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Money and Happiness

Drake Bennett has an interesting and nuanced article in the Boston Globe Ideas section on money and happiness. To make a long story short, money can buy us some happiness, but only if we spend our money properly. Instead of buying things, we should buy memories: A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that quite possibly it can - it's just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on…

Confessions of an organic gardener, part I.

The Ask a Science Blogger question of the week asks if organic foods are really worth the hype. I'm afraid my answer can't fit into one blog post. Let me start by telling you about my garden. This year my garden has been a home to local wildlife, but during the years that I do garden, I have a semi-organic garden. I don't use any pesticides but I do occasionally break down and use Miracle Grow and, sometimes Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). Overall, though I don't see any justification for using chemicals that might be harmful to fish or other animals in my garden, so I don't. Even in the…

Friday Cephalopod: What the heck?

OK, cephalopods, what's going on here? This is that weird dweeb from junior high school who was always getting picked on by the other kids, who is probably now running a software company and buying Ferraris like I buy red pens. Fabien Michenet

Proust in Paperback

The paperback version of my first book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, is now shipping from Amazon. Needless to say, everyone should buy the book in triplicate. I'd apologize for the self-promotion, but isn't blogging just one big orgy of self-promotion?

Just because you're paranoid ...

As I expected, Ed comments on the Washington online poker law that I posted on yesterday, and raises an interesting point: [H]ow are they going to know who's gambling without tracking all of their activity online? Money transfers to the gambling sites are all handled by offshore operations like Firepay and Neteller and those transactions are not traceable by the government (they can track your money going to the pay service, but not where it goes from there, and those services can also be used for lots of perfectly legal money transfers). The only way they can know is to violate our privacy…

College is Uranium: Online Learning

Do you like my title? I will make a connection in just a bit. This post is mostly about online colleges. I saw on TV that Kaplan now has online courses. So, what do I think about that? Here are some points. Some people can learn online I think this is an important starting point. Yes, there are people that can do just fine in an online course. Say there is an online course in physics (and there are). I think that students (not sure how many - could be a lot) that could perform just as well on a physics test as a student that took a traditional format course. I don't think this is a…

More on Internet Gambling Bill

I've been gathering information on the new internet gambling bill. No one can know for sure just how draconian it will be until the Treasury department writes the regulations to implement it, but here's what I am tentatively concluding at this point: the bill will fail to achieve its purpose. It will make it harder for people to send money to and from the gambling sites, but there will inevitably be workarounds to avoid the law and they will be perfectly legal. The bill requires banks and other money exchange services (Western Union, credit card companies, etc) to stop the transfer of funds…

Calvin Says...

"and protect us from Atkins and his disciples. Ramen." From the user Salad Is Slaughter. He has won a copy of the Book God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. Thanks for all the great entries! And Thanks to the marketing team at Prometheus Books for picking the winner! Go out and buy the book today!

Unsuccessfully Grokking Prostitution

Dear Reader DuWayne asked what I think about prostitution. By way of answer, here's a re-run of an entry on that issue from May 2006. Two years later, I am no wiser. News reports from the German brothel industry pending the World Soccer Championship have set me a-thinking about prostitution. It's one of those tricky issues where I find it hard to make up my mind. Is prostitution a problem? If so, who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators? What are the ethical aspects of prostitution? Quite apart from ideals, what is the best practical stance for society to take regarding prostitution?…

Caryn Shechtman: A Blogger Success Story (an interview with Yours Truly)

You may have noticed a couple of days ago that Caryn Shechtman posted an interview with me on the New York blog on Nature Network. Then, Caryn and Erin and I thought it might be a good idea to have the entire interview reposted here, for those who missed it. So, proceed under the fold: 1. What is your professional background? Even as a little kid I always loved animals and thought that whatever I do when I grow up would have something to do with animals: perhaps work at a zoo or in a circus!. When I was in 6th grade or so, I read the entire series of books by James Herriot and decided to…

Managing your online persona like a Superhero

Michelle asks: What Kind of Online Superhero Are You? The easiest way to think of this is through superheroes, of course. In many comics such as Superman, Spiderman, and Batman, the protagonist has double life. The characters seem to cherish both roles-the closeness of relationships with others in the standard life and the power and responsibility of the superhero life. In other comics such as X Men, the hero and the person are the same. Wolverine, although sometimes escaping into solitude as Logan, is always a Mutant. Jean Grey is always Jean Grey and Storm is always Storm. There is no…

