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Overwhelmed at ScienceOnline 2009

OMG I am at ScienceOnline! In (also cold) RTP! And I've now met ScienceWoman! And let me say she is as lovely in person as she is online. And I've met a whole bunch of other folks, but am still trying to sort out the politics of pseudonymity. Hopefully I'll get to post some official blogger photos later. But in the meantime, both SW's and my sessions are this morning. Wish us luck! :-)

Second Annual Online Philosophy Conference

The second Online Philosophy Conference has begun, and the first week's presentations are up. If you didn't participate in last year's OPC, here's how it works: a presentation and one or two responses are posted for you to read, and comments are open to everyone for discussion. This year, they've also included two keynote addresses, one for each week. This week's keynote address is by Ernest Sosa. Stop by and check it all out.

PBS is Getting Web Friendly

Finally. NPR has been providing almost all their content online for quite a while. First you can watch Charlie Rose ... for free! (It use to cost 1$ a show, now you can watch the last week no charge.) Now NOVA has some videos. Great! Then if you want more see John Hogan (The End of Science) and science writer George Johnson talk about the Greene/Krauss debate on string theory they are on Bloggingheads.tv.

Dissing BP, a Bora Interview, and a Blog Carnival Request

Jennifer L. Jacquet has been investigating the results of unfettered "drill baby drill" environmentalism, and in the process came across this impressive collection of tee-shirts that say something about the BP oil spill. For the most part, they are not pro BP. Bora of A Blog Around the Clock interviews Anne Frances Johnson, in his continuing series of Science Online 2010 interviews. And finally, science bloggers take note: Scientia Pro Publica Needs Your Writing!

Johns Hopkins Magazine article on Lancet studies

Dale Keiger's article on the Lancet studies is now online: Newspapers the world over put the number in their headlines. Reporters tried to explain it, often bungling the job. To dismiss the research, critics seized on its implausibility, in the process frequently distorting its meaning. Political leaders dodged its implications by brushing it aside as the meaningless product of a discredited methodology. In a leading scientific journal, other scientists challenged how the study had been done.

Please vote for Peter Sinclair and Climate Denial Crocks

Peter Sinclair is locked in a close struggle in online voting for a $5000 grant that he can use to improve the quality of his Climate Denial Crock videos. If you've watched any of his videos here, please vote for him. You have to register, but it only takes a few seconds. Saturday, May 15 is the last day to vote. Here's one of his videos that I haven't featured before, on global warming on Mars:

Check Me Out on Live TV This Friday

For those of my readers in the UK (or anywhere else where you have access to Sky News), I'll be appearing live on Sky News at about 10:30 11:30 BST this Friday to talk about Barack Obama's visit to the UK and his support among Americans living abroad. I'm not sure if the video will be posted online afterward, but if it is, I'll post a link to it here.

A Perspective on Critical Thinking

The process of using critical thinking involves several steps. These steps work formally in experimental design and analysis, studying and mastering new concepts as we learn and in making decisions that people need to make in the various aspects of our lives. They also work informally and people process these steps often when we are not aware of them, nor even that we are following them. Mike Haubrich on Critical Thinking, a propos Science Online 10

ScienceOnline2010 iPhone app

Yes, we have it. You can check out the app in iTunes here. Features include a schedule quick-reference, information about the conference as a whole, and a brief nod to the participating sponsors. The app is named 'SciOnline10' due to the (visible) naming restrictions on the device. Searching for Science, Online, or ScienceOnline2010 (or the app name, SciOnline10) will find it on the App Store if the link doesn't work for you.

Happy 10th Birthday, NASA Earth Observatory

Mt. Pinatubo, Philippines taken by STS-050 in July 1992. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory Few websites offer so many unique views of active volcanism than the NASA Earth Observatory. That is why I'd like to wish the EO a happy 10th birthday. The website first came online April 29, 1999. Keep up the good work and here's to more stunning volcano images (like the one above of Mt. Pinatubo) to come!

Back from Montreal

I'll try to post a synopsis of the Islam and Evolution Symposium I participated in at McGill one of these days, but until then you can get a taste of it by viewing the presentations online. Especially interesting for those of you obsessed with all things Josh, my presentation. In short, a great time was had by all, with lots of great conversations in the sessions, and among the participants over the several days of the conference.

Medicaid, disability, and penury

I've been writing a lot about the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, mainly from the perspective of Medicaid as a route to health insurance for low-income US residents. As a recent Wonkblog post from University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack reminded me, though, Medicaid is also an essential source of care for people who require long-term care -- or, in Medicaid language "long-term services and support (LTSS)" -- due to disabling conditions. When a person needs daily assistance with routine tasks, the costs can quickly eat up a family's income and savings, so Medicaid is a…

How Did You Get My Facebook?

