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Exploratorium Webcast Tomorrow on Science, Politics, Hurricanes

I'm here in San Francisco--just arrived--and tomorrow will be doing a webcast at a fantastic museum called the Exploratorium. This is an open-to-the-public webcast--i.e., you can come see me in person or you can see me through your computer. The webcast starts at 1 pm PST on Wednesday, the 13th. I will be talking about hurricanes for the first time, and even showing some slides on this new subject (for me), though nothing too extensive. We will also be talking about politics and science. Anyway, go here to tune in to the webcast online. It will also be archived, of course.

Science And The New Media at AAAS

I'm back in the District to speak at the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy alongside Adam Bly and Dr. Anthony Crider. We'll be discussing 'Science and the New Media' and there's still time to participate online! I'm looking forward to connecting with SciBling Jessica Palmer of Bioephemera and would love to meet any readers in attendance as well... Come on over to say hello and I hope you'll stay for my talk Friday at 1:45: I Am New Media (And So Can You!) Communicating Science And Policy Through The Series Of Tubes And Beyond

Online updates

Thanks to those of you who posted on your ethnic stories. I'm thinking about replies, but need some time to do so. In the meantime, I've started a couple of online communities for people doing engineering education research - if this sounds like you, check out: a Facebook group on engineering education research (although I'm not offering to be everyone's FB friend ;-) ) a blog on Engineering Education through Wordpress. If you have the engr.ed research chops, and are interested in writing for this blog, do let us know! Have other opportunities that readers might be interested in?…

QIP 2010 Speakers

The list of talks accepted at QIP 2010 is now online. As a member of the PC I can tell you that there were way more good papers than available speaking slots and made some of the final decisions hard to make. One talk that I think will be a highlight is the invited talk by the optimizer: "Efficient simulation of quantum mechanics collapses the polynomial hierarchy." Quantum computing skeptics of the "BQP=BPP" kind may just found their island significantly smaller and lonelier. The QIP=PSPACE will also be given a talk slot. Quite a year for quantum complexity theory, I think.

NeuroTV at UCSD

UCSD-TV, the local television station broadcast by the University of California at San Diego, has a series called Grey Matters, which is devoted to neuroscience. To date, fifteen full-length presentations have been produced for the series, all of which are availabe online in RealPlayer at the UCSD-TV website. They can also be viewed on the UCTV YouTube Channel, along with the other programs produced (all 1,800+ of them). The programs in the neuroscience series cover topics such as autism, aging, decision making, neural stem cells, perception, and development and evolution of the brain.

The Lobotomist is online

The Lobotomist, a PBS documentary about Walter Freeman which I mentioned recently, is now available online as a series of short clips that require either QuickTime or Windows Media Player for viewing. The program charts how the lobotomy came to be regarded as a cure for most types of mental illness, how Freeman "refined" the procedure, and how, in the face of criticism, it was eventually replaced in the 1950s by the newly-developed neuroleptic drugs. Read more about the rise and fall of the prefrontal lobotomy, and watch a film clip of James Watts and Walter Freeman performing a prefrontal…

Help Gary Farber

Gary Farber of Amygdala is in a crisis, both financially and in his health. This is such a waste: Gary is one of the all time great online raconteurs with a long history of bloggy productivity and the respect of swarms of other internet personalities. If someone were setting up a weblog franchise similar to scienceblogs, they ought to snap him up to anchor their site—he's that good. And at this point, the tiny amount he's asking for means he'll work for cheap. Help him out however you can. And if you're looking for an interesting and provocative commentator, hire him!

The voice of David Paszkiewicz

Remember that fundie history teacher who was caught on tape? One of the recordings is now online. I haven't listened to the whole thing—the quality is terrible, and it's a typical high school classroom that is in a noisy uproar—but you do hear him nattering on about Satan and the Bible and sin and so forth; apparently, the "Scriptures aren't religion, they are the foundation of all of the world's major religions", and he claims evolution isn't science. I'm not sure what he's teaching. Dave, an audio engineer, has provided an amazingly cleaned-up version of the recording. Listen to that one.

