of archive.org and more. He is extremely persuasive. Must listen. Zattoo, a new IPTV service that serves free TV on the computer (low resolution, like youtube, but uses p2p like BBC's iPlayer) in Europe and hopes to make money by sticking ads while users switch channels. It'll probably succeed. Picked this up at YC.news. I've setup a box at home (dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows XP) for iPlayer and Miro. I hope to add Zattoo to it, buy a shipload of popcorn and spend the rest of my life watching a shiny screen and be eternally entertained.…

5 Things Meme

5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago: well, I was all of 13, so...Freezing in WardsboroFinishing 8th grade (I'm just a baby!)Watching Saved By The BellListening to 'N Sync (hey, I was 13!)Getting my first iBook (A blueberry one!) 5 Things On My To-Do List Today:Take barry to the airportTake the dog to the vetGet cat foodGet my oil changedGo to the doctor (I'm a sickie) 5 Snacks I Love:CheezitsRice CrackersChips & SalsaCheese. In general.Poke 5 Things Iâd do if I was a Millionaire:Buy a house in HawaiiInvest enough to live comfortablyDonate someEat a lot of sushiPay off my family and my debts…

Happiness Is....

spending money on your friends and strangers? According to new research published in Science, spending money on other people has a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. This may come to a surprise to some, but makes perfect sense to others. Given that we are creatures of reciprocity and live our lives not in absolute terms but in relative ones - both spending less money and spending it on others seems a reasonable path to increased happiness. Ethicist Jonathon Haidt has written a length about such dilemmas in his book The Happiness Hypothesis. There are important…

Friday Cephalopod: Where am I going to put a 300 gallon salt water aquarium?

This is a new one: an octopus farm. Kanaloa Octopus Farm is open for business -- for $200, you can get your very own pet octopus. Unfortunately, they're caught in a chicken-and-egg problem. You should not encourage the capture of cephalopods in the wild, so it's a great idea to have a breeding program to provide animals for aquarists. But they're still in the process of building up their stocks, so they're selling their smaller wild-caught octopuses, which isn't so good. Need I point out that you also should not buy an octopus unless you have the facilities and experience to care for them…

Terry Pratchett donates $1m for Alzheimer's research

Best-selling fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who announced in December that he has a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, has pledged $1million for research into the disease. In a speech given ealier today at the Alzheimer's Research Trust Netowrk Conference in Bristol, Pratchett said that he compliments his conventional treatment with various unspecified alternative remedies, in the hope that he can slow the progression of the illness: The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept because I'm too young to have Alzheimer's for free...But, on the whole, you try to be your own doctor. Teh…

Is Bill Maher really that ignorant? (Part II)

Here's part 1. Here's part II. It's Bill Maher on David Letterman ranting about "toxins," how we are being "poisoned by America," and how your body is trying to produce a "river of mucus" to rid itself of the toxins, all standard tropes of "alternative" medicine and quackery. Sadly, David Letterman seems to buy right into the whole rant, more or less. Maher's mindless parroting of the vague claims of quacks who think that "detoxification" is the cure for every ill, combined with his being an antivaccination wingnut and a germ theory denialist, are just three reasons why, whenever I see anyone…

Dieting to fit into your genes

Mary Mangan at Open Helix predicts that personal genomics will trigger the appearance of a brand new eating disorder: geneorexia nervosa. ...there will be a proportion of people who take their genetic information (which I know is of varying utility at best right now to those who have been sequenced ), and they'll change their diets.  They'll upend their and their family's lifestyles.  They will be in fear of substances, of foods, of fabrics, of everything-beyond reason.  And they'll buy products and services of dubious quality-even potentially dangerous ones. I do agree that widespread…

Monkeying Around

This is a tamarind: The fruit pulp is edible and popular. The hard green pulp of a young fruit is considered by many to be too sour and acidic, but is often used as a component of savory dishes, as a pickling agent or as a means of making certain poisonous yams in Ghana safe for human consumption. The ripened fruit is considered the more palatable as it becomes sweeter and less sour (acidic) as it matures. It is used in desserts as a jam, blended into juices or sweetened drinks, sorbets, ice-creams and all manner of snack. It is also consumed as a natural laxative. (via wikipedia) This is a…

The longest lecture - evah...

