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Wikis and web browsers

In our last episode, I wrote about embedding Google forms in my classroom wiki pages. Recently, we've been working on a project where students enter results into a Google Docs spreadsheet, via our classroom wiki. All the students were able to enter their results. Except for one. When other students went to the spreadsheet page, they saw this: When this student went to the same page, he saw this: We tried all kinds of things to see if we could remedy this situation. I checked and rechecked permissions, both in my Google account and in the wiki. We closed and reopened pages, we…

An Early Look at The Future of Science Journalism

One of the reporters I spotted at AAAS was Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review. Curtis is CJR's science correspondent and creator of CJR's Observatory, a great new online source for analysis of how the media is covering science. At AAAS, I also saw Bud Ward who runs the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. The site is designed to foster dialogue on climate change among scientists, journalists, policymakers, and the public. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I appeared on an amazing panel with Andy Revkin of the NY Times, who has launched the ultra-successful Dot…

How a Rabbi Speaks

Here's how. Interview with the Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is Abraham's function in the Bible? Metzger: The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides explained this very impressively. God created various objects in heaven. The sun, for example, or the moon and the stars -- they are all high above us. This was understood to mean that God wanted us to respect them more than the things which were created on Earth. Gradually things went wrong. Instead of praying directly to God, the people turned the objects into targets of their prayers. This is impressive…

Casual Fridays: Typing quirks

It used to be that everyone who needed to type took typing class in school. I was probably part of the last generation that actually learned on a typewriter rather than a computer: we clacked for 55 minutes a day in Mr. Butler's room full of IBM Selectrics. No correction keys, either: if you made a mistake, you had to retype the whole thing. But even though Mr. Butler drilled us incessantly about proper typing form, I still have a few typing quirks. I don't use the proper finger to type "backspace," and I'm not properly ambidextrous with the space bar. This got me to thinking. Does "proper…

Tracks and Traces 5.8.2010

Written in Stone is now available for pre-sale on Amazon.com (as well as a few other online stores)! The description of the book, author bio, etc. will have to be updated, but otherwise it is good to see it get its own page, and many thanks to the several of you who have already pre-ordered copies. Yet another cool new paleo blog - Crurotarsi: The Forgotten Archosaurs. Looks like I am going to have to update my blogroll again. In the "online first" section of Evolution: Education and Outreach there is a new paper on science communication (which also covers the Darwinius kerfuffle) by…

Online source for hands-on chemistry (for kids).

Since Sandra has posted links to sites with brainy games for kids*, and Karmen is working on her list of science education web sites for children, I thought I'd mention one of my favorite online destinations for kid-strength chemistry. Luddite that I am, what I like best is that the site isn't hypnotizing your child with a virtual chemistry experiment, but actually gives you activities to do with the child in the three-dimensional world. The site is chemistry.org/kids, a portal of the American Chemical Society website aimed specifically at kids, parents, and teachers. For summer (here in…

OA student projects available

Heather Morrison just finished teaching her class on Open Access and the student projects are now all online for you to see.

Science Communication Lecture and Boot Camp at CalTech

Over the past year, I've done well over two dozen talks, with Matthew Nisbet, about science communication. And now we're taking it to the next level. Next week at CalTech, we're unveiling a two-part affair: Our lecture (entitled "Speaking Science 2.0") followed by an all day "Speaking Science" boot camp, which we're describing as follows: ...the full-day workshop will provide a hands-on media primer, focusing on two critical issues: 1) how audiences find, understand, and use scientific information; 2) the knowledge and tools that scientists need to deal with the press. In other words, when…

Are You %&*#ing Kidding Me?

