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Quick note: OSTP is requesting input on public access to publications resulting from federally funded research

SUMMARY: With this notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, requests input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies. This RFI will be active from December 10, 2009 to January 7, 2010. Respondents are invited to respond online via the Public Access Policy Forum at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open, or may submit responses via electronic mail. Responses will be re-posted on the online forum. Instructions and a timetable for…

Online AP science classes -- with lab?

Adventures in Ethics and Science field operative RMD alerted me to a recent article in the New York Times (free registration required) about an ongoing debate on the use of online instruction for Advanced Placement science classes. The crux of the debate is not the value of online science classes per se, but whether such courses can accomplish the objectives of an AP science course if they don't include a traditional, hands-on laboratory component. The debate is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gets to the question of what precisely an AP course is intended to do. Second, it…

Economic Disasters and Stupid Evil People

With the insanity that's been going on in the financial world lately, a bunch of people have asked me to post a followup to my earlier posts on the whole mortgage disaster, to try to explain what's going on lately. As I keep saying when people ask me things like this, I'm not an economist. I don't know much about economics, and what little I do know, I tend to find terribly boring. And in this case, the discussion inevitably gets political, so I'm expecting lots of nasty email. Anyway, with that said, I've been doing a lot of reading, to try to understand this mess. And I'll try to explain…

Facebook's "Click Through Activism": Illusory Participation?

If you are on Facebook, you have probably grown annoyed by the many causes and appeals that show up in your Notifications on a daily, if not, hourly basis. Like any new information technology, Facebook has generated a fair share of hype over its potential to "revolutionize" citizen participation and to ignite support for social causes. But like previous information technologies--ranging from the radio to the Internet--this initial hype is now starting to be replaced by a sense of realism about what Facebook "click through activism" can and cannot do. Obviously, there's little doubt that…

I want you to want me

"I Want You To Want Me" Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition Mining data from online dating profiles, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar have created a romantic, bittersweet peek into the human psyche. This video tour of the "I Want You to Want Me" installation ends on an up note - apparently "intelligence" is the top turn-on for online daters! Still, the sight of all those balloons bumping randomly past each other in the sky serves as a reminder that finding love anywhere, online or in meatspace, is a total…

Internet addiction: Anatomy of a problem

Take a look at these graphs: Most bloggers and web designers will find this sort of chart familiar—it's a record of Cognitive Daily's visitor statistics for the month of November. The first graph records the amount of traffic we received each day. Notice that the pink bars are shorter—these correspond to the weekends. You might think that weekend traffic is lower just because we don't post new articles on weekends. But we didn't post an article at all on November 14, a Monday, yet still saw an increase in traffic compared to the day before. The second graph charts a number of indicators of…

Bill Gibson is cooler than you

But he's not cooler than me. Which is one of the things I thought of several times while reading Spook Country, his new novel. If you don't want the long version, here's the gist: it's decent, he's still pretty good, buy it in hardcover, move to Vancouver, buy a Powerbook, learn Mandarin, get hooked on benzos, run a startup involving art, and find yourself some new cocktails to drink. Minor spoilers ahead, but no big ones. I really wanted to love this one. Gibson's of course been a big part of my life since I was a wee one; Neuromancer is one of the few books I've been…

The Libertarian University

Or, more precisely, a university designed by libertarians. Over the last number of months, I've featured a fair bit of apocalyptic MOOC Disruptionism in my regular Around the Web posts. Recently, the libertarian think tank, The Cato Institute (Wikipedia) via their Cato Unbound site, has put online a series of essays discussing just how the traditional academic system can be radically reworked and rethought via a highly commercialized online academy. It's interesting because they've also included some responses questioning their assumptions and the overall MOOC triumphalism that's floating…

Truth tickets and stupid offsets

Perhaps you've heard of carbon offsets: the idea that if you're going to do something that will release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, you also buy or support something that will sequester an equivalent amount of carbon. It's a rational way to compensate for necessary activities and keep your damage to the environment neutral. Well, how about stupid offsets? Let's say you're going to do something that will increase the net amount of stupidity in the universe, like, say, paying to watch some inane creationist propaganda film because you're curious about just how bad it can be. You can,…

Create a Wildlife Conservation Stamp for Habitat Acquisition and the Conservation of Wildlife.