This is quite an old piece of news...but still pretty ridiculous. Mangalore University Applied Botany Professor Annaiah Ramesh is all set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as he successfully completed a marathon lecture, running to 96 hours and 40 minutes, here on Sunday. Dr Ramesh who started his lecture on the subject, "Molecular Logic of Life," on March 22, completed it at 03:45 hrs on Sunday, surpassing the record set by South African Moosawazi (88 hours and 4 seconds). Dr Ramesh, who delivered the non-stop lecture at the jampacked Old Senate Hall in the varsity without any…

Images from New York, part 1: The unbearable lightness of fraud

Seen in a bookstore in the Delta terminal at LaGuardia: It makes perfect sense. What's left after fleecing millions of gullible readers selling books about "alternative" medicine and secret cures "they" don't want you to know about? Fleecing millions of gullible readers by selling books rife financial scams, of course. (I wonder how many pyramid schemes--excuse me, multilevel marketing investment opportunites"--are within this new book.) Of course, Kevin Trudeau definitely knows about financial scams. After all, he did spend time in jail for swindling banks and another for bilking his…

Like plums? Do something right away!

This is the first I've heard of this, but there is a devastating disease called Plum Pox Virus that kills trees bearing stone fruits, like plums and peaches, and the only way to deal with infected plants is to rip them out of the ground and destroy them. There has been a recent outbreak in Pennsylvania; don't rush out to buy the last of the fruits in an apocalyptic terror, it's just a hint of a potential problem for the future, but you can worry a little bit. And maybe you can promote some science that will help. A new variety of plum called the Honey Sweet has been genetically engineered…

Raise the Gas Tax

Bob Lutz, the vice-chairman for development at GM, is best known for creating gas-guzzling and eye-catching icons, like the Dodge Viper, Camaro concept and latest generation Corvette. He loves V-12's and ridiculous amounts of horsepower. So I was shocked to read this quote in today's WSJ: "I'd say the best thing the (U.S.) government can do is to raise the gas tax by 10 or 15 cents a year until it reaches European levels," Mr. Lutz said, during an impromptu interview just before GM Europe's media event last Thursday. That way, he says, car makers could concentrate on designing for the U.S.…

Palfrey, John and Urs Gasser. Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives. New York: Basic, 2008. 375pp.

Digital Natives will move markets and transform industries, education, and global politics. the changes they bring about as they move into the workforce could have an immendsely positive effect on the world we live in. By and large, the digital revolution has already made this world a better place. And Digital Natives have every chance of propelling society further forward in myriad ways -- if we let them. (p. 7) Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser is a fine and useful book. Every page is brimming with facts and analysis…

Open Education Declaration

On the heels of David Warlick's session on using online tools in the science classroom, this initiative is really exciting: Teachers, Students, Web Gurus, and Foundations Launch Campaign to Transform Education, Call for Free, Adaptable Learning Materials Online Cape Town, January 22nd, 2008--A coalition of educators, foundations, and internet pioneers today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the internet. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching…

Reminder....

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Science Online 2012

Are you going to Science Online 2012? You should!

CoE 49

The latest Carnival of Evolution is online at Mousetrap.

Friday Fun: An update from the Founder and CEO of World Wide Web, Inc.

Just like the author of this piece, I too attended a recent talk by Cory Doctorow -- a brilliant talk relating the life and death of Aaron Swartz with the theme of his latest novel Homeland -- and similarly I often marvel at how lucky we are that the web is free and open. Enjoy this wonderful little satire and shudder at the possibilities. The World Wide Web is Moving to AOL! The World Wide Web has been great, but to be honest, it's also been a lot harder than it needs to be. I know some of you love creating new web pages and participating in online discussions, but the last thing most…

So Much to Do at APHA

Itâs impossible to attend all of the interesting-sounding sessions at the APHA annual meeting, so now pressed-for-time attendees can catch up on some of what theyâve missed through the APHA Annual Meeting Blog. Kim Krisberg, Bithiah Lafontant, Alyssa Bindman, and Patti Truant are reporting on sessions at the blog; so far, theyâve posted on communicating with reporters,war and public health, how the public health community can address climate change, public health practitionersâ use of new online tools, the lives of child workers, public health preparedness (here, too), and the opening…

Beware BlogBurst

I received this email from the editors of Medgadget.com, regarding the situation that exists with BlogBurst, which is apparently a rather shady organization. If you are a member of BlogBurst, you will definitely want to read this. If you are considering joining BlogBurst (or any blog listing service), you should be aware of a few things before you do so; Dear Bloggers, We, the editors of Medgadget.com have noticed a trend that may negatively affect the blogosphere, and felt we should address it to you. Recently, an operation called BlogBurst (blogburst.com) of the Pluck Corporation began…

What could be better than undergraduate research in Las Vegas?

