Search Content

Displaying results 3751 - 3800 of 87950

Carbon taxes: Macron is an idiot

Zut alors! Ze Chef Frog, Macron, 'e iz not 'appy wiz ze prix of ze Carbon: Europe needed a significant minimum carbon price to boost investment in its energy transition, and a European carbon tax at the bloc’s borders to guarantee fair competition for its companies... Macron said Europe had to give “the right price signal” for carbon emissions, and make them sufficiently high enough to attract investments. He said that a carbon price below 25 to 30 euros ($35.31) per ton was not efficient to spur investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. If in the years ahead, we don’t have a…

Haggard Caught in Obvious Lies

The plot thickens. The Rocky Mountain News reports: Embattled minister Ted Haggard this morning admitted receiving a massage from the Denver man who claims to have exchanged sex for money with the Colorado Springs church leader for three years. And a local news station reports: Haggard says he bought the meth from a gay escort, 49-year-old Michael Jones, after contacting him for a massage. Haggard says he never used the meth and instead threw it away. However, Haggard could not remember where he threw the meth away. According to Haggard, he met with Jones in a Denver hotel room. Haggard…

Amazing Laser Application 5: Optical Data Storage!

What's the application? CD and DVD players use lasers to read (and in some cases write) digital information from convenient plastic disks. What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do we store a large amount of digital information in a convenient and stable fashion?" 2) "How do we make everybody buy the White Album a second time?" How does it work? The optics at the core of a CD player are very simple, and illustrated in this graphic that I lifted from the excellent explanation at HyperPhysics: Light from a diode laser is collimated and then focused down onto the surface of the CD. The…

Aspen live-blogging - part 3

Sorry, gang, but this is just more journal than blog - and yet another emphatic and blathering reason of why I love this town. Had a lovely hike yesterday with PharmGirl and PharmPreSchooler to the Grottos just outside of Aspen proper, an amazing series of igneous rocks and ice caves at the base of Independence Pass. PharmMom now forbids posting pictures of her beautiful granddaughter on these here internets, so here's an inanimate shot that still doesn't do justice to the view: Then, had a lovely lunch with a dear friend in Explorer Bookstore and Bistro, an idyllic setting in an old…

Spring Bloomtime at Jenkins Arboretum

This post is for all who love plants... I visited the Jenkins Arboretum yesterday. It's located in Devon, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, on the "Main Line". This arboretum is a real jewel of biodiversity in the midst of a region that has been developed to the ultramax. It has a special focus on rhododendrons and azaleas, and right now the azaleas are in peak bloom. The eponymous Mr. Jenkins established the arboretum as a living memorial to his wife, Elisabeth, "an avid gardener and wildlife enthusiast". He also stipulated in the terms of the foundation that admission to the arboretum…

Kevin Trudeau: New book is true "in essence"

This just cracked me up this morning: NEW YORK - Kevin Trudeau, the million-selling author, infomercial star and convicted felon, swears that his new health guide, "More Natural 'Cures' Revealed," is 100 percent true. Make that 100 percent true "in essence."` "My point is I don't want to be caught in what is true, what isn't true, what is opinion, what is an idea," Trudeau, whose self-published "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About," thrived despite his criminal past and other legal run-ins, said. "More Natural Cures," released in May and also self-published, is a sequel to "…

Bad Ads?

I have been writing recently about the role of science in advertising as the "new glam." A Yoplait television ad brings a new dimension to this discussion. Is it possible for TV ads to deliver subliminal potentially harmful messages, whether intentional or not? Ads are everywhere, of course, in all forms of media. The market research firm Yankelovich estimates that we are exposed to, incredibly, up to 5,000 ads per day! Below is the commercial that sparked considerable controversy from a health advocacy group: According to the National Eating Disorders Association: "The language in this…

Extra, Extra

I humbly present, once again, the quasi-weekly linkfest. Enjoy! First, a reminder: Submit awesome science blogging for Open Lab! I encourage you not to be shy about submitting your own stuff! Also, are you following me on twitter? Lots of shenanigans going on over there, and lots of good links, too. Starting with the Science: Did you catch my Research Blogging editor's selections this week? Science journalist Bill Lascher (twitter, blog) is now doing some freelance writing about the environment for High Country News, on their "A Just West" blog. Interesting stuff. I know Bill from when he was…

Don't Waste Good Wine on Food

I used to work in a restaurant where we served wild salmon with a Barolo sauce. (This was back when drinking red wine with fish was still very au courant.) Needless to say, the chef wasn't wasting real Barolo on a wine reduction. Instead, we used some of the generic plonk you buy in two gallon jugs. It wasn't Gallo Hearty Burgundy, but it wasn't that much better, either. The chef actually swore that the cheap wine, with its sweetish edge, actually made superior sauces. So I wasn't surprised to read this: Two weeks ago I set out to cook with some particularly unappealing wines and promised…

Order My Mead-Halls Book On-line

Those who want hard copy or are unwilling to wait six months for the free PDF can now order my Mead-halls book on-line for SEK 180 / U$D 27 / â¬20 / £17 plus postage.