Facebook watchers are reporting that the service is about to launch a new feature for merchants that will allow merchants to target ads to users based upon users' email and phone numbers. That's a little confusing. Let me explain with a hypo-- As I understand it, it might work like this: ABC Corp. has an extensive database of consumer email addresses, but is concerned that no one is reading the company's spam. So ABC uploads its consumer email database to Facebook, which identifies Facebook members who are customers of ABC. ABC Corp can then send its marketing through Facebook so that it…

Can't we do something with this White House petition thing?

For a long time I ignored the White House petitions, mostly, because their sign in system was messing with me and I spend very little time on web sites that mess with me. But they seem to have fixed that problem and now I can actually read what is going on there and participate in the process. Or not. So, here's some ideas. First, I wonder if we should all sign the petitions for various states to secede from the Union, but only for states we don't live it. That would be funny. Like this one: ALLOW ALASKA TO SECEDE FROM A DYSFUNCTIONAL UNION. As an American Veteran on behalf of the U.S.…

Are Books and Kindles Correlated?

I'm trying not to obsessively check and re-check the Dog Physics Sales Rank Tracker, with limited success. One thing that jumped out at me from the recent data, though, is the big gap between the book and Kindle rankings over the weekend. The book sales rank dropped (indicating increased sales, probably a result of the podcast interview), while the Kindle rank went up dramatically. This suggests that people who listen to that particular podcast are less likely to buy new books on the Kindle than new books on paper. This got me wondering, though, whether this was an anomaly, or a general truth…

Radio Simulation

Thinking a little more about the soundtrack post from a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the fact that I don't seem to have the same strong associations with more recent songs that I do with some older stuff. It's not that I'm buying less music, I don't think, but rather that iTunes and the lack of good radio has changed the way I listen to music. In particular, I miss good radio, and I wonder if it would be possible to get iTunes to simulate the sort of thing I'm after (explained below the fold). In my opinion, a really good radio station playlist breaks down sort of like this: 50%…

Brandon Sanderson, Elantris [Library of Babel]

When Brandon Sanderson's debut novel, Elantris first appeared on store shelves, I was tempted to buy it. It had a lot of things going for it: good review quotes, a striking cover, an interesting description, and it's published by Tor, who are usually pretty reliable. I couldn't quite figure out, though, whether it was the first book in a series or not, and I'd really rather not commit to another long fantasy series if it can be avoided. The paperback edition helpfully addresses this in the back cover copy: "Elantris delightfully proves that a great complete fantasy story can still be told in…

Creation Museum Attendance Decreasing

I spent the last weekend in scenic Parsippany, NJ, participating in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. As big a chess fan as I am, I am mostly retired from tournament play. It's too hard and stressful! For the first time in a long while, however, I managed to make some decent moves, so you can be sure that you will hear all about it shortly! Alas, since I am digging out from all the work that didn't get done while I was away, that might have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, you can take some comfort from this article, that appeared recently in…

The Goracle speaks!

"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet." -- Al Gore We all knew what he'd say, but we still stood in line for an hour to hear him say it. Today Al Gore issued his "Generational Challenge to Repower America" to a packed house at the DAR Constitution Hall in DC. After zinging the administration a few times as a warm up ("I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously"), Gore laid down the We Campaign challenge. Basically, he wants the entire nation to be on "100…

E. coli, We Hardly Knew You

Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer Pantheon: 2008, 256 pages. Buy now! (Amazon) I come face-to-face with Escherichia coli every day. In a sense, we all do--as billions of E. coli inhabit every individual's intestines. But for me, E. coli is a protein factory. I'm a structural biologist, and my work depends on being able to produce large amounts of specific proteins--generally proteins found in humans or mice. However, purifying large amounts of these proteins from humans or mice would be virtually impossible, and manipulating these proteins in the manner I…

Why this information industry land grab is different [Christina's LIS Rant]

And why we should care. Gary Price of the Resource Shelf pointed to a news story today, that Ebsco has acquired two more research databases: Criminal Justice Abstracts and Communications Abstracts. For those of you who haven't been following, Ebsco has recently acquired Ageline (it is now not available for free), NetLibrary, research databases from OCLC, The Music Index Online, World Textiles, ExPub (ChemExpert)... oh and exclusive rights to some magazines. What we can expect from this is that those other databases will no longer be available on multiple platforms. Folks who aren't librarians…

