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The trials of a postdoc

There's a reason why I haven't posted much lately. No, not the drinking, work. That stuff that gets me paid and occasionally moves forward, but alas, not this week. I just found out that I didn't get my grant. It took me the better part of a month and a half to prepare. All gone. Wasted. (Well, not exactly wasted - they say you can recycle these things indefinitely until you succeed). And of course the end of my postdoc is creeping closer rather more rapidly than I'd like. So papers, papers, papers, and job applications, job applications, job applications! Presently I'm working on revising…

Dog Treats

Our dog has developed a fear of traffic. Since we live on a busy street, this is a problem. It all started when he was crossing the street with Carmen and a car went through the red light without even slowing, passing less than a metre in front of him and smashing into the side of another car just a couple of metres away. After that he wouldn't cross the street at that intersection, which is sort of understandable, but his fear quickly grew so that he would freeze up walking on the footpath beside a busy road. Did I mention that we live on a busy road? Naturally I searched my…

Come in, spinner

Earlier, Glenn Reynolds accused me of spinning because I wrote that "the [Australian] election was not about Iraq---it was hardly an issue.". Now he approvingly links to a piece by Greg Sheridan Labor did not buy a single ad on Iraq. Nor did Latham mention his troops-home-by-Christmas pledge in his policy speech. Indeed Iraq only figured in the last line on page 13 of a 16-page speech by Latham. ... It was rather strange that we have troops at war and they were hardly mentioned in the campaign. Why, that's what I was saying! Do you think Reynolds…

My week in the Pacific Northwest

Today it's family day with a mob of Myerses hanging about and bickering opinonatedly at a picnic. You aren't invited unless you can show evidence of a recent family relationship; showing evidence that all primates are related is nice, but won't get you in the door. Tuesday at 6ish I'll be at the Pike Brewing Company waiting upon Ophelia Benson. Come on out! Buy us beer! I'm also thinking I might head up there a little early to visit the Seattle Aquarium, since it's right there in the neighborhood. Friday at noon I'll be at Room B101, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford BC. This is a…

The Vatican has been beaming cancer rays into children!

That's the latest news, anyway: radio masts operated by the Vatican have been implicated in an increased incidence of cancers nearby. It is such a juicily evil story — it would just fit the Pope's Bond villain image so well — but, and I really, really hate to defend the Vatican, I don't buy it. Sorry. I know it's my mission to smack the Catholic church around, but this is a case where I just find it highly unlikely. I have not read the report; all I've seen so far is the accusation, the small numbers (19 deaths in 23 years) and the excessive charges — 6 people are being investigated on…

Helping Haiti

There's much that needs to be done to assist the recovery in Haiti, but the consensus of those on the ground is that what's needed now is money. Don't mail blankets or whatever, just let the aid agencies buy what they need and ship it in. The airports and seaports are clogged and there's minimal capacity to offload supplies, so let the aid groups make decisions about what's needed and when. The Intersection has a good roundup of the top aid groups. Personally, I've always been happy with Oxfam. They have a longstanding presence in Haiti, and I know that they'll be working not just on the…

The ten commandments of student science blogging

Yesterday, I wrote about students using science blogging as a way to develop an on-line portfolio and document their skills.  One friend wrote me this morning and asked if my instructions to our students were really as simple as I described. Well, no. In fact, it wasn't easy to persuade my colleagues that we should let students blog.  I had to promise them I would scrutinize every post and make sure no one got in trouble.  Luckily, our student bloggers are responsible adults.  Reading their posts has been a pleasure and there have only a couple of cases where I checked with them to make sure…

Product Defense Wolf Tries on Sheepâs Clothing

The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book âDoubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.â These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation â only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, itâs transformed itself into a âproduct supportâ firm. Changes to the companyâs website, like transforming the âProduct Defenseâ category of services to âProduct Support,â suggest that the Weinberg Group has a new awareness of its online audience â itâs no longer just potential clients…