Genetics for the spring

I know some of my students read Pharyngula, so I'll mention this here: if you're taking Biology 3101, Genetics, the course web page and syllabus are online. Get the textbook and start reading chapter 1!

Digital dissection coolness

This is so cool. A one-millimeter long spider (Cenotextricella simoni) encased in amber gets "digitally dissected" using Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography. The paper is online in Zootaxa 1623:47-53 but requires a subscription.

How to prepare brain slice cultures

A method for the preparation of rodent hippocampal slice cultures is now available at Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, a comprehensive online database of research techniques for the life sciences. The full list of freely available protocols is here.

Fame: Dr. Kiki edition

I taped this back in April, and forgot all about it until I just found it online. Enjoy! Dr. Kiki and I chatted about science education, controversies in science classrooms, and related issues. It was inspired by this presentation.

'Pulp Fiction' does not need to pay copyright, just be honest

(August 10, 2005) --------------------------------------- Since "The Connection" was abruptly cancelled by the Boston affiliate of NPR, the local station is scrambling to fix the schedule. We got Diane Rehm show instead and also something called "The World". I was listening to the World this afternoon - interesting stuff about the Harvard Zoology Museum collection, about a Slovenian alpinist rescued from the Himalayan mountain called "The Killer" (9th highest peak in the world), etc. At the very end, they had a segment, just a few minutes, about an interesting German band and their new CD. It…

Two views of Kiribati Bails Out

mt notes that "Kiribati Bails Out": The low-lying island nation of Kiribati (formerly "Christmas Island") is buying real estate on the larger Fiji Island and planning to move everybody out, on account of, well, you know, water. The usual story of atolls being submerged by global warming. Or not; but that's not the point here, so I won't go into that. My response was Could be a sensible solution. How does it stack up, cost-wise? That wasn't the reply that mt was looking for, of course, for he replied The point is not how individuals or particular groups cope so much as that the problems are…

Brief thoughts on Fair Use

My Scibling Shelley has gotten into and out of a bit of fuss while I've been incommunicado. She posted about a paper discussing the role of alcohol in protecting antioxidants in fruit. As so many of us have done, she posted a graph and table from the original paper to illustrate her description of the study. Wiley Interscience complained, but has, thankfully, buckled to their obvious wrongness. To me and most observers, what Shelley did is an obvious instance of "fair use," as described by U.S. law: the fair use of a copyrighted work … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news…

Peer reviewer behaving badly (and why it matters).

Revere already flagged this story, but I'm going to try to move beyond the forehead slapping to some analysis of why a journal's confidentiality rules might matter. (I'll leave it to Bill, Bora, Jean-Claude, and their posse to explain how a thoroughgoing shift to "open science" might make such situations go away.) The story, as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, is that a peer reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine, reviewing a manuscript that reported negative findings about the safety of a diabetes drug, broke confidentiality rules and sent a copy of that soon-to-be-…

How was it for you? Interview with Graham Steel

Graham Steel attended the Science Blogging Conference last week - but only virtually! He has been a strong proponent of Open Access, frequent commenter on PLoS ONE articles, a patient advocate and, more recently, a blogger on his own. 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 background? What is your Real Life job? Dear Squadron Leader Zivkovic. Thanks for inviting me to contribute. I remain a McNative and McResident of Glasgow, Scotland. For the last 20 years, my real life job has been dealing with…

Open Science Session in October

ASIS&T 2008 meeting - Joining Research and Practice: Social Computing and Information Science will be held in Milwaukee on October 19-24, 2007. The Program is now available online and it is very exciting. Especially this session ;-)

Eyes in Seed

My last column in Seed is now online for you cheapskates (OK, you're forgiven already) who don't subscribe. It's called "Eyeing the Evolutionary Past," and discusses a familiar topic around these parts — the evolution of eyes.

First Google Hit

Dear Reader, the new blog has received its first Google hit, less than a week after coming on-line. And what did this web surfer search for? Bikinis? Big Danish bog booty? No: "Aardvarchaeology". It's already a household name.

Another Political Test

And it tells me nothing I didn't already know: You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (60% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Link

The possibilities are endless

A 15-year-old girl was arrested for child pornography and child sexual abuse for posting pictures of herself online. Would it be statutory rape if she touched herself? Or would that fall under Romeo and Juliet laws?

The Neuroscience of Screw-Ups

My latest Wired article is now online and on the newsstands. It's about the messiness of experimental science, the blind-spots created by knowledge, Thorstein Veblen, European Jews and the background static created by the Big Bang.