Testing the fix for the spam filters: Nudist trampolining

As others have complained, a new and overzealous spam filter caused a number of us ScienceBloggers headaches while trying to post over the weekend and has caused problems in commenting as well. I've been informed that a fix has been done. We've been asked to do a post; so I figured I'd really test whether the overzealousness of the filter has been eliminated by posting a link to a hilarious online game that I've encountered: Nudist Trampolining. If you see the post, the fix must have worked... Oh, and the site is worksafe (well, borderline worksafe, depending on your specific work environment…

Get Your Masatoshi Nei Trading Card

The Penn State Alumni Association has produced trading cards featuring the best and the brightest of the university's faculty (Pa. trading cards highlight brains, not brawn). The cards are only available at University President Graham Spanier's tailgate parties on home football weekends. The biologists featured include entomologist Jim Tumlinson and molecular evolution pioneer Masatoshi Nei. I haven't been able to find a complete list of all ten faculty members featured, and I don't think that individual images of the ten cards are available online. If anyone can track them down, post a link…

So

It's summer and Seed's running a few classic articles online. This weekend, read about "So"... The language of science, with its specialized vocabulary and clipped rhythm, has a distinctive architecture. The functional elegance of this rarefied speak is uniquely captured in one of its most inconspicuous words: "so." This isn't "so" the intensifier ("so expensive"); it's not the "so" that joins two clauses. This is the "so" that introduces a sentence, as in "So as we can see, modified Newtonian dynamics cannot account for the rotation of any of the three observed galaxies." This "so" is key to…

Geeky Computer Names

Behind the scenes Kevin and I are making fun of Peter which now that he is out of town I will do online. See Peter is a bit of traitor toward our invertebrate cousins. You think somebody who studies corals would perhaps name them after some such species. But no...Peter named his computer after a fish. I am so disappointed. On the other hand Kevin, with a computer name after good ol' invertebrate phlya. Mine? Name after the world's largest and second largest invertebrates. I guess we know where loyalties lay. Now that I think about it...Peter was the one who pushed for Megavertebrate…

You have no privacy

How Privacy Vanishes Online. Pretty banal actually. Social networking has really changed things. As I've said before I'm fascinated by the large number of people who, even those who want to be anonymous, enter in their real email addresses when leaving a comment. There seems a default "trust unless you shouldn't trust" setting, so we naively input our information assuming it isn't being mined by someone. In any case, a bigger issue in the future I think will be stupid government officials who scan up documents which they shouldn't scan up. It's happened a few times so far, but I think it'll…

Am I geekier than I thought?

Eszter Hargittai at Crooked Timber points out another silly online quiz: Web 2.0 or Star Wars character? So of course, I had to take it. Out of 43 possible points, I scored a 32 -- a mere point below Eszter's 33 -- leading to the diagnosis: As your doctor, I recommend moving out of your parents' basement. The thing is, I've not even seen 2 of the 6 Star Wars movies, and my Web 2.0 cred is even worse. I suspect I'm just a good test-taker. (And, of course, I'm hopeful that one of my ScienceBlogs brethren or sistern will out-geek me on this one!)

Error on credit card bill

Too big a bill: Josh Muszynski, 22, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was one Visa customer aghast to find the 17-digit charge on his bill. Adding insult to injury, he had also been hit with a $15 overdraft fee. He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while making a routine balance inquiry on his online Bank of America account. According to his statement, he had spent the profound sum in one pop at a nearby Mobil gas station -- his regular stop for Camel cigarettes. "Very, very panicked," he jumped in his car and sped to the station.