Hotspots, a new PBS movie

Starting this month, a new PBS documentary-three years in the making-will change the way Americans see life on Earth. Scientists the world over now agree that Earth is experiencing runaway mass extinction of life across virtually all ecosystems. The bottom line? Life on Earth is dying off, fast. The good news? People everywhere are waking up and doing something about it. Far from being just another nature film with awe-inspiring aerials (although it sports some), HOTSPOTS takes American television audiences to the front lines of some of the most far-flung places on Earth. Viewers are given a…

History of the Swedish Boardgame Market

Karl Olausson has just submitted his Bachelor's thesis in history: a study of the post-WW2 Swedish boardgame market. The material he's used is largely interviews with people in our country's boardgame business. Karl has kindly given me permission to put the work on-line (in Swedish). Here's the abstract: This essay is about the history of the Swedish board game-industry from the 1970’s to today. The essay focuses on the companies in the business and how they change during this period and about the causes of this change. This essay aims both at accurately describing the development of the…

A workshop on Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences

I've been to another workshop presented by the same group and I highly recommend them. Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Post-doctoral Fellows July 16-July 19, 2009 University of Nevada, Las Vegas Application DEADLINE is March 18, 2009 http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep09/index.html Preference will be given to those entering or soon to enter the academic job market. The workshop will include faculty panels on academic careers and the academic job search, short presentations on various topics, structured discussions, and…

Why this information industry land grab is different

And why we should care. Gary Price of the Resource Shelf pointed to a news story today, that Ebsco has acquired two more research databases: Criminal Justice Abstracts and Communications Abstracts. For those of you who haven't been following, Ebsco has recently acquired Ageline (it is now not available for free), NetLibrary, research databases from OCLC, The Music Index Online, World Textiles, ExPub (ChemExpert)... oh and exclusive rights to some magazines. What we can expect from this is that those other databases will no longer be available on multiple platforms. Folks who aren't librarians…

Where does cartoonist John Spooner get his science from?

You know the paper in PNAS by Kaufmann et al that found: that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects. Here's what John Spooner, cartoonist from The Age felt it showed: "Sulphide [sic] emissions from Chinese coal fired power might be causing global cooling" "Global cooling should make the carbon tax and ETS redundant" "There seems to have been no increase in aerosol…

A sad day for personal genomics

(Cross-posted to Genomes Unzipped.) Today's US Congress Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing into the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry was a vicious affair. Representatives from testing companies 23andMe, Navigenics and Pathway faced a barrage of questions about the accuracy and utility of their tests, made all the worse by the fact that many of the Committee's members seemed unable to distinguish between the more responsible companies in the field and the scammers and bottom-feeders. (I watched by web-cast, which I can't yet track down a copy of online; you can read the…

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Ken Liu, translator)

As the Hugo nomination debacle unfolded, one of the few bright spots was the replacement of Marko Kloos's novel with The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, who is apparently a Big Name in SF in China. This got a good deal of buzz when it was released in the US, and I've sorta-kinda been meaning to read it for a while. Having it move onto the Hugo ballot provided a great excuse to finally crack it open. And given that I wasn't blown away by the other two non-Puppy nominees on the slate, or the one Puppy book that I had already read, I had great hopes this would redeem the category. Alas, it was…

PowerPoint and Knowing Your Audience(s)

One of the endlessly recurring topics around here is the use of PowerPoint and comparable presentation software. Usually because of some ill-informed rant against the use of PowerPoint. It's come around yet again in a particularly ironic fashion, via an online slideshow at Slate, the only medium more consistently exasperating than a bad PowerPoint presentation. In keeping with modern tastes, this has been re-shared so many times that I finally went to look at it, but it's more of the usual, in a more annoying medium. This is a bit of a shame, as there's actually some good presentation advice…

The law loves American Christianity

At first glance, I thought this story was good news: Oklahoma is going to build a Christian prison! About time, I thought, I can think of a few Christians who deserve a few years for faith-abuse. But no…it's a prison to be administered by Christians to give Christian criminals special privileges. Not quite as appropriate, but more in line with what we've gotten used to from our dominant faith tradition. We're getting more of the same from Congress, too. Religion is being given permission to intrude on science once again, with the sanctimonious Orrin Hatch (abetted by a pair of Democrats,…

Wet markets: going viral

Concern about cutting down the rain forests is not just a conservationists hobby horse. As more and more trees are cut down for their wood and the land cleared for agricultural use the unplanned consequence is that more an more mobile and traveling humans come in contact with animals for the first time. These animal populations are reservoirs for many viruses, some, like Ebola and AIDS, make their way into new homes, human bodies. The rain forest is no more than an incubation period's travel from major cities. But this isn't the only way animals and humans are thrown together in intimate and…