A Crank Responds: Georgie-Boy and his "Scientific Proof of God"

Remember my post several weeks ago about ["The First Scientific Proof of God"?][georgie] The author, Georgie-boy Shollenberger popped up [in the comments yesterday][georgie-comments], and posted [a response][georgie-responds] on his blog. This is how he describes this blog: >This website is an example of how some math teachers are thinking and teaching >your children. In general, this website is a Good Math, Bad Math web. On this >web, debunking creationism is listed under the bad math category. So, your >children are most likely taught by atheists. Is this what parents want? If…

Gotta have more woo in my medical school, 2011 edition

Four years ago, I wrote a post that I called Gotta have more woo in my medical school! In it, I discussed how UCSF had put out a woo-ful, non-science-based booklet about "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), full of references to qi, acupuncture, and all manner of woo. Since then I've been sounding the alarm bells about the creeping infiltration of pseudoscience into medical school, even so much that it's becoming part of the mandatory medical school curriculum. Now, four years later, I see that the creeping infiltration has ceased to creep. Rather, it's turned into a torrent of woo…

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists endorses nuclear power as "an alternative energy source"

(Thanks to Steven Starr, at the Energy Justice Network, from whom I got most of this.) This is all strange to me. The January/February 2007 edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says (on page 71): "Major progress towards a safer world would include engaging in serious and candid discussion about the potential expansion of nuclear power worldwide. As a means of addressing the threats from climate change, nuclear power should be considered as an alternative energy source." They also say that "nuclear energy production does not produce carbon dioxide." They don't say anything about…

Fumento gets himself fired

When I criticised Michael Fumento's innumerate writing about the Lancet study he responded with this: You can blog all you want, but my next column is also on this. It goes out to over 350 newspapers Not any more: Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS) announced Friday that it severed its relationship with Michael Fumento -- a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute -- for not disclosing he had taken payments in 1999 from agribusiness giant Monsanto. The payments were revealed by BusinessWeek Online, which also broke a similar story revealing columnist Doug Bandow receiving payments…

Media Buzz over Gold and Autoimmune Disease

Well some discoveries are flashier than others. And to get the media's interest make sure your finding can be summarized with some catchy slogan and/or pun. From a post on my old blog: So my blog's been suffering from neglect. (I'm writing up a paper.) Hopefully it'll get in some journal, then I'll be a happy scientist! Speaking of happy scientist, check this photo out (to the right). And why is he happy? He not only just published a paper, but is on front page of Harvard's website. Check out the Harvard article, and the original article in Nature Chemical Biology. What a golden moment! {…

Saving an endangered species (Republicans?)

Nothing demonstrates the Bush administration's commitment to Family Values than the number of its officials who have resigned to spend more time with their family. The latest is Julie A. MacDonald, an Interior Department deputy assistant secretary in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species program. The context for her new interest in family matters is the usual one for Bushies: conflict of interest charges, providing internal documents to lobbyists and the arbitrary alteration of the findings of her own scientific professionals in the Interior Department. MacDonald's…

Nature Methods: It's good to blog

Another editorial about science blogging today, this time in Nature Methods: Lines of communication: The public likes science stories it can easily relate to, and we have to admit that most science, including that published in Nature Methods, is unlikely to get more than a snore from nonscientists. In contrast, science stories that have a human interest or other emotionally charged angle require the concerted efforts of both journalists and scientists to ensure that the public understands the story well enough to make an informed personal decision. A failure in this regard can lead to a…

Do arrogant, condescending, and dismissive attitudes contribute to the journalism crisis?

To begin, I'm not necessarily saying these are attitudes of journalists but perhaps may be of some editors and media business decision makers. This post was stimulated by an interesting comment thread is developing over at The White Coat Underground - a fine blog written by practicing internist colleague, PalMD. Pal wrote a short post on one of his pet peeves: the lack of journal citations in mainstream media articles of recent science and medicine stories. On one hand, the space taken by such a citation in print would be perhaps a line or two more than the text, "Researchers at Highfalutin…

Quantum Postdocs and Beyond

Well it seems that it is that time of year again when grad students and postdocs begin to think about job applications. Last year I had the great pleasure of going through the process (yet one more time!) so yes, I feel your pain. But, at least on the postdoc side of equation for quantum computing, things don't look as bad to me as I've seen in the past. I've already posted about Microsoft Station Q postdocs and the Center for Quantum Information and Control postdocs. Here are a few more to add to the mix. First up is some loon from the University of Washington: The quantum computing…

I'm An Omnivore -- What Are You?