Source. Disagreements can arouse passions. The blogosphere can be a battlefield, with rapid fire blog posts and comments flying to and fro, sometimes helpful and thoughtful, sometimes off point unbridled ranting. There's been a lot of discussion amongst my fellow Sciblings and our sponsors on this topic - dare I say it? It begins with the letter "C" - no, sorry, I can't use it - at least at this moment. Here's a simple test: would you feel comfortable for your spouse or your employer to read what you posted? There is an allure to venting, especially anonymously, because the reader - and…

Stem Cell Enhancers? What a load of bollocks

If my job was to debunk poorly justified herbal remedies, I would eat well for life. Here is the newest one: stem cell enhancers. As covered in the Scientist: A California company is marketing the latest in dietary supplements, an extract from algae they claim will boost the number of circulating stem cells, easing disease and discomfort. Consumers have already spent millions on the "stem cell enhancer," but some stem cell researchers remain unconvinced the product even works -- and warn that the "enhancer" may trigger other problems, including cancer. ... According to STEMTech HealthSciences…

Tangled Bank #115

The latest edition of the Tangled Bank is online at Evolved and Rational. Say hooray for collections of science posts, and go read!

Local Paper

The first issue of Carrboro Citizen is now available both in hardcopy and online. [Background here] Update: Brian is gushing over it....

Drop in preterm births followed Colorado's rise in long-acting contraception use

I've written before about the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, which in 2009 started providing free IUDs and contraceptive implants (the two forms of long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC) to low-income women at family planning clinics in 37 Colorado counties. Between 2008 and 2014, the state's teen birth and abortion rates both dropped by 48% (see this webinar for details). While teen birth rates have been declining nationwide in recent years, Colorado's decline was the largest. LARC methods have become increasingly popular in the US over the past several years. This is likely…

Dichloroacetate (DCA): A scientist's worst nightmare?

Given all the verbiage (see the link list below) about dichloroacetate (DCA) that I've spewed into the blogosphere decrying the hijacking of a promising cancer therapy by conspiracy-mongers (it's the cancer cure "big pharma" is keeping from you because they can't make money on it) and opportunistic entrepreneurs like Jim Tassanno preying on the desperation of terminally ill cancer patients, I had thought that I would be taking a break on the topic for a while. But wouldn't you know it? My blogging colleague Abel at Terra Sigillata unearthed another fascinating article on the effects of this…

Ann Coulter fills me with anticipation

This new book by Ann Coulter is going to be full of delectable idiocy, isn't it? Coulter devotes the last 80 pages to her full-scale attack on the theory of evolution and the utter dishonesty of what she calls the "Darwiniacs" and their refusal to face the fact that evolution is a patent absurdity, according to Coulter, credible only to those who will find any reason to deny the existence of God. Great. Virtually every biologist in the world must be an atheist, then. Good for us! I'm sure this is going to be a bit of a shock to the readers of this weblog who understand and accept the…

Understanding Non-Euclidean Hyperbolic Spaces - With Yarn!

One of my fellow ScienceBloggers, Andrew Bleiman from Zooilogix, sent me an amusing link. If you've done things like study topology, then you'll know about non-euclidean spaces. Non-euclidean spaces are often very strange, and with the exception of a few simple cases (like the surface of a sphere), getting a handle on just what a non-euclidean space looks like can be extremely difficult. One of the simple to define but hard to understand examples is called a hyperbolic space. The simplest definition of a hyperbolic space is a space where if you take open spheres of increasing radius around…

The 'Truth' About Harold 'Fancy' Ford

In the Tennessee Senate race, the Republicans have been viciously playing the race card. They have been referring to Democrat Harold Ford as 'Fancy' Ford because he, a single black man, has dated...white women (note: 'fancy' is an old Southernism for, at best, a lothario, and, at worst, a pimp). Now, the Republicans (the NRCC) have run an ad where they point this out. Even the candidate is publicly protesting the ad (although he's probably loving it in private). So, this week, one of those helpless white female victims of Ford commented on l'affair du Fancy: But all of this - this focus…

Catholic hypocrisy…of course

A Catholic abbot is accusing Disney of corrupting children. It's not because they are transmitting bad ideas, but that they are all tied to Disney's corporate motives. While he acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues this is part of a ploy to persuade people that they should buy Disney products in order to be "a good and happy family". He cites films such as Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians that feature moral battles, but get into children's imaginations and make them greedy for the merchandise that goes with them. Now I can sympathize…

