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Dick Cheney, ICD, and Anxiety

The implantable cardioverter defibrillator is a device placed under the skin, near the heart.  It delivers an electric shock to the heart when a dangerous abnormal rhythm is detected.  As you might suspect, it hurts when this shock occurs (doctors call it a " href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/542830">short-duration nociceptive stimulation").  Also as you might expect, it can create a great deal of anxiety. Persons with ICDs are liable to be shocked at any time, with no warning at all.   There's an evidence-based review of the subject that is openly available at Current…

Students Across North America Call for Universities to Stop Abetting Access-to-Medicines Crisis in Poor Countries

Chapters of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) are pushing their local universities to sign Equitable Access Licenses (EAL) that would lift patent barriers on drugs developed by university labs. These agreements would effectively increase the access of medicines to poor countries. An article in the the June edition of PLoS reports the latest on this movement ... more specifically how Yale recently signed such an agreement for to allow a generic version of Zerit, stavudine, to be used to treat HIV infections in South Africa. Sol Shulman, a member of the Harvard Medical…

Extra, Extra

There was A LOT of stuff this week. Was this week particularly good for blogging or am I just aware of more blogs and blog posts in recent weeks? Am I paying more attention because of the new networks? Am I just filtering less, and including more in the round-up? Anyway, lots of awesome. Science I've really been enjoying the Replicated Typo blog lately. I particularly liked a recent post on the social sensitivity hypothesis: "Given findings that certain genetic variants will make a person more sensitive to social contact and more reliant on social contact under stress, it proposes that…

Friday Random Ten, 10/2

Dead Soul Tribe, "Goodbye City Life": mediocre prog metal. Not bad, but nothing special either. Dave Matthews Band, "Lying in the Hands of God": I know, lots of people think I'm crazy to like DMB. But I do. And I find this song terribly depressing. One of the members of the DMB was an amazing saxaphone player named LeRoi Moore. Moore's saxaphone play was absolutely fantastic - incredibly skillfull, tasteful, with a huge range. Moore was killed in an auto accident, and his place was taken in live shows by Jeff Coffin from the Flecktones. Coffin is, in my opinion, a godawful…

PZ and the preacher?

A small mob of atheist students (and a confused, deluded mob of hapless Christians) are going to be making a trip to New Orleans to help rebuild homes. This is a wonderful idea, and I commend all of the students, even the misled theistic ones, for making the effort. However, they need money to cover expenses. Not a lot, just $1500, so they are doing an online fundraiser on 16 January. I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but they are asking for donations that will give you a chance at prizes…and the opportunity to ask questions of some poor preacher man in a webcast on blogtv.…

Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience

tags: birds, literature, ornithology, Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience, Jeremy Mynott, book review Not too long ago, this unemployed scientist had the honor of being asked to write a book review for Science. The Science book review editor was looking for a review of Jeremy Mynott's new book, Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience. The editor, who peeks at my blog when no one is looking, noticed that I am a scientist and bird maniac who writes and publishes lots of book reviews on my blog, so he very kindly (and out of the blue) decided to give me a chance to…

Around the Web: OMG still with the librarian angst, Forking the academy and more

Yes, We Should Talk About the MLS On Big Name Librarians The Loon’s job Why am I getting my MLIS? Because I have to. So You Think You Want to Be a Librarian? The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship Your candidate pools Fork the Academy (github as a model for scholarly communcation) Massive (But Not Open) (new online cs degree program) [Expletive Deleted] Ed-Tech #Edinnovation (relates ed tech history as it is often told to how Argo treats the Canadian contribution to that story) Making the peer review process public Why is Science Behind a Paywall? The Delete Squad Google, Twitter,…

Around the Web: Hacking at education, The great librarian identity crisis of 2013 and more

Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall Why MOOCs May Drive Up Higher Ed Costs California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study The great librarian identity crisis of 2013 Q&A: Dan Cohen on His Role as the Founding Executive Director of DPLA The Basic Skills of All Librarians Poaching jobs Is coding an essential library skill? Beyond the Bullet Points: Rock Stars Why I Ignore Gurus, Sherpas, Ninjas, Mavens, and Other Sages Cracking the Code: Librarians Acquiring Essential Coding Skills Research Librarians Discuss New Ways to Support…

Around the Web: What makes academic library patrons tick, The ascendance of expertise and more

New LJ Report Closely Examines What Makes Academic Library Patrons Tick Nate Silver and the Ascendance of Expertise Stables and Volatiles (balancing personalities in project groups) Academic Libraries, Information Literacy, and the Value of Our Values Facebook wants to organise our relationships. What's not to like? PeerJ: An Open-Access Experiment Engaging the Public, Citizen Science and Imperialism Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy Why Tablets? Why Are Physics Classes…

