Search Content

Displaying results 4201 - 4250 of 87950

PBS special on AIDS

I forgot to mention this before it aired, but earlier this week PBS aired a two-part documentary on HIV, The Age of AIDS. It's very good, and according to the website, you can watch it online beginning at 5PM EST today. There's also a lot of information, interviews, etc. on the PBS website linked above.

Maneater

Once upon a time, we got a request to help The Countess in an online poll. For our participation, she agreed to write an erotic horror story with us in mind. It's done! You can now go read Maneater! All yours, for free! It might still be nice if you left some feedback on the story, though.

Where in the World is Coturnix?

If you were amazed the other night to find I was not online for a long time, not blogging, not commenting, not responding to e-mail, not on Facebook, now you know where I was - spreading Brotherhood and Unity in the Triangle area blogging community. And if the same phenomenon happens tonight, here's a hint where I can be found.

What Sort of Christmas Tree Are You?

tags: christmas tree, online quiz This is a cute quiz and you have to let me know what your results were! You Are a Tinsel Tree For you, Christmas is no different than the rest of the year. And this means you do things your own way - and continue to surprise people. What Christmas Tree Are You?

Forward on Climate Rally - February 17, 2013

"Thank you to the nearly 50,000 who demonstrated on Presidents Day Weekend at the Washington Monument, the thousands at 20+ solidarity rallies across the country, and the more than one million online activists who stood up and spoke out to tell President Obama that right now its time to move Forward on Climate."

Anthro Blog Carnival

The sixteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Testimony of the Spade. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology beyond your wildest dreams. "Give yourself over to absolute pleasure Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh Erotic madness beyond any measure And sensual daydreams to treasure forever" Richard O'Brien

Anthro Blog carnival

The seventy-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Neuroanthropology. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.

Sättuna Fieldwork Report On-Line

I've filed the Sättuna excavation report with the State Board of National Antiquities, the County Archaeologist's office and the County Museum. And I've put it on-line at archive.org. Check it out if you're into the Late Mesolithic! We didn't get much data on the 6th century elite settlement.

Taking over Torpig

In early 2009, a bunch of folks at UCSB took over the Torpig botnet for ten days. In that time, they observed more that 180,000 infections and recorded over 70G of data that the botnet captured. During that time, over 8,000 accounts at financial institutions were "acquired". The report is available online [pdf]

How Readers Scan News in Print and Online

On April 10, the Poynter Institute is set to release it's latest "eye tracking" study of how readers navigate the printed and online news page. The preview of the key findings is fairly suprising. Watch the video about the study at the site, and listen to this NPR Marketplace story on the forthcoming study.

The incredible penis-shrinking gene identified in birds

Find out why most species of birds do not have a penis in this video abstract of new research published yesterday in Current Biology: Source Herrera AM, Shuster SG, Perriton CL, Cohn MJ. Developmental basis of phallus reduction during bird evolution. Current Biology Published online June 6, 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.04.062

A dystopian, conflicted art gallerist Jess? Sweet!

OMG! This Chris Beckett story is totally about me! You can read the title story of The Turing Test online, and it's well worth checking out. In a dystopian future, Jessica runs a gallery where art increasingly involves human body parts and is designed to shock and appall bystanders. Now I have to go read it. . . via iO9

Encephalon 49

The 49th edition of Encephalon, which is online now at Neuroscientifically Challenged, includes entries on the limitations of the use of gene therapy for psychiatric disorders, the sensationalization of neuroimaging data by the mass media, and how the relationship between music and movement is manifested in the drumming that accompanies Sudanese martial arts demonstrations.

Friday Cephalopod: Octophotography!

You'd think with all those arms they'd have at least one free to focus and set the exposure. This is a picture taken by an octopus who stole a divers' camera. The diver chased it and got the camera back. Otherwise, we'd be waiting for the octopus to get online and upload the pictures to youtube.

An administrative note

As discussions have heated up, more people have been getting trapped in moderation due to excessive links in their comments. I believe that you can get around that by signing in using TypeKey, using OpenID or various other online authentication systems. Try it (this post is a good testbed!) and let me know if it works, please.