Tweetlinks, 10-20-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): Seasonal blues - as a SAD sufferer I agree - spring and summer rock; fall and winter...try to survive. Byte Size Biology: Weekly poll: favorite wolf metric? - (yup, scientometrics) This is morbid and spectacular: Photos of remote birds killed by our trash - how we are killing the world with our plastic! Downie-Schudson…

The iPad and the more things change

I haven't bought myself an iPad yet, but I'll probably do it before heading off on vacation in August. By that time it will have passed its shakedown phase and we'll know the best and worst. But from what I see and hear it looks pretty good, especially if you travel a lot. My trusty MacBook Pro weighs about 6 lbs with everything and this is less than 2 lbs (if I spring for the docking keyboard). One knock on it is price: $499 (and more if I go for the 3G version at $630. But it's all relative. Relative to what? In 1981 I bought my first computer, an Apple II+. It had no monitor, 48K of RAM (…

Great editorial response to the Jumbotron ad

The Times Square Jumbotron ad keeps trucking, and with it frustration from the medical and public health community. The American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to CBS Outdoors, asking them to pull the ad, to no avail. Rahul Parikh thinks it's time to do more: We in medicine need more than letters and passive education for parents on a website. What we really need are some Mad Men of our own. If you want guidance, look at what the folks at the the American Legacy Foundation have done with their anti-smoking campaign, The Truth. Who can forget the TV commercial where a truck pulls up to…

DonorsChoose: over the halfway mark

The DonorsChoose drive here at ScienceBlogs is just over halfway finished. My challenge is almost 50% funded, with $952 raised so far as I write this and donations from 10 of you out there (and thank you very much for that). There's still quite a ways to go, however, and many incentives to get there. For one, DonorsChoose will kick in additional money for anyone who meets their challenge goal, so that's great for the kids; and second, Seed is offering a number of prizes for donors (and especially for donors to my challenge, copies of "Vaccine" by Arthur Allen). If you've donated already…

A physics murder

As widely reported, Polonium 210 was used to murder former russian spy Litvinenko A pure alpha emitter, Po-210 is a curiously elegant and vicious assassination method. It has to be handled with extreme care, but as a pure alpha emitter with short half-life (138 days) it can easily be shielded, and thus avoid detection. It is a final isotope in the decay chain, next stop is lead-206 which is stable. The dose required is only about 0.1 micrograms. It is soluble in acids and relatively easily volatilised. Sounds like Litvinenko ingested it. Newspaper reports suggest it is hard to come by and…

The Best Things in Life Cost About Five Bucks Per Month

tags: emotional health, mood, happiness, National Lottery "Money can't buy happiness" as the old addage goes, and every once in awhile, that's actually true, too. Yesterday, for example, I read an article based on scientific research that suggested that it's the simple things in life that make people truly happy. Having lived a very simple, and yet very stressful, life these past three years, I do -- and do not -- agree with this sentiment. According to the article, which was based on a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found…

Pork Producers Council Chair Highlights a Benefit of Regulation

Last week, Mark Bittman published the New York Times column "A Food Manifesto for the Future," in which he proposed ways to "make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring." Among his suggestions was outlawing concentrated animal feeding operations, so it wasn't surprising to see a letter to the editor from Randy Spronk, Chairman of the Environment Committee of the National Pork Producers Council in the Times a few days later (hat tip to Maryn McKenna's Twitter feed). It's interesting to see how Spronk responded to…

Will Walmart Follow Ford's Lead?