The Bird Bloggers, led by Corey Finger at 10,000 birds, where I blog monthly, are asking you to sign this petition and pass it on to others: We propose a Wildlife Conservation Stamp, comparable to the well-known Duck Stamp, to support the acquisition of habitat and the conservation of all wildlife in the National Wildlife Refuge system with an emphasis on non-game species. A Wildlife Conservation Stamp would allow birders, photographers, hikers, and other people who enjoy wildlife in a non-consumptive way to financially show their support of the National Wildlife Refuge system. CLICK HERE TO…

Monaghan's Catholic Jonestown?

Juan Non-Volokh and Ann Althouse have both written of Tom Monaghan's plan to move his Ave Maria Law School to a town in Florida - a town where he owns everything. Monaghan, you may remember, is not only the founder of Domino's Pizza, he is also the founder of the Thomas More Law Center, which is attached at least informally to the Ave Maria Law School. He is from Ann Arbor and these operations are currently located there, but he plans to move them to a new town outside of Naples, Florida, which he will call Ave Maria Town. I'm with them, this sounds downright creepy and cult-like: "We'll own…

Tirman on Neil Munro's dishonesty

John Tirman documents Neil Munro's dishonesty. I think this is an excellent catch by Tirman -- Munro selling his National Journal story to Iraq war architect Michael Rubin: George Soros funded the survey. The U.S. authors played no role in data-collection, and did not apply standard anti-fraud measures. The chief Iraqi data-collector had earlier produced medical articles to help Saddam's anti-sanctions campaign in the 1990s, and said Allah guided the prior 2004 Lancet/Johns Hopkins death-survey. Some of the field surveyors were employed by Moqtada Sadr's Ministry of Health. The Iraqis'…

Life in Cold Blood Benched?

Do we have something against David Attenborough in this country? First his narration for Planet Earth was overdubbed by Sigourney Weaver, and now I've heard that Life in Cold Blood is not even going to be televised in the States. I got this email from Herpdigest this morning: Animal Planet just emailed me. "Life in Cold Blood" will not be airing May 7 or 14. They do not know of any new dates. Sounds like they are dumping it. Won't be seen in U.S. And the only way to see it is to buy the DVD if they do produce one. Lame. At least Herpdigest is offering the book though: Or you can buy the book…

Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship. Really?

Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship by James A. Evans, ironically behind the paywall, has got a lot of people scratching their heads - it sounds so counter-intuitive, as well as opposite from other pieces of similar research. There is a good discussion on FriendFeed and another one here. A commentary at the Chronicle of Higher Education is here, also ironically behind the paywall. Here is the press release and here is the abstract: Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled.…

Should the Bill be Killed?

I'm talking about the health care bill, of course. The people I tend to trust on these sorts of questions, such as Robert Reich and Paul Krugman (here and here respectively) say the bill does more good than harm, and sets us down a path towards further improvements later. They also point out, rightly in my view, that if this moment passes we will not have another shot at serious health care reform for quite some time. The trouble is that Howard Dean is also pretty convincing when he writes If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands…

How to Survive From Tsunami

"How to Survive from Tsunami" by Murata et al, is vol 32 of the Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering from World Scientific Books Chapter 2 has the introductory phenomenology and basic physics, and the how-to-survive bit. In view of recent events, WorldSci is putting it up on their website for free: Knowledge for Tsunami Survival (pdf) Obviously WorldSci would be grateful if you became interested enough to buy the whole book...(ToC pdf) - it actually looks quite interesting.

Darwin Quotes

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Buy Carl Zimmer's Book. Now.

Look, folks. It's this simple. Carl Zimmer is one of our very best science writers. If not the absolute best bar none. So if you like reading about science, go buy his newest, Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. And don't wait--the book is just out, and if you buy now you drive up the Amazon.com numbers, which every writer loves....

There is no need for a 'Creepy Treehouse' in using the Web in the classroom

I love the way Web works! So, I was on FriendFeed earlier today and I saw through this link there that Paul Jones posted a note on Pownce (on which I am registered but never check) about this article in Raleigh N&O: An iPod Touch for each student? A Chapel Hill middle school could become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys. It's still not clear how the iPod Touches would be used at Culbreth Middle School. And school…

The Psychology of Video Game Addiction

I love video games. Hell, I was raised by Mario, Luigi, Sonic, and Yoshi and eagerly anticipated every new upgrade of the Nintendo console. My parents understood, they were of the Atari generation and saw video games as harmless fun on a rainy Florida afternoon, and perhaps even "good" for improving hand-eye coordination. I played outside like any normal kid, had friends, did schoolwork, grew up, and went to college. However, video games followed me through all of it. And while I don't play much anymore, a new Final Fantasy game or a Wii demo at Best Buy is still capable of raising my blood…

Science Online 2012 feedback -- and ideas for #scio13!