ConvergeSouth05 - Closing Thoughts

So, now that you have a better idea how great it was last year, are you coming to ConvergeSouth this year? On October 14th (yup, one day instead of two). Last year was about journalism and blogging. This year, the theme is "beyond blogging", both technologically (podcasting, vlogging) and socially (building communities, etc.). I am especially interested in the Facebook session (you may have heard already that Facebook opened its doors to non-"edu" e-mail addresses today) and hope that there will be a lot of young users of Facebook there telling us how they think about it instead of us old…

#scio10 Science Online 2010 recollections and reflections on the sessions I attended

Last weekend I attended Science Online 2010, which is a conference of science communicators with a heavy mix of bloggers, many journalists and others from the print industry, an increasingly large number of book authors, and OpenX (X=access, notebook, science, or whatever) advocates and practitioners. Science Online is now reaching a tipping point. It is a fantastic conference partly because of its small size and its focus, but it is now becoming much more popular, and faces the possibility of growing over the next couple of years to become not what it is today. Perhaps it will evolve into a…

LOL Covert Ops?

It's bad enough that a plane which previously made non-stop flights from the continental U.S. to Guantanamo Bay crashed in the Yucatan with tons of cocaine aboard. What's even more ridiculous is the 'cover' story. The plane was owned by Donna Blue Aircraft which is in the business of "Aircraft Consultance and Sales." According to Boing Boing: Mad Cow Morning News visited the owners of the plane, "Donna Blue Aircraft Inc" of Coconut Beach FL., and discovered that it's an "empty office suite with a blank sign out front." There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at…

Music Mondays: Five songs I really love

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd highlight some of my more recent musical discoveries. Long Way Home by Kelley Hunt. So. A month or so ago I'm browsing on the second floor in a local used bookstore and some really cool bluesy music is on their sound system. I really like it but I sorta think it's Bonnie Raitt. A guy browsing nearby asks the universe, "Who is that? It's really great?" I respond, on behalf of the universe, that it sounds like Bonnie Raitt to me. He wasn't so sure. In retrospect, I guess I should have Shazam'ed it to find out for sure.…

New election rules?

Some ideas from two years ago (August 26, 2004): --------------------------------------------------------- I posted this on www.jregrassroots.org and on the One America Committee blog (formerly JRE campaign blog) on March 06, 2004: Primaries: Most small parties do not have primaries. They decide their nominees at Conventions or in smokey backrooms. No TV for them. One of the big parties usually has an incumbent President or VP who is a de facto nominee. Even if that party has a primary, it is of no importance, thus no TV. Those parties that have competitive primaries need to set a date for…

Young, Green and Consumerist

From occasional partner-in-crime Keith Farnish (and author of _Times Up_) comes a scathing but accurate indictment of superficial youth environmentalism. (our heroine in her pricey electric car, cruising the streets of Beverly Hills) Farnish writes: I have met some incredible young people with vision, passion and the willingness to stick two fingers up at the system in order to create some kind of change. I have learnt from some young people what it feels like to be a concerned person in a society that values shopping, celebrity and vacations above the fundamental need to have a functioning…

Supreme Court to Debate Affordable Care Act Next week - and plaintiff's case has imploded

With the impending, and unprecedented, 3 days of arguments over the Affordable Care Act occurring early next week, it's interesting to see that the test case being used to challenge the law has now become a test case demonstrating the necessity of the law. Mary Brown, the woman who asserts no one has the authority to make her buy health care is now bankrupt, at least in part due to medical bills. From theLA Times article: Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama's healthcare…

Books for Young Mathgeeks: Rabbits, Rabbits, Everywhere

As promised, another review of a childrens math book. Tonight, my daughter and I read "Rabbits, Rabbits, Everywhere: a Fibonacci Tale" by Ann McCallum. This time, I have absolutely no complaints. "Rabbits" is a beautifully told story, with delightful artwork, which makes the basic idea of the Fibonacci series understandable to a first grader. It's a wonderful book, which I recommend absolutely without reservation. If you have a child around 1st grade age, buy this book. The book tells the story of the town of Chee, where the Pied Piper settled after he got the rats out of Hamelin. The…

They must be weak in Wisconsin

Ah, poor Wisconsin…our neighboring state to the east, where the people are frail and frightened, and unable to cope with the rigors of reality. (That ought to get a few of them fired up, don't you think?) There is a little dustup going on in the town of West Bend, Wisconsin. The local bluenoses noticed that there are books that discuss human sexuality in the library — and some of them are even written for teenagers! Teenagers, of course, never think about sex and have no interest in the subject unless some vile prurient publication stirs them up, so the crusaders for purity are stridently…

