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Friday Weird Sex Blogging

As seen on Facebook (I could not find the originals anywhere online - if you do, please let me know so I can attribute it correctly):

Video of the Open Science panel at Columbia...

...is now online. See summaries by Caryn Shechtman, Arikia Millikan and me. Update: Also see Talia Page both on Space Cadet Girl and TalkingScience.

Watch the South Park Scientology Show

YouTube has the entire episode of South Park about scientology available to watch online. It's quite funny, with the humor existing on several levels.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The thirty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's. His blog is, err, like, laden with archaeology and anthropology.

An Update

The computer is still broken.   So here at Myrmecos Blog we're still on vacation.  I should be back online within a week or two.

OT: Still very frustrated

I still am not online on my own computer at home so I'm not able to add posts as I'd like. Please bear with me!

Zeno and the evolutionary tortoise

The Knoxville Metro Pulse Online has a nice guest opinion piece by Rikki Hall that uses Zeno's paradox as an analogy for creationists and evidence.

Are you homosexual?

I'm having a dispute with a reader in an online forum. Let's settle it here with a quick, private poll: What is your sexual orientation? ( surveys) Trust me, this is related to psychology.

#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM".

Session description: We will introduce programs that attract wider audiences to science, math, and engineering at various institutions/education levels, programs that mentor students (high school, undergrad & grad students) in research and education excellence. How Social Media tools can be used to raise the profile of and build support networks for under-represented scientists and engineers. The session was led by Anne Jefferson (@highyanne) with assistance from Lyndell Bade (@lyndellmbade), Evelyn Lynge, and Zuska. DNLee (@FeteSociety) was to have led the session with Anne but did not…

The 50 Worst Albums Ever

Well, well, well. The blogging this week has been mostly serious and dense, with discussions of Hitler's mother's breast cancer and two rather long posts about medicine and evolution. I don't know why, but I got a little carried away. In any case, it's Friday, and it's time for lighter fare. And, given my huge CD collection and love of music, what better topic than music? Q Magazine has released a list of the 50 Worst Albums Ever. Naturally, I had to see if any albums I own are on the list, which is as follows (found via D-Listed): 1. Duran Duran - Thank You 2. Spice Girls - All Their Solo…

Separation of Science and State?

Silly human nature, getting scientists into trouble. Until the robots are ready to take the reins of the scientific enterprise (and personally, I have my doubts that this is first item on the robots' to-do list), we're faced with the practical problem of figuring out how to keep human scientists honest. Among the broad strategies to accomplish this is reducing the potential payoff for dishonesty compared to honesty (where, as we know, doing honest science is generally more labor-intensive than just making stuff up). I take it that this piece by David S. Oderberg is a variation on the theme…

Scientists against science denialism and pseudoscience

I wasn’t always a skeptic. Maybe I should rephrase that. I’ve probably always been a skeptic since a young age. It’s just that I didn’t start self-identifying as one until around 1998 or so. Oddly enough, my “gateway drug” into more organized skepticism was refuting Holocaust denial. I’ve told the tale on multiple occasions before, the first time on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (nearly 12 years ago now), about how I first discovered Holocaust denial. I always encourage new readers to read the whole thing, but the CliffsNotes version is I encountered the…

More on social networking

I'd like to pick up a little where I left off in my last posting on social networking. In that post, I was highlighting a post by Wayne Bivens-Tatum on how he prefers to interact in online environments. Or more precisely, how he prefers not to get too deeply involved. Wayne's points are well thought-out and reasonable. And a kind of challenge to those that want to build online communities -- the people they probably need to listen to the most when they are designing their communities are people like him rather than just people in the social media echo chamber. Now, of course Wayne got a…

The Future of Sci/Art Journalism: Elitism, niches, and loyalty

This week, Nieman Journalism Lab is running a fascinating series of video interviews with the New York Times' R&D group on the possible future face of news media. I know - you're wondering why the supposedly financially moribund NYT is wasting money on nerds who play with Kindles. Who do they think they are, Google? But it might be a good strategy after all. As Fortune and the Columbia Journalism Review recently pointed out, with outlets all around them slashing premium content (like science), the NYT's best strategy may be to instead become increasingly "elite:" Meanwhile, the company is…

Friday Fun: How much of a Klouchebag are you?

Klout is kind of evil. Basically, it's the impact factor for the Web, where this random company uses a mysterious algorithm to quantify and rank people's standing on social media -- Twitter, Facebook, etc. There's been some interesting commentary about it on teh interwebs these lasts few days, such as It's terrifying how important your Klout score has become, Klout Is Important Even If You Aren't Using It and What Your Klout Score Really Means. Lots of interesting and mostly measured and rational commentary and analysis. And along comes Klouchebag.com into the fray and blows it all up. From…

TEACHER RESOURCE SCIENCE BUDDIES RETURNS TO PROMOTE THE FESTIVAL!