Well, I survived. Science Online 2012 took place this past weekend and it was a blast. There's already been quite a bit of discussion in blogs and on Twitter about how it went. A very small selection of the them bits are: Scattered reflections about ScienceOnline 2012 (#scio12) Science Online North Carolina (a nice Storify) Scientists have .... (impressions from #scio12) Sex, Gender, and Controversy, a #scio12 WRAPUP Science writing, in context But there's way more that I've missed, I'm sure. One of the things the stellar organizing committee of Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn…

Garden 2010: The Calendar

Note: This is a repeat from ye olde blogge, because I think this is a really useful, and probably obvious tool that wasn't obvious to me. It has made everything so much easier. I also wanted to put in the plug for the Ozone House Calendar! Those of who know me in real life will probably already have noted that organization isn't my strong suit. So how to keep up with all the garden tasks is a chronic problem of mine. I get particularly muddled in late spring, when there are plants to be seeded outside, tender crops to be hardened off in cold frames, and long-growing fall garden plants like…

So you want to write a pop-sci book, Part 2: The value of blogs

Blogs, as Carl Zimmer astutely noted at this year's ScienceOnline conference, are software. Despite all the hand-wringing over whether science bloggers can or should replace science journalists the fact of the matter is that science blogs are the independent expressions of a variety of writers about subjects which they feel passionate about. There is no single science blog archetype that all blogs must fit, and this flexibility allows science writers the freedom to compose and promote their work in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Hindsight being what it is, of course, I can look…

Steve's body is worth...

Ok ok... I'll do it too..... $4725.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

ScienceOnline'09 - important information for international participants

Eva Amsen uncovered some important information for the international travelers into the USA: International travel info - Science Online '09: For those of you who are traveling to the Science Online '09 conference from Europe, Australia, NZ, South Korea, Singapore, or on a passport from one of those parts of the world, this is of importance: As of January 12 2009, travelers using the Visa Waiver Program to enter the US (that is when you don't need to apply for a visa but you get one of those green forms to fill out at the border) will need to register online before their trip. I had a look at…

Friday Sprog Blogging: I owe my soul to the classsroom store.

In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring's second grade. Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies. Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time? Younger offspring: It's not real money. Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for? Younger offspring: Once a week, there's a classroom store, and you can…

Some resources for reference assistant training in a scitech library

Trust me, I really tried to come up with a cool, funny title for this post. Anyways... We have a new reference assistant starting here next week. As somewhat typical for such a position, the new staff member has a science subject background rather than a library background. In this case, Maps/GIS. So I thought it might be a good idea to gather together some resources for helping our new hire get acclimatised to reference work in an academic science & engineering library. After all, we're not born with the ability to do good reference interviews! With the help of the fine folk in…

Alumni Magazines in Economic Bad Times

As an alumnus of the California Institute of Technology (thats "Caltech" not "CalTech" peoples!) and a member of the Caltech alumni association, I get a quarterly copy of Engineering and Science (E&S). In this month's issue there is a letter from the editor concerning the future of the print version of Engineering and Science. It seems that, like much print media today, this esteemed publication's print edition may go the way of the dodo. In particular editor Douglas Smith asks what the readers of his rag think of the decision to axe the print edition: Which brings me to the other hand…

Books

I haven't been pimping books lately, but it's time. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J. K. Rowling First, the last Harry Potter book is scheduled for 7/7/07, and if you buy it through this link a portion of the sale goes to the important project of keeping TfK afloat. Second, the new book by our dear friend Chris Mooney is available for pre-order. Again, buying it through this link lets you give money to two Sciencebloggers: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming by Chris Mooney Finally, I'm making my way through Robert Cato's series on Lyndon…