tags: internet, Pew Research Center, poll The Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 4,001 adults and found that half of them only use the internet occasionally, and even many avid Internet users surf the Web in the same way they did 10 years ago. Yeowza, not me! "We were struck by a couple of things in the survey," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Here's the list; 49 percent are not weaving Internet use into their daily life. These include people who don't check their e-mail every day -- or aren't online at all 20 percent are middle-of-the-road…

Typing Monkeys

"With a bit of luck, random sequences of letters and figures may form intelligible words and phrases. The most well-known formulation of this fact is the image of the monkeys and typewriters: if you let monkeys hammer for ever on typewriters, then they will eventually write every possible sequence of the typewriters' characters, including every book that has ever been, or will ever be, written. Let us disregard the risk that the monkeys may tire before they have typed for ever; also, let us leave questions of typewriter wear, paper supply and banana prices out of consideration." In 1999 I…

Museum Opens Catalogue to User Participation

As chronicled here before, some forward-thinking colleagues of mine in the Swedish heritage business are embracing the social web and launching cutting-edge apps and projects. This is impressive not least because they are all working for state bodies founded in the 17th century. Just the other day Minister for Municipalities and the Financial Market Mats Odell gave the National Heritage Board a big shout-out for their Flickr project. (This is funny because Odell is a Christian Democrat and my buddies Lars and Johan are not so much.) Well-deserved praise! Now Ulf Bodin has announced the start…

Online Copyright Registration

A couple years back I posted a short bit on how to register photo copyright with the U.S. government. That turned out to be the last time I filled out a registration with pen and paper. For all subsequent submissions I've used the new ECO system at http://www.copyright.gov/eco. Let me disabuse you of any preconception that the online method is easier. You'll need to clear an hour or two out of your schedule to prepare a submission. The new process involves clicking though an interminable array of confusing steps, filling out an order of magnitude more information than was requested in the…

Friday Fractal LXVIII: LEDs and A Fractal Pine Wreath

Is it just me, or are the holidays getting more and more high tech and environmentally friendly? Maybe it is me. I haven’t used real pine to decorate for the holidays in years. There may be some bits among the potpourri in the centerpiece, but just about everything else has been replaced with paper or plastic versions of the real thing: the tree, the garlands, and the wreath. This year, I’ve been seeking better ways to do the holiday thing. For instance, my tree and garlands now are strung with LED lights. (The odd "lunar white" glow was a bit disconcerting at first--they seem to flicker with…

NOVA: Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

NOVA's documentary about the Dover Creationism case, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, aired tonight. If you don't have a TV, or missed it and don't have a TIVO, etc., you can watch it online on the 16th.

Science Blogging Conference - Gender and Race in science: online and offline

There are 5 days until the Science Blogging Conference. Both Zuska and Karen are urging their readers to contribute questions, thoughts and ideas for their session on Gender and Race in science: online and offline - go help them out!

GRB blog and Supernovae on-line

GRBlog provides a handy live feed of the Gamma Ray Burst circulars - the GCN notices. Same bunch has the Texas Supernova Search online. Using ROTSE-III(b) to find optical supernovae, piggybacking on the gammar ray burst optical transient searches.

Guest post on TGGWS

I have a guest post over at Ellee Seymour's blog. Its an attempt at explaining TGGWS for more political type folks. Meanwhile The Independent has an article on the faked graphs; sadly the online version hasn't got the pix.

Et tu, Archie?

Not that I was ever a fan of Archie comics, but I thought they were a little less inane than this: You can read the whole thing online, if you want to. Sanctimony really doesn't go well with corn, though. (via Tikistitch)

Sad Anniversary, Apollo 1

I met Amy Shira Teitel at the Science Online 2012 conference, and we had an interesting conversation about the risks of spaceflight. Have a look at this extensive coverage by Amy of the Apollo 1 fire, which happened 45 years ago.

Lungfish petition

There is now an online petition to save the Australian Lungfish. Take a moment and put your name on it! Also, it's not just the lungfish—as Monika Dieker reminded me, there's also the Mary River Turtle at risk.

Life At Last

Earlier this summer my cover story on the meaning of life (or, at least, "life") came out in the July/August issue of Seed. Now, at long last, the Seedsters have posted the story online. Read it here.

What about art?

Bora's comment on my previous post (Could beautiful design save newspapers?) got me thinking about the distinction between aesthetics and advertising. Here's one Twitter-worthy take on it: Available at the Grandburo online store. Via Kingdom of Style

Dawkins clip

For those curious about Dawkins' documentary, "Root of All Evil?", you can find a short excerpt of the segment with Ted Haggard online. Haggard is extraordinarily creepy—keep some Pepto-Bismol handy if you watch it. (via Leiter Reports)

Promachoteuthis sloani

Isn't she pretty? This is Promachoteuthis sloani, a new species of deep water squid trawled up out of the North Atlantic. Many more photos of this creature are available online, and you can also download the paper describing it.