Educational Benefits Of Social Networking

This should be interesting to all of us, be it people who study capabilities of online education or people who study teen online behavior. It also appears to be a part of gradual shift from media scares about "online predators" to a more serious look at what the Web is bringing to the new generations and how it changed the world: Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered: In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income…

Grauniad hangwringing

Subtitle: Rupert Neate is a tosser, since I don't seem to have done one of my "is a tosser" series recently. Having assailed the nutters yesterday, I feel inclined to have a go at the handwringing going on at the Grauniad; I really do despair sometimes. As Timmy puts it "Fund to buy grain buys grain from grain wholesaler" (and lest you think I'm being to nice to Timmy, it looks like he stuffed up over the Greek debt). There are any number of things wrong with that piece, but the headline "How £50m in UN food aid for starving went to buy wheat from Glencore" pretty well sums it up. Its a lie…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jeff Ives

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Jeff Ives from the New England Aquarium to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is…

George Carlin's “I'm A Modern Man”

Like all sensible people, I'm a huge fan of George Carlin. I regard him as the very best stand-up comedian, ever. Not only are his routines funny and insightful, but they are delivered so skillfully that you can learn a lot about good public speaking simply by studying his technique. I often tell people that Carlin (and Robin Williams) had a far greater impact on my teaching style than any math ed. specialist ever did. After all, stand-up comedians have to command an audience's attention for up to an hour at a time using only their words and their mannerisms. That's pretty much what math…

The death of printed journals?

Early on when I was publishing for the first time, I published in an online open access journal entitled The Journal of Memetics. Being naif, I didn't think it mattered. I had an idea I wanted to get out, and that was the place where the discussion was going on. What I didn't realise was that this was new in the academic world of publishing. The Leiter Reports has an interesting discussion on the need for expensive for-profit journals, with most commenters to the thread agreeing that the time for these publications is ending. I am skeptical that they will, and here are some reasons: First of…

K-12 Online Learning

An increasingly large number of K through 12 students (in the tens of thousands or more) are getting some or all of their education on line. Typically, the on line resources are provided by private corporate vendors contracting to individuals or in some cases school districts, and the target audience tends to be middle school or high school. School districts and teachers (including unions) are typically reticent to support this shift. While such groups may be resisting online offerings because it constitutes direct competition, they also have valid complaints that online learning, like…

Defining the Journalism vs. Blogging Debate, with a Science Reporting angle

You know I have been following the "death of newspapers" debate, as well as "bloggers vs. journalists" debate, and "do we need science reporters" debate for a long time now. What I have found - and it is frustrating to watch - is that different people use different definitions for the same set of words and phrases. "News", "reporting", "media", "press", "journalism", "Web", "Internet", "blog", "citizen journalist", "newspapers", "communication", etc. are defined differently by different people. Usually they do not explicitly define the terms, but it is possible to grasp their definition from…

Dichloroacetate to enter clinical trials in cancer patients

I've written a lot about dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA (my last post here, along with links to my previous posts), the small molecule drug that burst onto the scene after Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta published a paper in Cancer Cell in January describing strong anti-tumor activity in preclinical models (in this case, a rat model) of several different cancers. Scientifically, DCA is interesting because, unlike many previous chemotherapeutic agents, it targets the energetics of the cell, specifically an alteration in cancer cells known as the Warburg effect. This is an idea…

1,210 Billionaires!

Forbes magazine announced yesterday their list of the world's billionaires - a record number at 1,210 individuals. The top ten are.... A billion, or 1,000,000,000 is such a large number that it is difficult to comprehend its scale relative to amounts that we mortals deal with on a daily basis. Achieving billionaire status offers the individual opportunities to do great good. Here are a couple of suggestions: Establish your own Foundation to support microlending, the inspiration of Muhammad Yunus, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for developing a banking system for seed funding to the…