Saturday Shillery: Paulas Choice

If you know me, I have raved about these products for a long time, just to my friends. But I thought it was high time Paulas Choice got its own shillery post. Over the past couple of years, people in the skeptic community have mentioned wanting skepticism to branch out into 'lady topics', like encouraging skepticism with cosmetics/beauty products/etc. The thing is, that view is a day late and a dollar short. Because people into cosmetics/beauty products have already branched out into skepticism. Like, for a really long time now. Beauty bloggers are known for buying, testing, and reviewing…

AU Students Debate the Internet's Impact on Society, Part A

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on "Communication and Society," we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter the nature of community, civic engagement, and social relationships. For college students who grew up online, it's easy to take for granted the virtual society we live in, seldom pausing to consider how it might be different from more traditional forms of community life. Therefore, one of the goals of the course was to encourage students to think systematically and rigorously about the many changes…

I get email

I think this one was more of a wrong number. Found you online and had a question… Hi, my name is Susan Dahl. I did a search online for Christians and I came across you. It would be great to have more info about what you are sharing online for the benefit and help of others. I am writing because I would like to find some new friends who have a walk with the Lord in the Puget Sound area. Even in the Northwest, there are still some of us out there! I look forward to hearing from you. God bless you, Susan Dahl It's OK. I've decided to name my penis "The Lord" just so these spammy…

Sid the Science Kid has his t-shirt, do you?

Sid the Science Kid has been seen sporting his new Festival t-shirt around town. Do you have your t-shirt yet? 3 GREAT Reason to buy a Festival T-shirt: 1. Show your enthusiasm for science and engineering! 2. Help spread the word about the Festival! 3. And MOST importantly buying a t-shirt helps bring a less fortunate student to the Expo. So what are you waiting for? Click here to buy your shirt.

Beer and Displaylink

Last night to the Beer festival to... drink beer. And to admire the beer mats, since Miriams company (as in, the one she works for, not the one she owns, sadly) is one of the sponsors. Don't forget to click through to their wonderful website and buy some of their wonderful products. Although you can't, really, unless you're a large corporation. But you can buy a Tosh or Samsung product with their stuff inside. :-)

RWS in Paperback

Chris Mooney's excellent book The Republican War on Science is now available in paperback. So if you didn't buy it in hardcover, shame on you! But now you have a chanc eto redeem yourself. Kidding aside, Mooney does a first-rate job of confirming what anyone who has been paying attention has long suspected: That the power brokers in the Republican Party are almost uniformly hostile to science and its findings. Buy it and read it immediately!

That's More Like It

Checking in to see whether the Amazon page for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has been updated (it had an older version of the cover copy yesterday morning, but that's been fixed), I see that the "Buy Together" box has been updated. It now says: Customers buy this book with The God Engines by John Scalzi That's much better than what we had yesterday. Thank you, Amazon, for some higher-quality recommendations.

All corporations are inherently evil.

First, check this out, then I've got a story of my own: "Last week, LAPTOP reported that Office Depot employees were routinely lying to customers about notebook inventory, telling them that systems were out of stock if they didn't want to buy extended warranties or tech services. Now LAPTOP has spoken to more Office Depot associates, one of whom goes by the name Alex and reports widespread altering of prices in his region. He says he even Photoshops higher price tags on clearance notebooks so that associates can tell customers that they're getting a free warranty or tech service, when the…

Should psychologists post their published articles?

Gualtiero Piccinini writes: I always put my papers online. I used to publish online a penultimate version, under the assumption that since it's not identical to the published version, it's ok. Lately, taking a cue from the copyright form of Australasian Journal of Philosophy, I've started posting the last version sent to the publisher (before proof corrections) While some authors cross off the relevant portions of agreements before signing, Piccinini signs the publishers' copyright forms as they are. Clearly the practice of posting your articles online violates many of these agreements.…

Old Tune Pimpage

For those who care, there's a list below the fold of what I bought from iTunes last night based on recommendations in the previous thread. For those who don't care so much about that, let me just note that trying to buy classical music on iTunes really is as annoying as everyone says-- as dozens of people have noted, it's hard to find specific pieces because they list everything by the name of the performer, not the composer. Even more annoying, though, from my perspective, is that many of the more important pieces are album tracks only. For example, they have approximately fifteen different…

What's your online reputation?