After an unforgettable 2014 Expo with over 2000 visitors stopping by their booth, Science Buddies is proud to return to the USA Science & Engineering Festival in 2016 as a media partner. Science Buddies recognizes USASEF’s commitment to improving the lives of all students through STEM learning and is excited to once again help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Science Buddies empowers K-12 students, teachers, and parents to quickly and easily find thousands of FREE project ideas and resources in all areas of science, from astronomy to zoology. Science Buddies helps…

Language

I posted this on the Edwards blog on Tuesday February 10, then re-posted it on JREG, then re-posted it again on my own blog here on August 25, 2004. It was a response to IM-like spelling in one-line comments by the newly-arrived Deaniacs who displaced the lengthy, well-written, thoughtful discussions we used to have on the campaign blog before Dean conceded in Wisconsin and told his supporters to support Edwards for the rest of the primaries: Language is a mirror into a people's culture. English is a beautiful language, capable of imparting meaning with a sharpness of a stainless steel…

SAGE keeps opening up....

I just noticed recently, when looking up a paper in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, that SAGE publishing group is starting to offer the Open Access option to the authors in some of its Journals: Independent scholarly publisher, SAGE Publications, is now offering authors of papers published on SAGE Journals Online, the option to make their primary research articles freely available on publication. The 'SAGE Open' publishing option has been launched primarily to ensure that authors can comply with new stringent funding body requirements, (for example those now in place from the Wellcome…

Thursday Sense of Obligation Blogging

A couple of things that I'm not excited to blog about, but sort of feel like I ought to say something about: 1) The Washington Monthly article about StraighterLine, an online program that lets you take college courses for $99/mo. The article is all breathless excitement about the revolutionary transformative power of technology, but it leaves me cold. The stories of working people putting themselves through accelerated degree programs through self-study are inspiring, and all, but there's nothing really new here. There has never really been any question about whether hard-working and…

"This is the danger of what happens when writers have not enough to do"

PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer has just done a wonderful online story about how Science Debate 2008 originally came about, and how far it has come since those early days. Reporter Jenny Marder didn't miss a point that I myself have been making in talks like this one--namely that if it weren't for the Hollywood writers' strike, two of our central organizers, Matthew Chapman and Shawn Lawrence Otto, might've been a lot, er, busier, and consequently, we might have had a much tougher time getting off the ground. To that effect, Marder quotes Otto: "This is the danger of what happens when writers…

Why I still have no Internet access, or why I really, really hate Comcast right now

I hate you, Comcast. I really do. My hatred of Comcast also explains the paucity of activity on this blog over the last few days. You see, over the weekend, I moved to a larger house, and I've had no Internet access other than Panera's or Starbucks for the last three days. Before that, I had lined up a couple of brief posts over the weekend, as well as a rerun for this morning in anticipation of being back up and running this afternoon. Instead, here I am in Panera's having a tasty lunch but also posting a brief rant and explanation composed right after my encounter with Comcast. I went from…

Wake up and smell the coffee

I'm a coffee drinker. I'm not finicky about grind or bean or method of preparation, although I guess I have some preferences. There is one thing that coffee has to have for me, though, and that it's strong. Very, very strong. The spoon has to stand up in the cup by itself. My usual cup in the morning is from an ordinary drip pot with whatever coffee is around. We usually buy it already ground and it's either a mail order Green Mountain espresso or sumatra or a Starbucks Goldcoast blend or Trader Joe's Bay Blend. Mostly dark roast and extra bold. Nothing fancy. Just good, strong coffee. Wnich…

No wonder people misunderstand evolution

How women evolved blond hair to win cavemen's hearts Academic researchers have discovered that women in northern Europe evolved with light hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to stand out from the crowd and lure men away from the far more common brunette. First, I'll note that I've not read the paper this article is based on, nor is it my intent to critique it. It may be great, it may be terrible. They may have a point, they may not. [Edited to add: you can find a post here on the actual paper for those interested]. In this case, I'm concerned with the write-up, 'cause it's one…

NYC SciBlings MeetUp - Sunday and Monday

During our trip to NYC we stayed at the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel (see the reviews here and here): The hotel was built specifically to aid the business of the United Nations next door: The hotel was actually very nice - big room with a big comfy bed. Great location as well (on Friday we took a looooong walk from there all the way to the tip of the island; and it was just a few blocks away from the location of the Saturday night party) - an easy walk to Grand Central Station (and from there to the American Museum of Natural History - a subject for an entirely new post tomorrow), etc. -…