End Game Strategies for Tobacco Control

by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA Can we really consider "end game strategies" for tobacco?  An Op-Ed in the New York Times makes a strong case for ending tobacco use.  Let me begin with some history. The World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2003, was developed in response to globalization of the tobacco epidemic.  The Framework's objective is to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Unlike previous drug control…

Science, Social Activism, Sexual Minorities, and Galileo's Middle Finger

I think most people who have read Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger feel at some point a bit annoyed at the title, and especially, at the way the book is marketed by the publisher. You could take Galileo and his finger entirely out of the book and you would still have the same book. Alice Dreger's book is about the relationship between social ethics, activism vis-a-vis science, and the science itself. It is about academic freedom and intellectual honesty, but again, not a history of as the reference to an old dead white guy in the title might suggest. Dreger's book is not a…

On The Google Pixel

First, for the record, I want one. But, since my current smart phone is a Nexus 6, I don't need one yet. I'm fine for a while. Google essentially invented Android, and the Nexus phones were pretty close to being Google phones, but they were not. They were simply very well designed and powerful smart phones that generally came with unadulterated Android, and likely to work best with Android because of Google's involvement. The new Google Pixel is an actual Google phone. So, this is a bit like the iPhone of the Android world, in the sense that there is excellent and carefully engineered…

Mann, UVA, Win Lawsuit: ATI Will Pay

The American Tradition Institute a.k.a. ATI a.k.a. Energy & Environmental Legal Institute is a "think" tank that supports or engages in climate science denialism. You can read about it here and here. Michael Mann is a climate scientist, famous for bringing to the world's attention the alarming problem of hockey-stick style global warming. According to Wikipedia: The IPCC acknowledged that his work, along with that of the many other lead authors and review editors, contributed to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize... The ATI, Michael Mann, and the University of Virginia have been…

The Golden Compass

Kate and I went to see The Golden Compass last night because, dude, armored bears! Also, we both really enjoyed the book, back when it first came out (though I haven't re-read it since The Amber Spyglass, to see if it was retroactively ruined by the third volume). From the opening titles in the left-over Lord ot ht Rings font, it's clear that this is New Line's bid to reassert their dominance over the "movie adaptations of popular fantasy books" genre, and as a spectacle, it's very good. There's a nifty steampunk aesthetic to Lyra's world and, dude, armored bears! I didn't walk out of the…

Dawkins coup de grâce in Oklahoma

Vic-- OMG!! Exciting Dawkins/Oklahoma news!!! Me-- EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Dawkins had so much fun on his visit to OK he decided to buy a ranch here and raise ostriches?!?!? Vic--.......... nooo........ *blink* Me-- *sad* Vic-- Well the locals had been keeping this a secret for a while, but its not a secret anymore! Dawkins refused to take any money for his visit! Me-- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!! "OMFG U SPENT OVER 9,000 MILLION TAX PAIRS DOLLORS BRINGZ DAWKUNZ 2 CAMPOOS! WE CUDDA SPENT DAT ON BYE-BULLS TO LED PEOPLES TO TEH CROSS!... wuddya mean he takeded no monies?" Vic-- I know, right? Oh,…

Links for 2009-12-08

News: Lincoln U. Ends Obesity Rule - Inside Higher Ed "For the past few weeks, "Fitness for Life" may well have been the most discussed college course around. From now on, however, no one at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania will be required to take it. The course became famous because of a requirement adopted at Lincoln for classes that entered in 2006 or later: that any students with body mass index scores above 30 show that they have lost weight or taken the course by the time they graduate. This year's seniors were the first to be covered by the requirement, attracting publicity that…

More on feedback

In a recent post I mentioned giving real feedback to vendors and people designing systems and services for us. Sue left a comment that the vendor basically acts like she's alone in this - and they say that to me, too, but we soldier on. (oh, and AIAA says we're the only ones who have any problems with their digital library) Right now, AIP Publishing has a beta of their new journal pages that you can try out and then either e-mail them or fill out a survey with your feedback. Please do, they're some of the good guys. Similarly, Jonathan Rochkind is impressed by the feedback he got at a recent…

Do You Have Five Bucks to Spare for Donors Choose? Then You Can Win Cool Stuff From Seed!