RBOC: Heading in to spring break edition

Last week was a bear with 2.5 days at my university's Multicultural Forum, a day of meetings, and meeting with the geothermal people on Friday, finally making it back home (the other home) about 5:00 pm Friday afternoon. However, now I'm on spring break! So while my blogging has been light over the last week, and ScienceWoman has been more prolific because of her break, things are likely to change this week. The nice thing is that my husband and I have different spring breaks, with his the week after this one. So we can be in the same place for two whole weeks! And boy, do I have a list of…

Happy Duck Stamp Day

On this day in 1934 the US adopted the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act, commonly known as the Duck Stamp Act. Hunters are required to buy a stamp before bagging migratory birds like ducks and geese, with the proceeds earmarked for habitat preservation. The stamps themselves are so beautifully done that many non-hunters buy and display them as art. We won't be hunting them, but here are a few quotes on Birds. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I…

Fresher and Cheaper: Make Your Own Vitamin C!

Vitamin C is great for you (as pirates who got scurvy due to the lack of it could tell you), but it loses much of its potency sitting on your grocer's shelf. Fresh Vitamin C is not only much more healthy for you, but its 1/5-1/10 of the price if you make it rather than buy it. Here's some simple tips on how to make your own Vitamin C tablets. (Below the fold....) I came across this recipe from Chemsoft, and I think its a great idea. On the website is a calucator which tells you how much of which ingredient you need to end up with a certain amount of Vitamin C. Very smart! This recipe makes…

WSJ on OLPC

A summary in WSJ about the state of affairs for OLPC.[via reddit] The discussion is not very much about what really makes an OLPC. It is more about how Intel, Microsoft and other companies are actively subverting it and how governments in many countries are weighing their options - not all in favor of OLPC. The decision to buy Intel's Classmate over OLPC, someone is quoted as saying, is a no-brainer. And, it's precisely that. If kids and those in government have no brains, they should buy a proprietary system with a proprietary hardware/software and sign-up for multi-year maintenance…

Buy Critters for Elementary School Classrooms!

Zooillogix is participating in DonorsChoose, a very cool annual fundraising effort to directly provide needy schools with the materials they need. There are literally thousands of projects to choose from and we selected some pretty modest ones that we hope our readers will choose to support. #1 An enterprising elementary school teacher in the Bronx wants to buy supplies to keep all sorts of live critters in the classroom, including: hermit crabs, butterflies, worms, ladybugs, pill bugs, and praying mantises. #2 Another Bronx elementary school teachers wants to get an incubator, fertilized…

Dreams and Narrative Suspense

I had a very bizarre dream last night. I was driving to the gas station to buy milk. It was the middle of the night. (In case you were wondering, I don't normally make nocturnal milk runs, or buy my dairy products at the local Exxon-Mobil station.) As I pull into the gas station, I notice several police cars parked outside. That's odd, I think. Then, as I get out of my car, I notice a police officer frantically waving at someone near me, trying to tell them something. But I'm determined to get milk, so I head inside. That's when I notice that the store clerk is being held hostage. I've walked…

A bad week for buying drugs over the Internet

Lack of health insurance, or selective lack of drug coverage by some insurance companies, has created a large, Internet-based market for cheaper prescription drugs. There have been many warnings about the risks of buying one's drugs on-line from such sources from the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry but those warnings, especially from drug makers, are often viewed as self-serving. This week, however, saw two examples of Internet drug-buying gone wrong that highlight the risks of purchasing medicines on-line. On Friday, the US FDA released a warning to consumers that some who purchased…

Energy-Efficient Appliance Question

So, we'd like to get a new refirgerator (our current refrigerator is pretty old and beat. When the compressor kicks on, the lights in the living room flicker, and the shelf on the inside of the door is broken, which greatly reduces the useful storage space.), and being good liberal types, we'd like something energy-efficient. The problem is, our house is small, and the kitchen is very small, so the space available for the fridge (without ripping all the cabinets out and re-doing the whole kitchen) is only about 28" wide, and the selection in that small size is really limited. In particular,…

Toys to Teach Little Girls their Place

Back in July I went to a big toy store to buy presents for my daughter's fourth birthday. I got her some street crayons, a magnetic drawing board and a head dress with silver antennae. While browsing I found the product in the above picture. I didn't buy it for her. Let us cleaning!

Seattle Has the World's First Quantum Computer

The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI: And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?