Well, probably getting a stipend to help you do it. And, the really cool thing is that's part of the deal! Hustle, hustle the deadline is March 7th, and all the contact info is below. The NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates program in Environmental Microbiology at UNLV is accepting applications. This grant provides students with the opportunity to work on a research project for a 10 week period with a faculty mentor. Students receive a $4000 stipend, round trip airfare, and housing in a UNLV dormitory. Mentors have projects in the following areas: ⢠Adaptation of…

KITP: getting organized

getting organized - unlike the totally laid back string theorists, the astrophysics program has daily morning meetings to discuss progress except today today we get to meet after lunch, everybody was kinda busy this morning for some reason... then we get informal short talk presentations once a week on thursdays, on top of the seminars, colloquia and lunch talks - the thursday talks will be recorded and podcast and video feeds made available online ooh, first monday seminar will be: ""Emergent phenomena in negative heat capacity systems: fundamental physics from dense star clusters" by, er…

Archaeobooks Blowout 27 October

My part-time employer, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, has been publishing books for over two centuries and rents a huge storage space for books in central Stockholm. Most of the stock isn't moving very fast. In fact, a lot of it hasn't moved at all since Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. Storage is expensive. The Academy now feels that a lot of the funds devoted to storing these old books would be better used in, for instance, scanning the books and putting them on-line for free. On Saturday 27 October, the Academy's book store is opened to the public, and most of the books will be…

Celebrating Your New Henge

Mike Parker Pearson and team have excavated part of a huge Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls above the Salisbury plain, not far from Stonehenge. Finds are abundant and suggest that the place was a seasonal ceremonial feasting site. Says MPP, "We're talking Britain's first free festival. It's part of attracting a labour force - throwing a big party". And you know what that labour force did? Yep, among other tasks they pulled massive blocks of rock on sledges from Wales to Wiltshire and built something that still stands after several millennia. I wish the Neolithic record in the Lake…

Buying a New Board Game

Lately I've been playing more board games, thanks to gaming friends moving to my area, and also to my son and his buddies reaching an age where they can understand and enjoy games. I have a number of good board games from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and the newest one in the house is Blokus from 2000. Now I'm thinking of buying something new, and I'd appreciate some suggestions. Here's what I have in mind. A new game, 2006 or later. Suitable for age 12 upward. Typical session length less than 4 hours. English, German or Scandy. Not a spin-off on an earlier game such as Settlers or Carcassonne. So…

Amazon Freaks Out

In my email this morning, I have a note from everybody's favorite online retailer, informing me that: We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Christopher Moore have also purchased Esther's Revenge at Susa: From Sennacherib to Ahasuerus by Stephanie Dalley. OK, fine, they see a correlation, and are sending me a heads-up. Of course, they then go on to provide the jacket copy for the book being recommended: Why are the names of the chief characters in the biblical Book of Esther those of Mesopotamian deities? Stephanie Dalley argues that the narrative reflects real…

Terra Sigillata announces new home at CENtral Science

Click HERE to come to our new home: cenblog.org/terra-sigillata/ Please update your bookmarks and see this farewell post about our departure from the ScienceBlogs community after four years and this inaugural post at CENtral Science. CENtral Science is an online forum associated with Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly publication of the American Chemical Society that covers, "science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education, and employment aspects of the chemistry field." The majority of the bloggers there are Ph.D. staff writers for the magazine…

Second strain of flu may be complicating flu picture

I've noted several times here how more measured heads keep emphasizing that a) we're working on partial information in responding to the current swine flu outbreak and b) new developments may complicate things at any point along the line. Here's a great example of what these folks (like Effect Measure, Crof, and Avian Flu Diary) are talking about. From Reuters : Second strain of flu may complicate picture-study 06 May 2009 15:02:09 GMT By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - A second strain of influenza, one of the seasonal strains, may have mutated and may…

Almost time for Science Online '09!

Late tonight (or is it early tomorrow?) Mrs. Laelaps* and I will start on our drive down to North Carolina for the Science Online '09 conference! We'll be making stops at the NC Zoo and the Duke University Lemur Center along the way, but when we recover from Friday's traveling we'll be ready for the great conference sessions on Saturday and Sunday. (I will be co-moderating two back-to-back sessions on the first day; "Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond" and "The Web and the History of Science".) It is going to be a very busy weekend, but I look forward to seeing old friends** and…

The "Two Cultures" discussion at the Intersection

C.P. Snow fans, prepare to head over to the Intersection to partake in an upcoming online discussion of Snow's famous "Two Cultures" address. In their new article, "The Culture Crosser," Sheril and Chris portray Snow as a sort of science policy prophet: It helps to think of Snow as an early theorist on a critical modern problem: How can we best translate highly complex information, stored in the minds of often eccentric (if well meaning) scientists, into the process of political decision making at all levels and in all aspects of government, from military to medical? At best that's a…