Waiting periods: licenses for marriage vs guns

Following last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, most county clerks here in Texas began issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. But many of those happy couples couldn’t immediately tie-the-knot. Texas requires couples to wait 72-hours after obtaining their license before they can say “I do.”* About half the States have such waiting periods which range from 24 hours to six days. One source describes the wait time as providing: “a cooling-off period for the couple to determine if they truly wish to be married.” So if a cooling off period is a good idea for matrimony, I’m stumped why there’s…

Mark Steyn and Judith Curry

Two items related only because these two seem to like each other and there are coeval happenings. Mark Steyn and Dr. Michael Mann's book Michael mann wrote a great book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. It really is a good book, I highly recommend it. Mark Steyn is a right wing talking head and shock jocky guy whose behavior is that of a seventh grader. Since Mann's book was published, numerous anti-science and anti-environment Internet trolls have posted bogus, harassing, one-star reviews on Amazon of Mann's book. Often, these reviews come in…

Interesting Parallel

There is an interesting parallel between the fight over rural electrification, in 1935, and the current health insurance debate. (HT href="http://dangerousmeta.com/site/comments/newwestnet_if_you_read_nothing_else_today/">dangerousmeta) href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/"> href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/how_fdr_enacted_his_public_option/C37/L37/">How FDR Enacted his "Public Option" By Bob Simmons, Crosscut.com, Guest Writer, 9-13-09 ...President Roosevelt had decreed a public option in 1935, putting the federal…

Animalcules 1.9 Is Now Up

Over at Aetiology, the carnival o'the wee beasties known as Animalcules is now online. Lotsa good stuff. My contribution can also be found here.

Evolution and Design class

Allen McNeill's Cornell course on Evolution and Design is now over and the student papers have been posted online. Dan comments on some of them.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The ninety-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Very Remote Period Indeed. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!

Anthro Blog Carnival

The fourteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Anthropology 2.0. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to take you through the night.

links for 2008-06-29

I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist | Mail Online Terrible, terrible headline for an excellent essay. (tags: books religion literature SF science)

New neuro blogs

Here are some more new members of the ever-growing online neuroscience community: The Brain and the Sky Illusion Sciences N-Cog-Neato! Neurophilia Neurotonics

Religion. It gives comfort.

... or, this: Watch Saving Africa's Witch Children in Activism & Non-Profit  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com Hat tip: Traumatized by Truth

What a Tangled Web They Weave

Tom Pennington/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, via Associated Press First, rock snot. Now, giant spider webs that cover acres. One more screwy thing, and I'm stocking up on canned goods. From the New York Times: Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors. Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town…

A new chapter

Here I am on ScienceBlogs, moved from the comfortable confines of my old blog, where I've been active since October 2002. The opportunity to come here was never anything I really expected or pursued, but now that I'm here I'm really excited to start this new chapter in my blogging existence. How did it happen, you ask? Well, it all started last week with a post I did about the "Are You a Librarian" survey that Seed was running on the site at the time. Basically, the survey was a marketing tool trying to encourage librarians to subscribe to Seed Magazine for their institutions. I was…

A Universe of Black Holes: III

"Massive black hole pairs" is the topic of today's session at the BHOLES13 workshop at KITP Talks are online here - note that slides of talks show up later as speakers get their act together and send in slides Monica Colpi (Milan) starts the session with Formantion of Binary Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei starts off with good summary of "last parsec" problem and why it is a bit of a red herring followed by discussion of role of gas at late stage of mergers and summary of sims new trendy things to do is to look at star formation in situ in outer accretion disks - something must happen, but it…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Kevin Emamy

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 Kevin Emamy from CiteULike to answer a few questions. Hi, Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Tell us more about CiteULike - what is it, how does it work, where did you get the idea to develop it? CiteULike is a quick and simple way to save references where one finds them (online), a highly effective social filter of…

'....the potential future of an open, transparent peer review process. ...'

Garrett Lisi's Exceptional Approach to Everything: When Lisi published his physics paper, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," to an online archive last year, it created a media buzz about his lifestyle and an onslaught of support and skepticism about his model. Although the verdict is still out on whether Lisi's theory will prove predicatively accurate, the means by which he released and vetted his research point to a larger trend in the scientific community. Barriers to data are falling, a cross-disciplinary community of commenters is replacing journal-selected peer reviewers,…

Victory for Open Access!