When I fly off to give talks, I've got three basic categories that I choose from: there's the "science is godless, and here's why" talk for atheist audiences, there's the "development and evolution go together like peanut butter and chocolate" talk for atheists or scientists, and finally, there's the "you better pay attention to the online world, and here's why" talk for scientists, who often don't have a clue about blogs and twitter and facebook. Now Nature gets in on the latter act, with a feature on managing your online reputation. It turns out that most scientists, especially younger…

The Good News Is That Blue Dog Dem Mike Ross Isn't a Cheap Whore...

...it takes a lot of money to buy his vote. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million, give or take: Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross -- a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate -- sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth. The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out. Ross sold Holly's Health Mart in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping price for real estate in a tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles…

My New Product: All Natural Pb®

Sciblings, I know you all are going to run out and buy my new nutritional supplement, Pb®. Pb® is all natural. Pb® is pure. Pb® is elemental. Pb® is balanced. Pb® affects one's optimal health. Pb® is readily absorbed by the blood stream and accumulates in the body, competing with unnatural toxins that cause illness. Pb® is highly bio-available. And Hoofnagle-brand Pb® is positively charged at our all-natural bioplant facilities, meaning that it repels negative ions. Pb® can be used by children as well as adults. There are no side effects of supplement products as they are made with all…

Only in America ..

tags: Only in America, cultural observation, humor A friend sent me some interesting cultural observations regarding the odd and ironic behavior of Americans .. of course, I had to share it with you. Only in America .. Only in America .. can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. Only in America .. are there handicapped parking places in front of a skating rink. Only in America .. do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front. Only in America .. do people order double…

July Pieces Of My Mind #2

Jrette wandering around watching TV on the iPad, overturning and breaking things in the kitchen. *sigh* Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold. Jrette stole my zombie novel -- Carey's 2014 Girl With All The Gifts -- and proclaimed it to be the best book she's read in ages. Now I am bookless. Mistakenly read two global catastrophe novels in a row. Now everything around looks temporary. Jrette is twelve today! I asked her if she doesn't find the Vampire Diaries scary. "I would, only with a dad who's a scientist, I'm not afraid of supernatural things." Pittentian in Perthshire is a fine…

Money Can Buy Happiness

You've all heard the old adage "Money can't buy happiness." But honestly, money can buy a Ferrari, and when was the last time you saw someone in a Ferrari who wasn't smiling? Now, I'm surely not saying that money is everything. Its not by a long shot. However, we live in a material world, and we are all material girls............or so says psychologist Dr. Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and economist Andrew Oswald. However, the effect of money on happiness seems to be small, and only effective up to a certain income level. While people who make $150,000 are consistently more happy…

Darwin and Cheese

From the great Harold McGee comes an investigation into raw milk, bacteria and cultural evolution: On our journey up to the Stichelton Dairy last September, Mr. Hodgson [a cheesemaker] explained how cheese quality progressed for centuries, then declined in the age of mass production and supermarkets. "I think of it as a Darwinian process," he said. "People make cheeses many times a year, in many ways, and all kinds of factors -- accidents, chance, laziness, intentional changes -- cause variations in the result. In the past, the changes that caused an improvement survived because consumers…

Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!

Chris Clarke explains Berube's new book (yup, I am hoping to buy it one day) for the masses. I am assuming that Chris spent quite a lot of time and effort into making this from scratch. I could have saved him some of that by mailing him some of the existing stuff I had and read as a kid. Ah, the glory of growing up in a socialist country! [Hat-tip: Amanda]

Darwin Quotes

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Celebrate Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself. ..and much, much more...

Who are you? ScienceBlogs wants to know

They could have used the data from my serial killer survey, but no, being scientists or science-related, the ScienceBlogs overseers want to find out for themselves. Plus the chance of winning and iPod is higher than the chance of winning the lottery and you don't even have to buy a ticket. Take the survey, maybe even win. I wonder if they have the pink Valentine iPods?

How Mortgages Turned into a Trillion Dollar Disaster

Ok, another batch of questions have come in, all variants on the same theme. The question is, if mortgages are at the root of the current economic disaster, how can it possibly result in close to a trillion dollars worth of losses? It definitely seems strange, on two different levels. On an absolute scale, it's hard to see how mortgage losses could add up to a trillion dollars. And on a relative scale, it's hard to see how the foreclosures could really overwhelm the lenders when even an extremely high foreclosure rate represents a fairly modest loss considered as a percentage. Let's…