Ever on the lookout for any company who dares to acknowledge that there are gay people on the planet, the American Fascist Family Association is now targeting Walmart because - ohmygod! - they're looking for ways to market products to gay people to get a share of the half a trillion dollars they have to spend: AFA spokesman Randy Sharp says his organization has obtained a copy of a Wal-Mart staff memo inviting home office associates to a seminar on December 16 entitled "Why Market to Gay America?" The memo, dated December 8, notes that America's homosexual community has $610 billion in…

Government Logic

Thursday night is the night we host a weekly poker game, and the first one to arrive is usually our buddy Scott. Known Scott for years. He's your basic small businessman, owns a convenience store that does pretty well. He has two homes a couple miles from us, and a couple miles apart, one on the lake and one on an 80 acre parcel outside of town. So last night he's here first and we're just shooting the breeze, he and my brother and myself, and he mentions that he had been planting some stuff on his land (I forget exactly what, and it doesn't matter). And this is the conversation that ensued:…

In case you were happy

I'm here to depress you a little. First off, we have the upcoming anniversary of Katrina, about which Jane Dark has a tough tale to tell: The abandonment of a great city to time and tide is indeed both symptom and mark of empire on its downhill slide; it bears noting as well that pathetic, delusional and desperate regimes are equally an indicator of this decline. I'm interested in what she has to say, but Ozymandias references are sooo AP English. She also disses on Stardust here, but I'm not touching that with a ten-foot Worldcon program. Second, we have gender issues in physics…

Dorky Poll: Lab Relics

Welcome to the laboratory graveyard: This picture shows the back room in one of the labs, and most of the gear in it is broken or useless. There's a computer that's so old it has a 5 1/4" floppy drive, the skeleton of a vacuum evaporator, a crappy student STM system, and an electrometer that's so old it has a nicely carved wooden frame. Actually, that last one probably counts as an antique, and might be worth something on that basis. It's certainly not being used, though. And yet, we keep this stuff around, because we can't bear to throw it out. Which brings us to the Dorky Poll question:…

Physical Theories Squeak When You Chew Them

"The Internet is silly!" I turn around from the computer. "Yes it is," I say to the dog, "But what, specifically, makes you say that?" "All these posts about physics theories. Comparing them to women and men and stupid wizards, and relationships. It's silly." "Yes, well, it does seem to be the diversion of the moment." "Anyway, they've got it all wrong. Physics theories are like my toys." "oh, god..." I was afraid of this. "Go on, name a theory, and I'll tell you how it's like my toys." "Do I have to?" "Yes! Go on, name a theory!" "Fine. Classical mechanics." "Oh, that's easy. Classical…

Two Cultures Publishing Journals

I hate to keep highlighting silly articles in Inside Higher Ed, but they keep publishing silly articles, like Jeffrey DiLeo's argument that humanities journals cannot be ranked because they're all unique and precious flowers too specialized: Another reason for the roaring silence regarding the ranking of humanities journals regards the high level of sub-disciplinary specialization. In philosophy, there are journals devoted to general areas of philosophy (e.g., logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, etc.), to sub-areas of general areas of philosophy (e.g., medical ethics, business ethics,…

Crikey, I've Been Anglicised!

I spent yesterday going over proposed copy edits to Anglicise How to Teach Physics to Your Dog for the forthcoming UK edition, which adds "Quantum" to the title, and will have all new cover art, etc. This means that clergy in the book are now permitted to marry, all book property belonging to the Catholic Church has been seized by the Crown, and an "s" has been added to "math" every time it appears (weirdly, it doesn't seem to actually pluralize the word, leading to the jarring construction "maths is" in several places). My favorite parts of the changes: The evil squirrel in Chapter 10 gets…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Caption Contest

Today is six months to the day from the official release date of my book, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It feels like I ought to do something promotion-like to mark this date, and I have a couple of extra bound galley proofs (seen above with Emmy), sooo..... I hereby announce the first of two contests giving you, the blog reader, a chance to win an uncorrected galley proof copy of the book six months (ish) before you can buy it. The idea is simple: below the fold are two pictures that just cry out for amusing captions of some sort. The person who comes up with the best caption will get…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update and Miscellany