New resource for philosophy of mind and cognition

David Chalmers and David Bourget of the Australian National University have a great new resource up of online papers on mind: We (David Chalmers and David Bourget) are pleased to announce the launch of MindPapers, a new website with a bibliography covering around 18,000 published papers and online papers in the philosophy of mind and the science of consciousness. This site grew out of a combination of David Chalmers' old bibliography in philosophy of mind and his page of online papers on consciousness, but it is much larger and has many new capacities, programmed by David Bourget. The site…

Reason #1493 to Love Phil Hellmuth

From CardPlayer magazine's live updates from the $5000 buy-in No Limit Hold Em tournament: Phil Hellmuth raises to $75,000 preflop. Eugene Todd reraises to $220,000 total. Hellmuth asks Todd, "Are you trying to donk off your stack with ace jack?". Hellmuth proceeds to fold and shows A-Q. Todd just grins as he flips over A-J. Hellmuth, of course, jumps up from the table in disbelief. That's gonna be fun to watch on TV.

Obama Care Was Not Trashed By SCOTUS

UPDATE: Here's the full text of the decision. Amy Howe of the SCOTUS Blog writes: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters.…

The Perfect Gift for my UK Readers ...

Here is a prehistoric album ("prehistoric" because it's vinyl) to separate UK bird lovers from their hard-earned funds. It is currently on sale on eBay in the UK (click image to be magically transported there). After you buy it, be sure to burn a CD for me. Thanks, Ian!

The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE)

Yup, I know this comes from our 'competition', the Science magazine, but it is a worthy cause: The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) has been established to encourage innovation and excellence in education, as well as to encourage the use of high-quality on-line resources by students, teachers, and the public. In 2009, the prize will recognize outstanding projects from all regions of the world that bring freely available online resources to bear on science education. Winning projects should reinforce one or more of the four strands of science learning recommended by the…

Say what? Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research

Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin. "I was surprised by the findings because the widely held assumption is that people are using their profiles to promote an enhanced impression of themselves," says Gosling of the more than 700 million people worldwide who have online profiles. "In fact, our findings suggest…

One day course in reef ecology

Deep coral biologists like myself are continually looking to shallow reefs for applicable paradigms. A new online seminar on coral reef futures sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies provides about 100 examples in a set of FREE online lectures given by a parade of stars like Terry Hughes, John Pandolfi, and Bob Steneck. It's like a dream course in reef ecology from the comfort of your own home. The only thing lacking is a printable diploma! Topics covered by the online seminars include: * The latest science on coral bleaching * The rising plague of coral…

Rand Paul and the Transmogrification of the Southern Strategy

Amanda Marcotte has a must-read post about Rand Paul, and why we shouldn't just sweep his libertarianism under the rug. I'll get to Amanda in a bit, but, to explain the title, I want to first provide some context by way of deceased Republican political operative Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-gger, n-gger, n-gger." By 1968 you can't say "n-gger" -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally…

NJ legislators call on bookstores to "ban" the sale of Ann Coulter's Godless

I can't stand Ann Coulter, but this response to her vileness is just plain stupid and plays right into her hands as "evidence" supporting the attacks Democrats that she makes in her book: QUIGLEY/STENDER CALL ON NJ MERCHANTS TO BAN SALE OF 'VICIOUS' COULTER BOOK Hate-filled Attacks on NJ 9-11 Widows Has No Place on NJ Bookshelves (TRENTON) - Assemblywomen Joan M. Quigley and Linda Stender today castigated political commentator Ann Coulter for vicious remarks made against four New Jersey September 11th widows in her new book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."... In response to these…

But it's the only good song on the whole CD!