Sequencing cancer genomes: the inside story

Over at PolITiGenomics, Washington University's David Dooling discusses his work as part of the Tumor Sequencing Project. The TSP and a variety of other groups (like The Cancer Genome Atlas) are using large-scale sequencing to create comprehensive maps of the genetic changes that underlie cancer formation. The cancer genome sequencing community have already made impressive headway - Dooling notes two papers in this week's edition of Nature, one from the TSP on lung adenocarcinoma, and another from The Cancer Genome Atlas on glioblastoma (which received extensive media attention when it was…

Bilingual Brains: Reading in Hebrew and in English

I've got an article that appeared in this week's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about recent research from Hadassah University on the neurobiology of bilingual (English-Hebrew) reading. Is the English-reading brain somehow different from the Hebrew-reading brain? You might not expect any major differences; after all, both languages are alphabetic and are read more or less phonetically by breaking words into their constituent sounds. Compare English and Hebrew to a logographic language like Chinese or Japanese, and the similarity between the alphabetic languages becomes obvious. But…

Cyber attacks caused blackouts?

The CIA on Friday admitted that cyberattacks have caused at least one power outage affecting multiple cities outside the United States. Interesting... Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said that CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue confirmed that online attackers had caused at least one blackout. The disclosure was made at a New Orleans security conference Friday attended by international government officials, engineers, and security managers from North American energy companies and utilities. Paller said that Donahue presented him with a written statement that read, "We have…

Friday Deep-sea Picture: Phakellia sponge (07/24/08)

Deep Sea News' Friday edition has a new mission - to "restore" small black and white figures from obscure scientific journals to their original color, hoping to give these images a new life and audience online. The paper's citation will be included. Please contact us if you have something to share. The image of Phakellia sponge is from the Johnson Sea Link submersible surveys of a Florida bioherm at 171 m depth in the west Atlantic. The sponge is about 2 ft tall. I like it because it's a good example of convergent evolution. You have to ask yourself, is Phakellia a sea-fan imposter? Or vice…

Hilariousity Break: Buying Phish Tix

So Mr. Z and I went to that Phish show last Friday night. We bought our tix for that show from a ticket liquidator online. Had to call them to confirm and all because it was last minute. They were all set to walk us through the VERY COMPLICATED PROCESS of opening the email, downloading the emailed tix doc, and printing it. First thing the person on the phone said was, "Hey Phish fan, are you ready to have fun? Are you doing 'shrooms already?" (We were not, then or later.) Then he began talking very slowly and carefully to Mr. Z. "Do you have a computer? Do you know how to turn it on? Do you…

DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008: more incentives for your donations.

Today is day 10 of Blogger Challenge 2008, in which generous ScienceBlogs readers help public school teachers come up with the funds to deliver the educational goods to their students. As I write this post, challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers have crossed the $10,000 mark. Given that this money has come from 113 donors and that there are about a bajillion ScienceBlogs readers, I'm guessing there are some folks thinking about making a donation but hanging back from actually donating. My hope is that this post will give you that little push forward you might need. You'll recall that I've…

Annals of peanut butter: it keeps getting worse

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure The peanut butter with a side of salmonella story just keeps getting worse (other posts here, here, here, here, here, here). The toll so far is 8 dead, 575 confirmed salmonella cases (and undoubtedly many more never reported) and 1550 products recalled, one of the largest recalls in US history. The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) plant in Blakely, Georgia, sold peanut butter in bulk to institutions (like nursing homes and schools) and peanut paste and similar ingredients to many other companies. And even as it did so, its own and government…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Arikia Millikan

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 Arikia Millikan, the former Overlord here at Scienceblogs.com, 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? First and foremost, I consider myself a scientist, though perhaps not in the…

What Darwin Never Knew (online)

If you missed it, you can still watch it online.