There isn't all that much news for a real obsessive update, so I'll lump in a few writing-related items of possible interest to people who read books other than mine. A real obsessive update item: BradDeLong doubts my book can help his dog. How to Teach Physics to Your Dog gets four out of five stars as part of a good books round-up in the Timmins Daily Press in Ontario. (Google News search is nifty). A fortuitous discovery thanks to, of all things, an ad in GMail: QM for cat lovers, part of an old blog of imaginary conversations with Einstein. I doubt this will change anybody's mind about…

The Friday Fermentable: Foiled and Frustrated

My wine co-blogger and dear scientific colleague, Erleichda, and I had hoped to bring you an account of the wines enjoyed at our recent meetup. Erleichda and I have recently had the good fortune of regaining support for our scientific interactions and had a face-to-face conference of the principals for planning and reviewing our collaborative studies. As you would (and should) expect, getting the two of us together would also include the enjoyment of various wines and culinary delights. However, circumstances beyond our control led to our group being treated to an evening at an…

Cartoons as political weapons

David Wallis, writing in SFGate, has a very interesting article about politics and political cartoons. I like all the historical background, although I don't entirely buy the one-sidedness of the censorship he seems to suggest: Adolf Hitler understood the power of cartoons. They made him crazy ... crazier. Long before World War II, David Low of Britain's Evening Standard routinely depicted Hitler as a dolt, which infuriated the thin-skinned fuhrer so much that the Gestapo put the British cartoonist on a hit list. The CIA also appreciated the huge influence of little drawings. Declassified…

Do you 'own' your digital things the same way as your material things?

Do you think you ought to 'own' your digital content the same way you own material content? Take ebooks from Amazon stored in the Kindle. Recently, Amazon snuck into users Kindle and removed a book with questionable copyright (the book is 1984, feel free to laugh with irony). Pogue writes: "As one of my readers noted, it's like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we've been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table." This is a PR disaster for Amazon and they have recognized how offended consumers are. You'…

Plants, steel, design, and the photos of Karl Blossfeldt

A while back I tossed up some of Callie Shell's photos of Obama, and the post turned out to be one of the more popular here at Neuron Culture. Recently Soulcatcher Studios, the site that is running an expanded version of that slide show, has a portfolio of the lovely, strange, and arresting 1928 master work of photographer Karl Blossfeldt: Urformen der Kunst, or "Art Forms in Nature." Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was a German instructor of sculpture who used his remarkable photographs of plant studies to educate his students about design elements in nature. Self-taught in…

Can Fabulous Save the Planet?

That's the question posed by an article in today's New York Times. The answer? Probably NO, but the article explores the role of high end marketing in the environmental crisis and is worth a visit--if only just for the photos. In shishi corners of our society, rich designers are doing their part to make a better world (at least until the next fashion comes along). Like recycled wreaths and other earth-friendly Christmas decor. "Rudolph the Recycled Reindeer" is the brainchild of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York. He used empty soda cans like mosaics in his Christmas…

National Review on Health Care: Let the Poor Eat Cake.

If you're poor, sick, and can't afford good - or even adequate - health care, it's your own fault for being poor, and your own problem. That's the clear message of an editorial that appeared on the National Review's website yesterday: Defined at a high level of abstraction, rationing is inevitable in medicine. Not everything that might be in a patient's best interest can be done in a world of finite resources, and some constraint has to limit his treatment. Thus the left-wing jibe that the market features "rationing by price." But there are many good reasons to prefer rationing by price to…

Wearing Science, the W.F.'s Fabulous Entry

Scienceblogs, as is widely known, is devoted mostly to fashion and men's neckwear. This makes sense: the most pressing concerns in the scientific and technological landscape have, for many years, been dominated by practitioner questions about what to wear, how to wear it, when to wear it, and why. I can't even tell you how many proposals I've had to referee for NSF on this very theme. (Yes, Coturnix, that was me, Anon Referee #4, on NSF #38872GT4-2003; Sorry Tara, I just didn't buy the Intellectual Merit of your #9927K654-2005 -- don't shoot the messenger!). This link should be tops for…