Ruminating on the digital divide

A few weeks ago I attended a education conference at Pacific Science Center entitled, "A Conversation that Can Change the World." It was interesting.  Everyone was pretty enthusiastic at the meeting and there was a lot of positive energy. We got to see Theresa Britschgi from Seattle Biomedical Research Institute make Jack Faris, President of the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association, get dressed up in a biohazard protection suit. We heard from Dennis Schatz about the Pacfic Science Center's outreach programs. We had our required moment of technical failure when Ran Hinrichs,…

agency rumours

the disbursement of the stimulus funding through the science agencies is going to get real interesting some disparate word has reached me on the stimulus funding first, the NSF divisions won't hear for a while, like next month, how much they individually get to push out the door (NIH might be different since the bill specifies the funding goes pro-rate to the divisions). But, the clock on getting the money disbursed is already counting, they basically have 120 days to dispose of the money from the signing of the bill. Now, some calls for proposal are in current evaluation (oh to have a…

Ford, Families and Gays

I reported a few weeks ago that Ford had decided, despite considerable pressure from the religious right, to continue buying ads in gay-oriented publications. Now it seems that pressure has been turned up considerably. The Worldnutdaily has a report full of empty buzzwords and silliness: Leaders of 42 pro-family groups have signed a letter asking Ford to honor what the activists see as a previous commitment to stop supporting homosexual advocacy efforts. It always makes me angry to see religious right organizations described as "pro-family", because what does that make the rest of us? Anti-…

Student Comments and Internet Reviews

I got my student comments from last term's intro mechanics course yesterday, which is always a stressful moment. As tends to happen, they were all over the map, with some students really liking me and others absolutely hating me. It struck me while I was reading through the written comments that the experience is a lot like reading Amazon reviews of my book. I think there's actually a decent analogy between the response of authors to reviews and the response of faculty to student evaluations: -- Really good comments can make you feel great, but the negative ones make you feel worse. I've got…

Cute Kid Update

It's been a good while since I did any Cute Kid Blogging, due to excessive busy-ness. There's big news among the younger residents of Chateau Steelypips, though: SteelyKid lost one of her front teeth the other day: SteelyKid showing off her missing tooth That gap? Wasn't there on Friday morning. Lest you think we're horrible people who let her run headfirst into a pole or something, while we were surprised to have one come loose this early, she's within the normal age range for losing baby teeth. Just barely, but then she got teeth really early, too-- she had eight at eight months old. So I…

Acknowledging chronic illness

Wow. I really don't deserve this but I truly appreciate your concern, advice, and best wishes sent over the last few days following my post on losing, and slowly regaining, my voice. I didn't know anyone was still reading but some of you must have seen my RSS feed pop up under the cobwebs on your reader. What's interesting is that I generally look well in person other than getting winded when walking too fast or going up stairs (yes! I can walk up stairs now! w00t!). And to be honest, the loss of 14 lbs I didn't need has actually made me look a little more fit. I've still got a long way to go…

Cancer: it's all about Vitamin D (???!!) or Linus Pauling was (almost) right

Get ready for a big fracas among oncologists: "In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding." (Globe and Mail, April 28). A lot of people are going to find this hard to swallow. More the Globe's Martin Mittelstaedt: A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large -- twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking -- it almost looks like a…

David Gross and concealed-carry in Minnesota

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a story about David Gross, who, after all this time, is the only witness to Lott's 1997 survey who has ever been found: A major player and legal consultant on Minnesota's new gun-permit law is a former board member of the National Rifle Association who was fired from the Minneapolis city attorney's office for opposing gun buy-back programs and carrying a gun to work. He also acknowledges shooting a deer in his back yard in St. Louis Park with a .357-caliber Magnum handgun for eating his raspberries, pointing a rifle at…

It's a bought and paid for bragging point, but it's still a bragging point.

On Sunday, Chris Mooney and Randy Olsen both tried to make the case that Ben Stein's "Evolution Caused the Holocaust" movie was a success at the box office. Both of them have been rather spectacularly condemned for calling Expelled a success, but I'm not sure that they're entirely wrong. I just don't think that they took a hard enough look at some of the issues involved. Let's start with the basic facts. Expelled hit theaters on Friday. It was aggressively marketed prior to release, and opened on 1,052 screens - the most ever for any documentary. On Sunday, estimates suggested that the…

Liveblogging the conference: Bill Wimsatt

Bill Wimsatt is somewhat of a hero around here and for good reason. He is perhaps one of the most influential under-published philosophers of biology. Today he's talking about modularity in biological and cultural evolution. Modularity is a recurrent theme in biology and culture. Evolved systems are usually modular. It's easier to make a modular system, because there are fewer part types - polyfunctional parts. They are easier to modify if you can adapt to local circumstances by changing one or a few parts rather than the whole system. Quasi-independent parts A small number of parts…