How to read a scientific paper

I was waiting until the last installment was up to post about this. Revere on Effect Measure took a recent paper about a mathematical model of the spread of anti-viral resistance and wrote a 16-part series leading the readers through the entire paper, from the title to the List of References and everything in between. While the posts are unlikely to garner many comments, this series will remain online as a valuable resource, something one can use to learn - or teach others - how a scientific paper is to be analyzed. As you can see, it takes a lot of time to read a paper thoroughly. It also…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Influence Of The Menstrual Cycle On The Female Brain: What influence does the variation in estrogen level have on the activation of the female brain? Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Jean-Claude Dreher, a researcher at the Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNRS/Université Lyon 1), in collaboration with an American team from the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, Maryland) directed by Karen Berman, has identified, for the first time, the neural networks involved in processing reward-related functions modulated by female gonadal steroid hormones. This result, which was…

OSHA at 35: Your Comments Welcome

By Michael Silverstein Thirty-five years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the promise of worker protection remains substantially unfulfilled. Over the past several months, I have been traveling across the country and talking with people experienced in worker health and safety to gather ideas about what we can do to protect workers better. The more I hear, the more I am certain that we canât achieve this by simply trying harder to do more of the same. The draft paper âGetting Home Safe and Sound? OSHA at Thirty-Fiveâ summarizes what Iâve learned and suggests three…

Big Brother Is Evaluating Your Teaching

The New York Times ran a couple of op-eds on Sunday about education policy. One, by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari is familair stuff to anyone who's heard me talk about the subject before: teachers in the US are, on the whole, given fewer resources than they need to succeed, paid less well than other professions with comparable educational requirements, and then castigated as incompetents. And we wonder why top students aren't interested in education. The other by R. Barker Bausell, offers a simple and seemingly objective standard for evaluating teacher performance: measuring their…

Wind Power Economics and the Ability to Focus

Kevin Drum re-posts a chart on wind power made by Stuart Staniford showing that the number of new wind power plants installed in 2010 was way lower than in 2009 or 2008: This is meant as a starting point for discussion about the big economic issues that might've caused this. One of the many, many reasons I'll never make it as a political pundit, though, is that when I see a graph like this, I'm inexorably drawn to speculating about aspects of it that really have nothing to do with the intended point. In this particular case, I look at this graphic and ask myself "Why are there so many wind…

I love Google Books

It can really be a chore to track down old papers. While many journals have digitized their collections and placed them online, a subscription is often required to access old papers (even from the 19th century!)*. That's if the paper you're looking for was published in a journal that still exists, of course. There are plenty of journals that have gone defunct or are otherwise unavailable, a sad fact that keeps important papers out of the hands of students and scientists today. [*This really aggravates me. Shouldn't these papers, in many cases nearly 100 years old or more, be freely available…

Friday Sprog Blogging: co-evolution

Have you ever tried to have a conversation about one thing and found that, almost immediately, the conversation veered someplace else entirely? This is one of those. I had heard the horrifying news that there are high school teachers -- in our pretty good school district -- who actually tell their students that it's OK to cut and paste stuff from the internet into their papers without quotation marks or citation, and that Wikipedia is a great source of authoritative information (which, again, one need not cite, seeing as how the internet is like our shared brain). My response was to launch a…

Shrinking budgets + skyrocketing subscription fees = UC boycott of NPG.

Economic recovery has not yet made its presence felt at public universities in California. (Indeed, at least in the California State University system, all things budgetary are going to be significantly worse in the next academic year, not better.) This means it's not a great time for purveyors of electronic journals to present academic libraries in public university systems with big increases in subscription prices. Yet Nature Publishing Group has, apparently, done just that by some 400%. And, as noted by Christina Pikas and Dorothea Salo and Jennifer Howard in The Chronicle of Higher…