Gift Wrapping With Bird Companions

tags: Holidays, companion pets, parrots, humor, funny, gift wrapping Orpheus. Male Hawk-headed (red fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, April 2008. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I thought you might find this little essay amusing about wrapping gifts when there is a parrot in the house. How to Wrap Gifts with a Parrot in the House: Clear large space on table for wrapping your special gifts. Go to cupboard and collect bag in which gifts are contained, and shut the door. Open the door and remove bird from cupboard. Go to closet and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.…

Gift Wrapping With Parrot Companions

tags: Holidays, companion pets, parrots, humor, funny, gift wrapping Orpheus. Male Hawk-headed (red fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, April 2008. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. I thought you might find this little essay amusing about wrapping gifts when there is a parrot in the house. How to Wrap Gifts with a Parrot in the House: Clear large space on table for wrapping your special gifts. Go to cupboard and collect bag in which gifts are contained, and shut the door. Open the door and remove bird from cupboard. Go to closet and retrieve rolls of wrapping paper.…

Advent Calendar of Science Stories 13: Timing Light

Speaking of the timing of astronomical phenomena, as we were yesterday, the timing of celestial bodies was the key to the first demonstration of one of the pillars of modern physics, the fact that light travels at a finite speed. This actually pre-dates yesterday's longitude discoveries, which I always forget, because it seems like it should've been a later development. The first really convincing demonstration that light doesn't cover arbitrary distances instantaneously dates from 1676, and was the work of the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer. Under the direction of Giovanni Cassini at the Paris…

WorldNutDaily Peddles Pseudoscientific Nonsense

It always amuses me that the Worldnutdaily wants to be taken seriously as a news source while constantly blaring huge headlines, complete with flashing red "Breaking News" or "Exclusive" icons, saying things like UFOs: Space Travelers or Demonic Deceivers? It probably goes without saying that most such headlines are little more than advertisements for books that they are selling and hence profit from. The latest such article declares that "Biblical Giants" - the Nephilim - built the pyramids after having sex with human females. And no, I'm not making that up. Perhaps they should change their…

The story of the Hurricane: Rethinking the climate change connection

It will be interesting to see how the climate change pseudoskeptics spin the latest research from Kerry Emmanuel. He's the guy whose 2005 paper suggesting climate change is making tropical cyclones stronger prompted the use of the "Hurricane Katrina=global warming meme. Al Gore even used the image of a hurricane emerging from a smokestack to promote An Inconvenient Truth, and his slide show included a large section on a causal connection. But now Emmanuel admits he might have been wrong. Might is the operative word here. In a new paper in the March issue of Bulletin of the American…

Non Science Fridays: Balance your Chi edition

Meathead of the Week: The Bush Adminstration Official who blocked the Surgeon General from going to the Special Olympics because it's supported by the Kennedys. "Why would you want to help those people?". New low for the Bush admin. What are they, 3rd graders? Forget that, even most third graders wouldn't use disabled people in a twisted vendetta. I had a whole mess of things to talk about today but I'm so darn excited about this that everything else would just cheapen the post... Do you feel it? It's the Chi machine! It's got 6, count 'em 6, major benefits! Let's start at the top... 1.…

Fraud, rehabilitation, and the persistence of information on the internet.

In the current issue of The Scientist, there's a pair of interesting pieces about how professional life goes on (or doesn't) for scientists found guilty of misconduct by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI). Alison McCook's article, Life After Fraud, includes interviews with three scientists against whom the ORI has made formal rulings of misconduct. A big concern voiced by each of these scientists is that after the period of their debarment from eligibility to receive federal grants or to serve on a Public Health Service (PHS) committee has expired, the traces of their punishment…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Dennis Meredith

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

How to report in vitro cancer studies: maitake mushroom extract doesn't "fight cancer"

Earlier this week, I saw one of the best treatments of a misinterpreted story that has me thinking about how all news outlets should report in vitro laboratory studies. Only thing is that it didn't come from a news outlet. It came instead from a brainwashing site run by those medical socialist types - I am, of course, speaking of the UK National Health Service and their excellent patient education website, NHS Choices. You may recall reading in the popular dead-tree or online press that investigators from New York Medical College in Valhalla published in British Journal of Urology…

Comments of the Week #89: from black hole evaporation to scientific theories

“"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works."” -Stephen Hawking Every week on Starts With A Bang brings with it a new set of considerations about the Universe we all inhabit. It was awfully busy here, with two guest contributions, including: How do black holes really evaporate? (for Ask Ethan), Your guide to the best meteor shower of the year: the Geminids, Amazing final images of stars right before they die (for Mostly Mute Monday), Could life exist in a star's…

Menopause in chimps? Or not?