The Cell on science blogging

There is a new (nice and long) article by Laura Bonetta about science blogging in today's issue of the journal Cell. Bloggers on A Blog Around The Clock, Pharyngula, Aetiology, Framing Science, The Daily Transcript, Sandwalk, In the Pipeline, Nobel Intent, Useful Chemistry, De Rerum Natura and Panda's Thumb are mentioned and/or interviewed. A couple of carnivals, e.g., Tangled Bank, Mendel's Garden and Gene Genie are also mentioned. For those who have no access to The Cell, I am assuming that each one of us will egotistically quote the part about oneself (like we did last month with The…

winners and losers

The big NASA individual PI grants are being announced in time for the holiday shopping season... Most of NASA's university PI based research and analysis is awarded through the ROSES annual omnibus Request for Proposals - the RfP typically comes out just after the State of the Union speech, with first deadline usually 90 days later, and a main "proposal season" in early summer, though some programs straggle through to the beginning of the following calendar year. The Requests for Proposals for individual lines are often heavily amended, postponed or cancelled as the actual budget takes…

Scientopia: A new kind of online science blogging community

This past Monday morning a new science blogging community came online: Scientopia! From their Vision: Scientopia is a collective of people who write about science because they love to do so. It is a community, held together by mutual respect and operated by consensus, in which people can write, educate, discuss, and learn about science and the process of doing science. In this we explore the interplay between scientific issues and other parts of our lives with the shared goal of making science more accessible. As a community, we strive to be welcoming of anyone with an interest in science…

But... It's *just* a blog!

One of the most rewarding sessions I was a part of was "But it's just a blog!" run by Hannah Waters, Psi Wavefunction, Eric Michael Johnson, Jason Goldman, Mike Lisieski and Lucas Brouwers. The main question was: how do new bloggers get noticed and read in a sea of emerging science blogs? Furthermore, how do they get over the self doubt and "impostor syndrome" that keep them from feeling like they belong and become an important voice in the science blogosphere? Coming into this session, I had to face my own impostor syndrome (or, as Emily best coined it, "I'm not Ed Yong" syndrome). As the…

Institute for Creation Research Masters Degree in Biology

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has, some time ago, filed for approval to run a masters degree program in life science education. The purpose of the degree is to train educators to present biology in a way that is consistent with Christian Biblical beliefs, as opposed to actual scientific knowledge. The Texas board in charge of these matters is taking the proposal under consideration this week. (Please sign the petition linked below!) The Texas Freedom Network has recently conducted a survey of Texas colleges and university faculty to get their opinions on this proposal. The…

Welcome to Coral Week

This is Coral Week. Not to be confused with International Year of the Reef 2008. The goal of this week is to pull you away from the reef, actually, down into the deeper, darker parts of the ocean where corals still thrive. We want to introduce you to the other corals, the maligned and neglected ones, like the octocorals (aka soft corals, or sea fans), the cup corals, the matrix formers, the black corals, and the zoantharians like the gold corals, which can grow to be 2000 years old. Deep corals hold secrets just like the shallow ones. They have alot in common, actually. We'll write about that…

Some quick comments on learning

I am totally ready to get back to blogging. In fact, I have a post that is 3/4th complete that I have been working on since before Christmas. Anyway, in order to procrastinate a little bit more I would like to share two learning observations (maybe they are not really about learning). Kids these day First, I was in the airport. When I am sitting around starring at the walls, I can't help but accidentally overhear someone that is 4 feet away. So this guy was talking about how impressed he was with kids these day in school. They are learning all sorts of stuff that he had already forgotten…

Teaching Blogging

Right after last year's ConvergeSouth I tried to get my school to let me teach a class on blogging. Posted on October 13, 2005 here and again on January 16, 2006 here. Somewhat related to the whole ConvergeSouth experience. I've been pitching a blogging course to my school for a while now (not NCSU, but a community college where I teach). It's been slow and disheartening so far. Nobody knows what blogging is. Also, there is a rule that one needs to have an appropriate degree for a class. In the case of a blogging class, this would mean, or so they said, either journalism school or computer…

Nice to see y'all in NYC!

After a long sit on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, I'm home from the ScienceBlogs blogger and reader meet-up. Many thanks to all of you readers who came out on Saturday to meet the bloggers at Social Pub, sponsored jointly by Seed Media Group and NYC Skeptics. The threatened anti-vaccination crowd did not materialize and I had a delightful time chatting with Dr Val Jones of the Voice of Reason blog, Peter Frishauf, founder of Medscape, one of the Medgadget proprietors, a reader named Dawn whose blog I cannot remember right now, and Steve, a pharma/biotech attorney. Dr Val was totally…

Small-Town Alberta Provides Big Support for Cancer Drug Trial

Although the dichloroacetate (DCA) horse has been beaten beyond recognition, PharmCanuck sends some interesting news from north of the border about how University of Alberta researchers have generated funds to support their clinical trial of this unpatented compound. Our correspondent writes: I was a stunned this morning when I read an online article on the CBC website (http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/04/fundraising-dca.html) revealing the source of the trial funding. Amazingly, almost 1/3 ($250K) of the $800K raised has come from the efforts of the small town of Peace River, Alberta…