Links 3/19/11

Links for you. Science: The Electric Taxi Company You Could Have Called in 1900 Glimpses of the Fourth Domain? Natural-Born Homophobes? Other: Tripped Up At The Finish Line: The Perils Of Unemployment After 50 San Francisco to Start Smart Parking Management Trial Soon Annual Mis-Reporting on Graduation Rates Times paywall (this is the smartest solution to making online journalism profitable) Red light camera nabs drivers for blocking crosswalk, rolling right on red The Ethics of The Quote

Our god is an awesome thixotropic blob of goo

This is what happens when you can't comprehend the ordinary physical properties of fluids: you start hailing grungy old bottles of gloppy stuff as your salvation. Naples has gotten all excited about a bottle of "liquifying saint's blood" — it's incredibly silly. And just as silly, there is an online poll: Do you believe in miracles?. So far, 64% of the respondents say they do. They should have asked, "do you believe in gullible people?", because then I would have voted yes.

Evolution, with teeth

My last Seed column is online, which reminds me (as if I weren't uncomfortably aware already) that I have to finish up the next one today, which actually isn't the next one, which is already done and submitted, but the one after that. These long leading deadlines force one to live a few months in the future… You know, if you subscribed to the print magazine, you'd be halfway to my future already instead of living in my distant past.

A temporary palliative

So you're pining away for ERV, hoping either that her site will be restored or that she'll bring her new site up quickly. Don't sit there weeping and wailing, she'll be back online soon enough. Cheer up and laugh! Here are a few links to help you out. Science and reality television. A lunar scientist explains everything. Conservapædia discusses "professor values" (this one is not intentionally humorous, but it still gets the job done.) You feel better already.

EuroTrip '08 - Trieste, part III

The entire thing is happening in a large building on a pier (Molo IV). I was impressed by the crowds on the first day. I also got vouchers for four nice restaurants in town for meals. Last night I went to a nice pizza place and had spaghetti with tomato&eggplant sauce and veal in wine sauce - delicious: real Italian food! Tonight, I will also be interviewed for the radio - there will be a podcast online so I will link to it later. Pictures under the fold:

A day of Dawkins

He just got here, and already Richard Dawkins is stirring things up in Minnesota. He was interviewed on MPR this morning — unfortunately, I had to miss it as I was scrambling to get ready for class — and it sounds like the interviewer was offended. The station live-blogged the interview, and it looks like some of the listeners were offended, too, while others are invigorated. Get online quick and you might be able to hear the tag-end of the interview.

Sesame Street Personality Quiz

tags: sesame street, online quiz You Are Cookie Monster Misunderstood as a primal monster, you're a true hedonist with a huge sweet tooth. You are usually feeling: Hungry. Cookies are preferred, but you'll eat anything if cookies aren't around. You are famous for: Your slightly crazy eyes and usual way of speaking How you life your life: In the moment. "Me want COOKIE!" The Sesame Street Personality Quiz Hey, how did they know that my favorite snack is a .. COOKIE!!

Are You A Feminist?

tags: feminist, online quiz You Are 93% Feminist You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action. Are You a Feminist? I guess this result is not surprising, eh? I also assume that you are going to fit into the "feminist" category as well, since you are reading this blog.

Do You Communicate Like a Man or a Woman?

tags: communication style, online quiz You Communicate Like a Man When you communicate, you like to get to the point. You're not afraid to say what's on your mind - and leave it at that. Talking about your emotions drains you. You rather keep them to yourself. You prefer solving problems to wallowing in your sorrows. Do You Communicate Like a Man or a Woman? Ho hum. I've often been told that I am too direct. What about you?

Dialogues with Darwin

Perhaps you don't know this, but Philadephia has a very large collection of Darwin literature — it only makes sense, since in the early years of our country that city was the center of science and philosophy in the US. The American Philosophical Society Museum is having a major exhibit of those artifacts, so you should get down to Fifth Street and amble through. If you can't make it (regretfully, I'm stuck in Morris for a while), they have an online tour.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The ninety-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The Prancing Papio. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Krys at Anthropology in Practice. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is already on 23 June. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The ninety-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sorting Out Science. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Raymond at The Prancing Papio. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is already on 9 June. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The eighty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at the A Primate of Modern Aspect. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Julien at A Very Remote Period Indeed. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 10 March. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The seventy-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Place Odyssey. 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. The next vacant hosting slot is in less than two weeks, on 21 October. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.