I've blogged about The Grandmother Hypothesis. Roughly, the question is why do women go through a "change" which rapidly shifts them from being able to become pregnant, though at sharply reduced rates by the time that menopause occurs, to a state of infertility where they may survive for up to three decades? Some argue that this is a peculiar human adaptation and that our social structures, where grandmothers may gain more in investing in their grandchildren than continuing to produce offspring in terms of long term reproductive fitness, are the cause. In contrast to women for males the…

Welcome to Yet Another Science Blogging Community: Phenomena!

Yes, the science blogging community has certainly seen some gyrations in the last few years with a bunch of new networks sprouting up, sometimes from the ashes of other networks, sometimes completely on their own. The latest is Phenomena: A science salon hosted by National Geographic magazine. Phenomena is a gathering of spirited science writers who take delight in the new, the strange, the beautiful and awe-inspiring details of our world. Phenomena is hosted by Jamie Shreeve, Executive Editor for Science at National Geographic magazine, who invites you to join the conversation. So far at…

Best Science Books 2011: Bachelors Degree Online, Devourer of Books, The Progressive, Bookriot

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: Bachelors Degree Online: The 20 Best Books of 2011 You Should Read Over Winter Break Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer Devourer of Books Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder…

Chevron's Fuel Your School Program Supports Public Education Projects!

Guest Blog by Fuel Your School This fall, Fuel Your School makes it easy for local communities to help generate funding for public schools in 19 markets. From Oct. 1 through Oct. 31, 2013, the Fuel Your School program will donate $1, up to a total of nearly $7.1 million, to help fund eligible classroom projects when consumers purchase 8 or more gallons of fuel at participating local Chevron and Texaco stations in 14 U.S. markets. Chevron also supports similar marketer-funded programs in Ector County, Texas and Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake and Mendocino counties (North Coast), California, as…

On the Road to Science Achievement: 'Wherever You Need to Go to Pursue Your Dream - Go'

Since leaving her native Saudi Arabia to pursue her dream in biotechnology, Hayat Sindi, a nanotechnology researcher and bio tech entrepreneur, has already reached some prodigious milestones in her young career, such as: --Overcoming formidable cultural and personal obstacles to become the first woman from the Gulf Region to earn a Ph.D. in biotechnology. --Becoming the first Arab woman in 2009 to win a fellowship in the respected American innovation network PopTech. -- Being chosen under the White House initiative to be featured with other innovators around the country in "Connect a Million…

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part III

In which we see the results and come to our own conclusions. If you want to let other people tell you what's right and what's wrong, they will surely do so. Turn on the TV and hordes of happy actors bounce around, only too happy to help you purchase the right deodorant. Open your e-mail and everyone wants to share the best on-line pharmacy and investment guide. Ugh. I prefer making my own decisions, thank you very much. So, I want to give you a chance to look at the data and decide for yourself, if the data show HIV protease sequences changing over time. Let's see the results. We're…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXIX: corruption calling

Living on a big ranch outside a city in a state with wide open spaces can be wonderful but it can also be a problem if you depend on modern telecommunications systems like cell phone service. If you are the only one around for miles and miles, it isn't that likely you will be supplied with a cell phone base station. Unless you are a presidential candidate and powerful Senator and senior member of a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over telecommunications policy. Then even telecom giants are more than happy to accommodate you. Free of charge: Early in 2007, just as her husband launched…