Yay! Prizes! From our benevolent Seed overlords! All you have to do is take part in our Donors Choose campaign. Here's the scoop: Seed has agreed to do prize drawings again this year for donors who give to DonorsChoose, beginning this Friday [10/17/08]. We'll be giving away 50 Seed mag subscriptions and about 15 or so other prizes from an assortment of mugs, laptop covers and USB drives. Each Friday we'll choose winners for a third of the prizes. In addition, there will be one 'grand prize' at the end of the drive, of an iPod Touch. To enter the drawing, all you need to do is forward…

Dr. Sexy Tells All

What are the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folk?... I think I can best answer this Ask A Science Blogger question by quoting myself. So: Suzanne Franks, in her fabulous essay Suzy the Computer vs. Dr. Sexy: What's A Geek Girl To Do When She Wants To Get Laid? which you can now read in the available for purchase She's Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff, writes: When I got to college, I found frat parties dominated the social life, and I suspected that smarts might not be a high-value attribute in that scene. Nevertheless, I trotted…

OK, I Can't Stand It

I will chip in a few thoughts about the President's proposed budget, just to make a point.  Based upon the following from href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003254.html">DefenseTech.org, a pro-military site: ...That'll include "the first significant funding" -- $3 billion -- in the next generation of aircraft carrier," the CVN-21. The Joint Strike Fighter fleet will grow from two in FY07, to twelve the following year -- including the first short take-off version. It'll take $6 billion in 2008, the Pentagon projects. Despite major cost inflation, the Defense Department budget…

In Which I Want Your Money: Donors Choose Challenge 2008

I've seen the geoblogosphere periodically erupt in harrumphing about the way geology is treated (and by "treated" we usually mean "ignored") in K-12 education. Well, now's our chance to fix that. Budget cuts and the No Child Left Behind Act mean that science is getting squeezed out of elementary school classrooms. Teachers know that their students love science, and are determined to keep them engaged, but they don't have the resources they need. That's where you come in. Donors Choose is a nonprofit organization designed to help you help schools tackle the projects you think are important.…

Deep water warming off Russia

The ocean is a many-layered thing. If you ask a marine biologist to tell you about these ocean layers, they'll talk about the "photic zone" and the "oxygen minimum zone". These gradients in light and oxygen influence the type and variety of animals you will find there. But if ask an oceanographer to tell you about layers in the sea, they'll tell you about "bottom water", "intermediate water", and "upwelled Atlantic water". Precise measurements of temperature and salinity help to discern water mass 'signatures'. Oceanographers use these signatures to track water masses along a three…

Farmed salmon decimate wild populations by exposing them to parasites

The next time you buy salmon from your local supermarket, think about the hidden costs in each succulent fillet. Compared to wild fish, farmed salmon is far less likely to burden your wallet. But by buying it, you may be placing a much larger burden on the environment. Fish stocks around the world are declining due to over-fishing and 'aquaculture' - the farming of fish - was originally thought to help. But farming brings with it a host of ecological problems. If the farmed fish are meat-eaters, as salmon are, they must be fed on the proteins and oils of wild fish, which does nothing to…

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: NOT just for scientists

This past weekend's international science communication conference, ScienceOnline2010, also saw the first, final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot's long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover, an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine. And already, those online science communicators who left the conference with Skloot's book are registering their praise via this Twitter feed that was so active it was a trending topic at the science aggregator, SciencePond. The story…

Reading Diary: Marketing for Scientists by Marc J. Kuchner

It's probably best to start with what Marc J. Kuchner's new book -- Marketing for Scientists: How to Shine in Tough Times -- isn't. It isn't a social media jackass recipe book for "Success through Twitter." It isn't a detailed treatise on marketing theory. It doesn't come with a guarantee of grants, publications and prizes if you follow it's instructions. In fact, it's hardly about Twitter or blogs or Facebook or Pinterest or any of that stuff at all. Instead, it's a primer on why getting your message out is a good idea. Marketing for humans, in other words, where humans = scientists. Kuchner…

The Toronto Star: Science Ink FTW, Science Books FTL

First the good news. Saturday's Toronto Star had a really nice little piece on the trend among some Toronto-area science grad students to get a sign of their scientific passion tattooed onto their bodies. T.D. MacDonald fact-checked the design five times before he let one drop of ink penetrate his skin. "I didn't want to have an incorrect chemical structure on my body," he says, recounting the long hours he spent creating his tattoo. "The way it is oriented in space had to be right." That his ink is accurate matters to him, of course. But few of us would know the strangely beautiful tattoo…