SOPA Dead (for now) But PIPA is Not

According to the examiner: In a surprise move today, Representative Eric Cantor(R-VA) announced that he will stop all action on SOPA, effectively killing the bill. This move was most likely due to several things. One of those things is that SOPA and PIPA met huge online protest against the bills. Another reason would be that the White House threatened to veto the bill if it had passed. . PIPA, the Senate Version is still in play, however.

See you at the Stone Arch Bridge on June 25th!

Or, on some other bridge or other flat spot next to a major body of water... Global Water Dances -- June 25, 2011 @ Yahoo! Video Global Water Dances is a world event planned for June 25, 2011. On this day, a 24 hour series of dances around the globe will be danced, centered around water issues. Beginning in the Western Pacific Rim, and encircling the globe, the series of dances will also be broadcast online. Check out the web site.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The twenty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sorting Out Science. Archaeology and anthropology, enough to turn you into a creature of the night, mad for love, with the fulfillment of your darkest desires your only goal in life. The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro -- come as you are. Come now!

Welcome Bergh's Students

Here's a link page that I used during a talk about internet culture to advertising students at Bergh's on 28 September. This blog entry will move down the page as I write new ones, but I'll leave the link page on-line. Bookmark it in your browser! If you, Dear Reader, weren't at the talk and still want to hear my comments on the links, I'd be very happy to give more talks on the subject at the venue of your choice.

Anthro Blog Carnival with Heavy Brow Ridges Grunt Growl

The twenty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza. It's a particularly populous and witty edition. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to scratch your pubic lice and soothe your fear of the cave bear. The next open hosting slot is on 24 October 7 November. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. You don't have to be an anthropologist, but bipedalism is encouraged.

Four Stone Hearth Call for Submissions

The 43rd instalment of the Four Stone Hearth anthro & archaeo blogging carnival will come on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza on Wednesday 18 June. Send links to good recent anthroblogging to him! It needn't be your own stuff: submit all the goodies you've read lately. The next open hosting slot is on 16 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Neuroanthropology. Archaeology and anthropology, and all related to the song "If You Should Try To Kiss Her" by Dressy Bessy. The next open hosting slot is on 16 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro. But you must have "If You Should Try To Kiss Her" playing in your head, like me.

links for 2008-01-14

Just Science 2008 » Just Science 2008 People blogging about nothing but science, Feb. 4-8. (tags: blogs science) Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fiction A Nebula-nominated story, available online. Yet another thing I'll read in my copious free time. (tags: space stories books) Prisoner's lawsuit says it was too easy to escape - Los Angeles Times ""Defendants . . . did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and the plaintiff could not escape," says Gomez's lawsuit" (tags: stupid news)

Sorry for the light posting...

...we had to move across town this weekend. The new house is not yet configured for internet, so it may be a few days until I'm back on track. In the meantime, here are some links to keep you entertained: Asian Myrmecology, a new ant journal! The first volume is open-access. An ecological menage a trois between Ants, Plants, and... Elephants? Friday Ark #173 at The Modulator The Ants of Fiji can be found online at antweb.org.

The problem that is the Road Runner: and why Microcredit doesn't seem to help.

We had a humour piece go up at Terry today that was just too cool. Since, the Terry website isn't as visible as the Science Creative Quarterly, i thought I would highlight it here. It's called: Microcredit Isn't Right for Everyone (by Mike Richardson-Bryan) Oh yeah, Terry has a contest, open to the general public as well, and happy to take in well written blog posts - just a thought for those hungry for bookish gift cards that can be used online.