Yesterday, President Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764) which, among else, mandates the repository of all NIH-funded research into PubMedCentral within at most 12 months after publication. Until now, the placement of NIH-funded research papers into publicly accessible repositories was not mandated, but recommended. However, only about 5% of the authors actually did it, as the process was complex and not always clear. This number is growing, but far too slowly. From now on, authors will have clear guidelines and assistance in making sure that all the…

John Haught, Robert Rabel: Cowards

This post is going to be a touch of a stretch for ERV. I normally dont write about theology. Mostly, because I dont care. I think the cultural phenomena surrounding 'theology' or Harry Potter or Twilight is far more interesting than the ins-and-outs of the magical creatures at the center of the phenomena itself. But I do enjoy learning new things about anything, so I was *very* much looking forward to seeing the video of Jerry Coynes exchange with a Muggle Twihard 'Systematic theologian', John Haught. They 'debated' earlier this year, and video was taken under the understanding that it…

A Nation Obsessed With Jade Goody's Cervical Cancer But Not Mentioning Why She's Dying From It

London (and much of the U.S.) is currently obsessed with Jade Goody, who is dying of stage 4 cervical cancer at the age of 27 in a very public way: On television. One thing I find amazing is that, in the mountain of media coverage on this (including articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, etc), I'm not seeing reporters mentioning one very important fact:  According to one story (no longer online, but quoted in this interesting post at TBTAM), Goody had multiple abnormal pap smears in her teens.  She went in for a few treatments to have the abnormal cells removed, then ignored…

Heaven is…

…the complete Calvin and Hobbes online. Hell is the fact that this looks like a violation of copyright and probably won't be up for long. (via unfogged)

#Scio10: S. Zvan, G. Laden, D. Schell, PZ Myers, Dr. Kiki and an engaged audience discuss ...

Trust and Critical Thinking at Science Online 2010. There is discussion going on here, and the six videos are here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

The Movement Conservatives Are Becoming Completely Unhinged

This isn't to say that they weren't well on their way there to begin with. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online's blog, The Corner, and an LA Times columnist (no, really, he is) gives Little Lord Pontchartrain some post-election advice: I think James Baker and Dick Cheney should take Bush out to the woods around Camp David. After 24 hours in a sweat lodge, he should be given only a loin cloth, a hunting knife and a canteen of water. Bush should then set out to track and kill a black bear, after which he should eat its still beating heart so he can absorb its spirit. He should then…

Charleston Conference Presentation: Keeping Up with the Things That Matter

I was at The Charleston Conference last week, thanks to Mike Diaz of Proquest who invited me to be on a panel that he moderated, along with Karen Downing and Clifford Lynch. The topic of the panel was Keeping Up with the Things That Matter: Current Awareness Tools and Strategies for Academic Libraries. Karen, Cliff and I came up with different takes on the subject but overall the panel was quite well attended and I think useful and interesting for audience members. Not surprisingly, my take was a bit on the "stealthy librarian" side of things: I enjoyed being a bit provocative and think…

Early-Morning Culture Jam

Here's some jollity, just in time for Friday. Chevrolet has launched a promotion in which people visit a website and use online modules to create a 30-second advertising spot for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The early entries might not have been what Chevy corporate was hoping for. More screenshots and links after the break. Early entrants of the Chevy Tahoe: The Apprentice contest vented their spleen about the Tahoe's contributions to global warming, the United States' continued reliance on foreign oil, and their perception of SUVs, and SUV drivers and manufacturers, as arrogant, selfish, and…

ScienceBlogs Welcomes the World's Top Scientific Institutions to Our Network

We here at ScienceBlogs are pleased to announce that beginning today, we will be helping to spark the next generation of research communications by introducing new blogs to our network from the world's top scientific institutions. The initial list includes: CERN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), SETI Institute, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The SETI Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory blogs are live now - you can find them at: http://www.scienceblogs.com/SETI/ http://www.scienceblogs.com/weizmann/ http://…

Sexsomnia Revisited

The article I linked to in my previous post on the topic of having sex while asleep (or is it 'being sleep while having sex'?), e.g., the one I got pointed to by someone (e-mail?), is actually, quite terrible. So, instead, if you are interested in the topic, you should check out a much more serious website - Sleepsex.org, which focuses entirely on the phenomenon of sexsomnia. I need to thank Karmen for pointing out that site to me. The site has extensive links to other sources of information, including links to all of Dr. Shapiro's papers on the topic. For instance, this paper (pdf)…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Peter Binfield is the Managing Editor of PLoS ONE and the Publisher at PLoS (all titles except Biology and Medicine), so, in a way, he's my boss. And he tweets. At the conference, Pete will lead a session on Article-level metrics. Bonnie Monteleone is staff (in the Department of Biochemistry) and a MALS Student at UNC Wilmington. She blogs on The Plastic Ocean and…