History Carnival 58

History is the study of past societies through surviving text and images. I just got back home to Sweden, whose narrative history starts in the 9nd century AD and is even then really patchy for centuries. I have spent the past two weeks in China, where recorded history starts some time in the mid-2nd millennium BC. And what did I find in my long-neglected in-box when I got home? The makings of the 58th History Carnival! A blog carnival, for those of you who don't already know, is an ambulatory and periodical collection of good blog writing relevant to a certain theme. Here today, somewhere…

About student posts appearing here

I expected that my students would get a little trial by fire in the furious life of the public intellectual, and the commenters here certainly provided that. Maybe a little too much of that. Dial the ferocity back a notch, OK? Constructive criticisms are greatly appreciated, but the nasty stuff is not. I suppose it's useful in the sense that it's going to toughen up the students, but it doesn't reflect well on you. One thing I'll be doing in class next week is making up some lists and handing them out in class: a list of the jerks ("You can ignore these commenters, they're wasting your time…

Reading On-Line and in College

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about online literacy this week (time-limited link, look quickly), and I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the author is pessimistic. The article cites distressing findings from new research: In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news feeds, [Jakob] Nielsen exclaimed, "'Reading' is not even…

Scott Hensley, one of the true 'good guys' leaving WSJ and Health Blog

As I have stated many times before, this blog has brought me some personal experiences and friendships I would have never had in my life as "just" a lab scientist and pharmacology professor. Among the most cordial relationships I have had online with a professional journalist has been with Scott Hensley of the Wall Street Journal. Mr Hensley is a top-notch print reporter on health issues who two years ago became founding editor of the Journal's foray into HealthWeb 2.0, the WSJ Health Blog. Today, he has announced formally that he is leaving the blog and the Journal. I have long admired…

Genome Technique Identifies Diabetes Gene

There is a letter published online at Nature, ahead of the print version, that describes a technique of analyzing an entire genome to find genes that may be associated with disease. The newly-identified gene, in this case, is linked to Type 1 href="http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec13/ch165/ch165a.html">Diabetes Mellitus (T1D).  That is the type that usually starts in childhood and always requires treatment with insulin. The study was done by research teams in Canada and the USA.  The gene they found is on the short arm of chromosome (16p13).  There are two versions of the gene, Hakonarson…

Another Tax Rebate? Give It to the States Instead

Nothing could be a greater waste of taxpayer dollars than the proposal floated by the Obama administration to give every household another tax rebate (supposedly $500). In fact, it's probably one of the few things that conservative economist Bruce Bartlett and I would agree on. Last March I wrote: I agree: most won't spend, unless they have to (and any whose income is that bad needs long-term financial help--$600 isn't going to cut it). While I disagree with Bartlett's suggestion to help Fannie Mae buy up some of the bad loans, he is right that it won't do much in the way of stimulus. What…

The Global Darwinist Dictatorship Must Apologize to the Entire World!

I've been promoted. I'm now a member of a ruling cabal that forms a world dictatorship. BWAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAAHAHAAAA! At least, that is, according to this email I just got. Darwinism is under official protection in 95% of the countries of the world. People are forced to believe this false theory imposed on them as an official ideology. THE GLOBAL DARWINIST DICTATORSHIP MUST APOLOGIZE TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, for presenting innumerable frauds to the scientific world for 150 years, for imposing Darwinism as the official ideology, for trying to keep Darwinism alive by means of official protection…

WSJ on Billboard Advertising Battles

The Journal's Cynthia Crossen gives an overview of political battles surrounding billboard advertising today. An interesting read, in part because billboard advertising lobbyists have been pretty shameless in their political advocacy. I remember that when I lived in Georgia, they wanted to lop off the tops of trees so that billboards could be better seen. In order to get around regulations that distanced billboards from the roads, the industry created megabillboards that were huge. And they argued that billboards actually improved roadway safety because it gave drivers an interruption…

September monthly arctic sea ice extent smashes previous record

NCSIDC has it's monthly analysis for September done and as expected, it ain't pretty. Arctic sea ice extent averaged for September 2012 was the lowest in the satellite record, and was 16% lower than the previous low for the month, which occurred in 2007. Through 2012, the linear rate of decline for September Arctic ice extent over the satellite record is now 13.0% per decade, relative to the 1979 to 2000 average. The six lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred in the last six years. Compared to the 1979 to 2000 average ice conditions, the September 2012 ice…