At The Scientist, a Discussion about Framing

The Scientist is currently sponsoring an online discussion about framing and new directions in science communication. The web feature is in advance of an article I am contributing to the magazine, co-authored with Dietram Scheufele, a colleague at the University of Wisconsin. So far, more than 40 comments have been posted. There is also a reader survey at the site. Regarding The Scientist discussion, Mary Miller has more to add in a post at her blog The Accidental Scientist.

OT: Can't win for losing

So my faithful little laptop has now died. It's 4 years old and hasn't really been treated all that gently. (my father-in-law just poured his drink in it a couple of weeks ago). I'm faced with the choice of buying new or repairing. It was purchased through the University of Maryland's student program with 4 year on site repair, but .... sigh. I had a post in preparation about free online books, so I'll try to reconstruct that soonest.

Amazing new philosophy resource

David Chalmers and his student David Bourget at the Australian National University have developed a new resource: PhilPapers. This is a hot list to online versions of (so far) over 188,000 items in current philosophy. I checked my own papers and they were all there (something Thompson International seems unable to achieve). So on the Wilkins Narcissism Scale it rates very highly indeed. Check it out. It will make a big difference to students and teachers, let alone researchers.

Albert and Carroll on bloggingheads.tv

Philosopher David Albert and physicist Sean Carroll* will be doing a Bloggingheads.tv spot like the one Paul Myeahs and I did recently. I'll add the direct URL when it comes online. Update: The spot is here. In particular note the segment on how Albert got suckered by the What the Bleep Do We Know? filmmakers (shades of Expelled. Is this s trend in science denial documentary making in the US?). * Not the biology Sean Carroll, the physicist Sean Carroll.

Talks from Kansas

As I mentioned earlier, I spent the beginning of this week in Hays, Kansas, where I had a number of successful events at Fort Hays State University. And now, they're available to be seen online. First, I did what the folks at FHSU call a "Times talk"--in essence, I gave an entirely improvisational faculty presentation that was grouped around three New York Times stories about global warming, politics, and science. The three stories (two by Andy Revkin) are here, here, and here (links in chronological order, as that was how I tackled the material). My riffing upon these articles, followed by…

Emotional Rescue

My new Seed column, with the same title as this post, is now online. It's about how to convey the "perfect moral storm" that is the global warming problem to an American public that remains deeply confused and even ambivalent about the issue....as epitomized by NASA administrator Michael Griffith's recent bonehead statement to the effect that global warming isn't a problem. Is he trying to massively over-correct for James Hansen or something? Prometheus has more.

In-Mind: An online social psychology magazine

The Inquisitive Mind (In-Mind) is an online quarterly social psychology magazine written by staff and students at the Free University in Amsterdam. The site has articles that cover all areas of social psychology, written in such a way as to make the field easily accessible to the general public. There are also links to psychology resources and stories in the news, and a discussion forum.   Free registration is required for full access to the contents of the site.

QIP Talks

It looks like the talks for QIP 2010 are now online.. Sweet, my television for the next few weeks. Well okay the Olympics may sneak in there (and jez NBC really stinks it up: I've never seen a network make men's downhill so boring...if you're going to short the west coast by not showing the events live don't you have a responsibility to at least do a good job? Please, please, Olympic committee let ESPN get the next contract.)

Cell Division - art for a good cause

Cell Division IV Michele Banks DC area artist Michele Banks has donated one of her cell division watercolors to raise funds for art outreach. Check out the online auction - the painting is matted and framed and currently going for only $52. Michele is not a biologist, but she's been on a sci-art kick for a while, inspired by the fortuitous resemblance of watercolor patterns to cellular structures. To see more of her work, visit her etsy shop, artologica.

The Living Bird

Cornell Lab or Ornithology has always had a lot of good stuff on the web. Now, they have a new site called Living Bird. Go check it out. It's basically an online journal with a lot of cool articles, including some science, birding advice, etc. ... and outstanding bird pictures. Hat tip: Biological Ramblings. And, speaking of Birds in the News, have a look at this particularly interesting Birds in the News post over at Living the Scientific Life. Here.