It's almost Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: the deluge of Christmas carols is about to commence. This is the time of year when I dread turning the radio on, because I know I'll hear the same sets of songs over and over again, and the kind of uniform anti-eclecticism characteristic of Top 40 AM radio gets amplified and expanded and starts to spread everywhere. I'm always pleased to see something new, especially since it doesn't happen very often…Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over), Minchin's White Wine in the Sun? Some people get cranky about anything that isn't sufficiently…

Bill Richardson and 4 other western govs form climate pact

Western States Agree to Cut Greenhouse Gases: Five Western governors agreed yesterday on a plan to cut their states' emissions of gases linked to global warming and to establish a regional carbon-trading system, though they stopped short of saying how drastically they will seek to reduce greenhouse gases. The governors -- [from] California,… Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington -- said that within six months they will set a regional target for lower emissions. A year after that, they pledged, they will devise a regional cap-and-trade system allowing polluters to buy and sell greenhouse…

links for 2008-06-23

Postcards from Nowhere "It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money." (tags: art culture society stupid humanities)

Defining blogs and blogging

Here are some ways to define the format/genre/communication channel... etc. I usually go back to Mortensen, Torill and Walker, Jill. (2002). Blogging thoughts: Personal publication as an online research tool. In A. Morrison ed. (Ed.), Researching ICTs in context (1 ed.) (pp. 249). Oslo, Norway: InterMedia University of Oslo, Norway. pdf online. That's where I got the "reverse chronologically arranged collection of discrete posts" idea that I use (actually, I can't check to make sure that quote is exact because M's computer can't open pdfs!) Here are some others culled from articles i've…

Living Abroad? Vote in the 2008 Global Presidential Primary

The Democratic Party is doing the very cool thing this year of giving Americans living abroad their own delegation to the 2008 Democratic Convention. This means that anyone currently living outside of the US can vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary for their own 11 delegates. Voting will take place online from February 5-12 and in person on some of those dates at a variety of locations. To be able to vote online, you just need to register (for free!) with Democrats Abroad by January 31st. Even better, though, to vote in person you just need to show up with your passport. You don't…

Help Kay Weber continue to pursue her case against Fermilab.

You may already have seen this at Absinthe or Zuska's -- if so, consider this post a friendly nudge to move beyond your good intentions toward action. Kay Weber, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fermilab for (the details of which sound pretty horrific), has come to a point where the expense of moving the lawsuit forward is personally insurmountable. With a little help from others who support her fight for fair treatment, however, it can be done: As women we have a network of other women that we share our friendship with. We send emails about good news, good luck, greetings of friendship…

Health priorities

I made a mistake. First, I got a little worked up during last night's debate because, when discussing health problems, both candidates gave shout-outs to relatively rare conditions rather than to the big killers. My second mistake was more grievous. I read something in HuffPo written by Deirdre Imus. No one brings the stupid quite like Deirdre. When she talks about health, it's like a 12th century peasant talking about quantum mechanics----most of the time, she's not even wrong. Deirdre's upset. She's upset that the candidates haven't addressed children's healt issues. That's…

Southernmost Point and the Key West Butterfly Museum & Conservatory

In our last few hours bidding farewell to the Conch Republic, we stopped at the Southernmost Point marker. Regular commenter and blogger leigh (the path forward) reminded us to "get a picture of the family pharmboy at the southernmost point marker, that's classic cheesy fun." Well, dear leigh, we found that the marker does not currently look like the photo to the right - as of Saturday, the buoy is only repainted with the bands of color and devoid of any identifying lettering. In fact, this classic comment appeared in the Citizen's Voice section of the Key West Citizen on Sunday, 14 December…

Bad science? It's OK—just put him in charge of women's health

Clearly, Bush is not going to drift quietly into oblivion. Majikthise and Feministing report that his administration is appointing a certifiable kook to run the federal program that oversees family planning and reproductive health. His qualifications seem to be that he's fanatical about abstinence, to the point of making stuff up. At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, "If I Only Had a Brain") by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships…

Burp: Eyjafjallajökull stirs

Couple of new webcams checking on the volcano it is stirring again. click to embiggen Hi Res vodafone.is webcam New IR camera from mila.is The ash cloud is getting back up into the atmosphere, so the jet stream can sweep it east, Europe can expect more airspace disruption. In the meantime you can buy genuine fresh Icelandic volcano ash from nammi.is, who also do a line of cheerful commemorative t-shirts.

Best O' The Blogs: The Best Gift For Any Occasion

A Blog Around the Clock's Bora (aka Coturnix) has slaved away assembling and editing the best science blog writing of 2006, with an excellent compendium to show for it. I was not able to submit (due to traveling in China and being away from email etc) to the anthology, which I am sorely sorry for. I know that this will be an excellent read even if it is in an old outdated medium. :D Buy it from Lulu here.