The Good and Fragile Egos

Following up on my earlier post about Beyond Google and Evil, I just came across this article from the Wall Street Journal on one of Google's detractors, Consumer Watchdog. Believe it or not, Google went after their funding! ...In January, Consumer Watchdog circulated a press release alleging a "rumored" lobbying effort by Google to enable it to sell personal medical data stored on its Google Health service. Simpson said the organization merely wanted to examine whether Google was trying to avoid new regulation under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows: People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind. Aroma Of Chocolate Chip Cookies Prompts Splurging On Expensive Sweaters: Exposure to something that whets the appetite, such as a picture of a mouthwatering dessert, can make a person more impulsive with unrelated purchases, finds a study from the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. For example, the researchers reveal in one experiment that…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Some Birds Can Communicate About Behavior Of Predators: With the aid of various alarm calls the Siberian jay bird species tells other members of its group what their main predators-¬hawks¬-are doing. The alarm calls are sufficient for Siberian jays to evince situation-specific fleeing behaviors, which enhances their chances of survival. This discovery, being published by Uppsala University researcher Michael Griesser in the journal Current Biology, shows for the first time that animals can assess and communicate about the behavior of predators. High Degree Of Antibiotic Resistance Found In…

MacDonald Resigns From USFWS

tags: MacDonald, USFWS, endangered species, politics Some of you might not yet know this, but in the highly charged atmosphere that that existed at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Julie A. MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary who oversaw the USFWS endangered species program, finally has resigned. After an egregious and ongoing abuse of power, MacDonald was finally rebuked for altering scientific documents to reduce protections for endangered species and for providing internal documents to lobbyists. MacDonald is a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences and who clearly…

Why Look for Life on Mars?

The Mars Polar Lander cost the average American the price of half a cheeseburger. A human lander would cost the average American more -- perhaps even ten cheeseburgers! So be it. That is no great sacrifice. -JONAH GOLDBERG, National Review Online, May 3, 2000 This week, Seed Magazine is doing a special on extraterrestrial life in the Universe. They cover a lot of ground, including whether life would necessarily look like life on Earth, where the likely places are to find it, and endeavors towards that end. And they approached me to write an article for them about Mars. An excerpt is below:…

Don't Miss one of the Most Important Interviews of the Year!

I will be interviewing Maggie Koerth-Baker this Sunda, April 1st, no fooling. Maggie Koerth-Baker is the author of the new book, "Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us". Maggie is the science editor and a regular writer at Boing Boing, and hails from the Twin Cities. She was once described as "A lighthouse of reason in a churling ocean of stupidity," which is exactly why we all need to read her book and listen to her interview Sunday, April 1st on Minnesota Atheists Talk Radio. From the publisher's review of "Before the Lights Go Out": "Hi, I'm the…

sigh, Perpetual Motion

I suppose I really ought to say something about the "demonstration" of Steorn's perpetual motion machine that's supposed to start today, but, really, I don't have much to say. I mean, if they were claiming that their device extracted free energy from extra dimensions thanks to their revolutionary new theory of quantum gravity, I might need to think about it for a few seconds before dismissing it as crap, but that's not their claim: Orbo is based upon the principle of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions. The core output from our Orbo technology is mechanical. This mechanical energy…

How to Score Well Without Really Writing

Today's New York Times has a story on the new SAT, particularly the writing test. The print version has images of the opening lines of three essays that received a perfect score, while the on-line version includes images of the full text of three perfect-score essays. The essays themselves are kind of interesting to look at. The question was one of those hideous, vague college application things: "Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present?" The three answers presented in full take different approaches. Essay #2 (there is no #1 on the…

Academic Poll: Pop Quiz, Hotshot

Tuesday is a heavy teaching day for me-- I'm in lab from 9-4, basically-- so here's something to occupy the time. Oh, no! It's a pop quiz: Pop quizzes are:(survey software) (In case the phrase is an American idiom, a "pop quiz" refers to a short test given in class with no advance warning.) This was inspired by Dermot O'Brien at Inside Higher Ed, who reports on taking his first quiz as a science student. The general topic of quizzes is one that generates a fair bit of heat, though, so I thought I'd see what my readers think of it. My quiz policy as of a year or so ago was to give many short…

On AIG and executive bonuses

It's not all that often I agree with Mike Dunford politically, but in writing about the AIG bonuses he's right. The bonuses ought to stay with the executives who were paid them. Neither congress nor the president ought to try to tax these bonuses back. Now obviously no executive at a failing bank deserves a bonus, even with the bank's money. Even more obviously it's repugnant to fund bonuses to failed executives with our tax dollars. But what's done is done, and there are three facts to be faced. 1. The executives' contracts require the bonuses, and the bailout bill specifically and…

Northern Ireland bans climate ads -- WTF?