Acupuncture and blood pressure

Having exhausted myself for the time being on two things that irritate me a lot (namely creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor and the antivaccination pseudoscience being presented as "evidence" that vaccines cause autism at the Autism Omnibus), it's time for a change of pace. For all my tendency to deride certain "alternative medicine" modalities as pseudoscientific nonsense (homeopathy, anyone?), you may have noticed that I tend to take a softer line with acupuncture. No, it's not because I'm a believer. Certainly, I don't buy for a minute that somehow sticking needles in "meridians" in…

Burnham and Roberts reply to Kaplan

Slate has published a response from Burnham and Roberts to Kaplan's botched criticism of Lancet 2. Kaplan's latest article focused on two baseless criticisms of our 2006 study. First, he claimed that our measured base line rate, the rate of natural deaths for the year before the invasion, was too low. We had estimated the rate to be 5.5 deaths per thousand per year. Kaplan claims that the rate was really 10, according to U.N. figures. He wrote, "[I]f Iraq's pre-invasion rate really was 5.5 per 1,000, it was lower than almost every country in the Middle East, and many countries in Europe."…

Brett Favre. Any questions? I thought not...

A very interesting day. I got word in the AM that Derick would be digging a trench across the Cabin property tomorrow, and as an archaeologist I could not possibly skip that, so I ripped a rotten board out of the porch as fast as I could, threw in some laundry, and watched the beginning of the football game. I was a bit discouraged as the third quarter was progressing and it looked like the Vikings were not going to sweep the 39ers (yes, I'm taking away ten points). So I sawed the rotten board into four pieces. Two went into the garbage (sneaky) and one in each car. The car bits will…

Agricultural Reform

Michael Pollan makes so much sense it's actually a little painful, since such basic agricultural reforms will never, ever get through Congress. At some point in the twentieth century, American lawmakers forgot that the sole goal of farming wasn't efficiency; high-fructose corn syrup should not be the epitome of modern agriculture. It must be recognized that the current food system -- characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table -- is not simply the product of the free market. Rather, it is the product of a specific…

Michele Bachmann, Light Bulb Vigilantes, and the Dim Bulbs of the Tea Party

Rightwing wackaloon and Minnesota Congresswoman and possible presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has been traveling hither and yon in New Hampshire, which, according to Bachmann, is where the 'shot heard round the world' was fired. For those who don't routinely wallow in the depths of the Republican id, one of Bachmann's signature issues is saving the incandescent light bulb. No, really, I'm not kidding: She conjured a tea bag from a hidden compartment in her blazer and began waggling it at the crowd. She waggled it while stumping for her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, a bill she…

Regarding the Tax Cut 'Stimulus', I Was Joking About the Porn

This weekend, I was going to blog about framing the tax cuts as the 'Pornography Stimulus Plan', since the last tax cut rebate benefited few sectors other than the pornography industry. It would be similar to the Republican term for the estate tax--'the death' tax. And then Larry Flynt arrived and screwed everything up: Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment…

Open science, peer review and the flu

We had a great discussion in the comments yesterday after I published my NJ trees from some of the flu sequences. If I list all the wonderful pieces of advice that readers shared, I wouldn't have any time to do the searches, but there are a few that I want to mention before getting down to work and posting my BLAST results. Here were some of the great suggestions and pieces of advice; 1. Do a BLAST search. Right! I can't believe I didn't do that first thing, I think the trees I got surprised me so much all sense flew out of my brain. 2. Show us the multiple alignments. Okay. I'll…

EPA Administrator Ignores Law, Science, and Consistency

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has denied Californiaâs petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucksâagainst the advice of technical and legal staff, reports the Washington Postâs Juliet Eilperin. Governor Schwarzenegger says his state will sue over the decision, and EPA lawyers and staff predict California will win that suit (just as states have won previous related suits). Johnson claims that Californiaâs proposed tailpipe emissions standards arenât necessary, anyway, because the Energy Bill thatâs just been approved will boost fuel economy standards to a comparable…

The Teabaggers Are Nuts

Via Brayton I caught this disturbing video of the new right-wing fringe movement: Now, if you guys have been following along for the last few years of denialism blog, you know you should immediately be suspicious of people alleging conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy. The administration as a culmination of a 5 decade communist plot to take over the country? This movement is disturbing, and as radical and unhinged as the 9/11 truthers. I would emphasize as always, no political ideology is safe from this paranoid fringe, and this is a great example of how ideology is the universal…