Childhood obesity and public policy

I heard about 20 minutes' worth of today's Diane Rehm show about childhood obesity on NPR. The program was motivated by Bill Clinton's recent deal with the soft drink industry to ban sales of some soft drinks in schools. The plan will be implemented by 2009, and will include the following provisions: No sugared carbonated beverages No full-fat milk or chocolate milk No artificially sweetened fruit juice No sports drinks at elementary/middle school level Of course, this still leaves plenty of unhealthy options at both elementary and middle schools, as well as in high school. There are no…

Five things meme

Isis tagged me for the five things meme that's making the rounds (again, actually, I know I've done this one at least once before.) But this time I borrowed Abel's idea and added a cool graphic that I got from takoma-bibelot on flickr. 5 things I was doing 10 years ago. working towards my undergraduate degree trying to decide whether to be a scientist, doctor, or lawyer using ICQ to chat with my now-husband living in my first apartment with a good friend and a third falling in love with the Princess Pup 5 things on my to do list today work on paper revisions write tomorrow's lecture…

"Uzumaki" Manga Integrates the Cochlea in Horror

Just a few days after Halloween, and who could have thought the inner ear could be so terrifying? Uzumaki by Junji Ito is a magna that I recently picked up, which describes a town whose inhabitants are becoming infected with an obsession with spirals. Although I've only read the first of three books in the series, the art is both beautiful and grotesque AND involves the subtle integration of the cochlea into the horrible tale. Specifically, one of the main characters is driven mad by her "contamination" with spirals and feels the desperate need to eliminate all spirals from her body. First…

LWSS Journal

Welcome to the Lake Wobegon Scientific Society Journal, where  all research studies are "authoritative", all scientists "experts", all findings "breakthroughs".  Not to mention "above average". That happens to be almost a direct quote from a recent article in the the Guardian.  (HT: href="http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=1801">Black Triangle) href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/02/pressandpublishing.healthandwellbeing">Overhyped health stories? They're all pants Peter Wilby The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008 Last Tuesday, the Daily Mail informed readers that cocoa…

Infant Deaths From OTC Meds

The January 12, 2007 issue of MMWR reports on cases of infant deaths due to (presumably) unintentional overdoses on cough and cold preparations. With this being the season that such products are most likely to be used, I thought I'd call attention to this. Many people do not realize that there are very few different active ingredients in over-the-counter (OTC) cough/cold products. Basically, you have antihistamines, decongestants, analgesics, cough suppressants, expectorants, and junk (such as alcohol). Yet if you look down the aisle at a drugstore, you see a bewildering array of products.…

Three Interesting Commentaries...

... From conservative Mac Johnson, on Intelligent Design; Student-Run Anchor of Rhode Island College Executive Editor Jessica Albaum on Huckabee the Hate-able ; and the Star Telegram's OpEd by Alan Leshner on science standards in Texas.... Intelligent Design, and Other Dumb Ideas A few short years ago, nobody had ever heard of "Intelligent Design" (ID). Today it is alleged to be one of the hot button issues of our times, the latest front in the culture wars. The sudden prominence of ID is traceable, in my opinion, to two factors. One is that, even ten years ago, ID had enough confidence…

Begging for Sympathy

Panhandling is a surprisingly lucrative profession: Anecdotal surveys by journalists and police, and even testimony by panhandlers themselves, suggest that begging can yield anywhere from $20 to $100 a day--though police in Coos Bay, Oregon, found that local panhandlers were taking in as much as $300 a day in a Wal-Mart parking lot. "A panhandler could make thirty to forty thousand dollars a year, tax-free money," Baker says. In Memphis, a local FOX News reporter, Jason Carter, donned old clothes and hit the streets earlier this year, earning about $10 an hour. Why do people give money away…

Survey: Blogs and Political Information

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have an online survey about blogging and political information. Help these good people out and take the survey.

Blog Reader Project Survey

The Blog Reader Project Survey is conducting an online survey. It doesn't take much time, and it's oriented towards smaller blogs. Find it here.