Northern Ireland's Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson, has banned an advertising campaign promoting efficient use of electricity on the grounds that the central thesis of the campaign is "patent nonsense" and "insidious propaganda." Even if it were true, since when are either attributes grounds for censorship? What's the real problem? From the BBC's coverage of the story: Calling for his removal, the Green Party said Mr Wilson made "a laughing stock out of Northern Ireland." Sammy Wilson argued that the Scottish executive had objected and stopped the adverts being broadcast. However, the…

Guide to Torture Available Online

A torture manual created by psychologists in the 1950s entitled The Manipulation of Human Behavior is freely available online. Included are these scary sounding chapters: 1 The Physiological State of the Interrogation Subject as it Affects Brain Function 19 Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. 2 The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation on Human Behavior: A Review 51 Philip E. Kubzansky 3 The Use of Drugs in Interrogation 96 Louis A. Gottschalk 4 Physiological Responses as a Means of Evaluating Information 142 R. C. Davis 5 The Potential Uses of Hypnosis in Interrogation 169 Martin T.…

Our Fearless Leader

Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson just posted an interview with Matthew Chapman, the original guy behind the curtain of Science Debate 2008. Sheril and I have taken to calling Matthew our "fearless leader," but "fearless, selfless, deeply inspirational leader without whom this wouldn't have been possible" is better, I think. Here's a quote from the interview, in which Matthew talks about how it all began: I spoke about the debate idea to a few people who were more or less entirely cynical. I then spoke to Chris Mooney. Chris was interested, and brought his Intersection co-blogger,…

Storm World on Quirks and Quarks

One of my first interviews about the new book can now be heard online by clicking here (MPG). I recently spoke with Bob McDonald of the CBC's Quirks and Quarks about the science, politics, and policy implications of the hurricane-global warming debate, and the roughly 12 minute segment just aired today. As this is one of my earliest live interviews on the subject, critical feedback is most welcome. In fact it will be of much help to me, since there will be many more such interviews, including an appearance on the Barometer Bob Show, a popular meteorology program broadcasting out of Florida…

You are not a gadget

Virtual reality trailblazer Jaron Lanier has a somewhat curmudgeonly, critical new book out called You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Here's an excerpt: If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of to musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than with truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless. The combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea…

Hubel's Eye, Vision and Brain online

I've just discovered that the book Eye, Vision and Brain, by Nobel Prize winner David Hubel, is available online in its entirety. Hubel is a neurophysiologist who performed some classic experiments with Torsten Wiesel, beginning in the late 1950s, on the development and functional properties of the visual system. Using microelectrodes inserted into the primary visual cortex of anaesthetized cats, Hubel and Wiesel characterized the responses of cells to various visual stimuli. They found groups of cells which responded selectively to lines of a specific orientation, others which responded to…

70 million amazing rare things

One of the events organized for Bora's visit to London was a fantastic behind-the-scenes tour of the Darwin Centre, a newly built section of the Natural History Museum which houses the museum's researchers and contains a vast collection of around 70 million bottled animal specimens. The Darwin Centre's tank room is a most remarkable place. This is where the largest specimens are stored, in glass jars and metal containers whose lids are opened and closed with a system of chains and pulleys suspended from the ceiling. The tank room mostly contains fish specimens, including a…

Need more geobloggers: ScienceOnline 2010 and The Open Lab

Geobloggers (and tweeters) are very social, but we often exist in our own world apart from the rest of the science bloggers. Here are some opportunities to remind the rest of the science-blogging world how cool we are: 1st: ScienceOnline 2010 is a conference devoted to science on Web 2.0 and to open-access science. This year's version will be held January 15-17, 2010, in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Some of the proposed sessions include "blogging (tweeting, sharing photos, etc) from the field," "Arctic/Antarctic blogging," and "nature blogging." I figure geobloggers do more…