Around the Web: Competing with free education, Redefining the library and more

Competing with “Free,” Part One and Part Two (Re)Defining the Library, Part 1: Why?, Part 2: How? Smoking Gun on Sexism? (scientists are biased against women) What Libraries Should Be: A Values Proposition The matter of credit Report on the International Workshop on Contribution and Scholarly Attribution Please Stop The Social An Introvert's Thoughts on Being A Professional Speaker and Consultant Introverts and the ‘new groupthink’ Not So Fast on 'Open Access' (Historians having second thoughts?) Rethinking What “Academic” Means The disappearing web: Information decay is eating away our…

Around the Web: The ethics of tweetbombs, Canadian copyright, eBook appetizers and more

The tweetbomb and the ethics of attention Did One-Sided Legal Advice Lead To The Terrible Copyright Deal For Canadian Universities? How we use our mobile devices Ebooks and Ereaders: Where do I Start and Which One Do I Choose? Ebooks Appetizer #2: Ebooks in the Library Ebooks Appetizer #3 - Ebook File Types How to Spot the Future Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years Sign the Petition at ebooksforlibraries.com! Massive Open Online Courses: How "The Social" Alters the Relationship Between Learners and Facilitators Why e-books will soon be obsolete (and…

Some local reactions

Our campus has an alternative right-wing rag of a newspaper called the Counterweight, funded who knows how, that throws up horrible little articles that usually sound like the kind of thing that would make Karl Rove and Dick Cheney chortle. They interviewed me recently — yes, I speak politely to even the most conservative students on campus — for a pair of opinion articles of the battling 'he was right'/'he was evil' variety, all on the desecration controversy. You can read them both online. The student who was taking my side framed it as an issue of opposition to political correctness,…

Science bloggers to discuss "GMOs" with Michael Pollan

The Changemakers international online community selected biofortified, a group website devoted to providing factual information and fostering discussion about plant genetics, especially genetic engineering, as the grand prize winner in the GMO Risk or Rescue Competition. This would not have been possible without the leadership of Karl Haro von Mogel, graduate student and blogger Anastasia Bodnar, our Australian colleague David Tribe and the votes of the science blogging community. Thanks all. Here is the announcment: Our entire team is excited to highlight your idea and your efforts on…

Crash the polls!

Once you've voted in the poll that matters, you can go play on this Online Presidential Poll. I'm pretty sure the results won't be binding, so you can vote for me or Immanuel Kant (wait, what? He left off Nietzsche?) John McCain 4% 8 Barack Obama 17% 35 Rev. Jeremiah Wright 2% 4 William Ayers 1% 2 Sarah Palin 0% 0 A Moose 4% 8 PZ Myers, aka, "Pharyngula" 2% 5 Glenn Reynolds, aka, "InstaIgnorance" 0% 0 Immanuel Kant 12% 26 Any member of the PGR Advisory Board 0% 1 Any member of the Texas Taliban 0% 1 Jason Stanley 4% 9 Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate 9% 19 Gary Becker…

Ignite talks at ScienceOnline2010

Ignite-style talks are very, very energetic. They last 5 minutes each and the slideshow is set to automatically change slides every 15 seconds. Thus, one cannot be slow or go over time. These kinds of talks can be very funny, yet also very powerful. At ScienceOnline2010, we will have an Ignite session on Saturday night, at the Radisson Hotel during the banquet/dinner. Here is the lineup of speakers and topics: "Why Triangle is Better than Silicon Valley" - Wayne Sutton "My "Little Black Book" of Scientists I Love" - Joanne Manaster "Crowdsourced Chemistry - Why Online Chemistry Data Needs…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Endangered Shortnose Sturgeon Saved In Hudson River: For the first time in U.S., and probably global, history a fish identified as endangered has been shown to have recovered -- and in the Hudson River, which flows through one of the world's largest population centers, New York City. Multiple Dimensions Shape Our Perception Of Mind, Harvard Study Suggests: Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual's ability for self-control, morality and planning;…

Science 2.0: What every scientist needs to know about how the web is changing the way they work

This is a great looking afternoon here in Toronto on Wednesday July 29th, organized by Greg Wilson and taking place at the MaRS Centre: Science 2.0: What every scientist needs to know about how the web is changing the way they work. The event is free, but registration is required. Here's an outline of the presentations: Titus Brown: Choosing Infrastructure and Testing Tools for Scientific Software Projects Cameron Neylon: A Web Native Research Record: Applying the Best of the Web to the Lab Notebook Michael Nielsen: Doing Science in the Open: How Online Tools are Changing Scientific…

UNC Nobel Laureate on the importance of information access to scientific research

This is today: A Conversation with Dr. Oliver Smithies Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 2007 Nobel Laureate Moderated by Dr. Tony Waldrop, Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Monday, March 30, 2009 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Room 527 Health Sciences Library Light refreshments to follow Join us for a chat with Dr. Oliver Smithies about the importance of information access to scientific research, especially his own. Audience participation will be encouraged. Don't miss this opportunity to have your questions answered by Dr. Smithies. You may also submit…

The hook-up culture

Amanda is in the middle of reading Michael Kimmel's Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and has posted the first, preliminary review, with some very interesting explorations by the commenters as well (I guess the MRAs did not get there yet to ruin the discussion). The review is focusing on the societal gender roles as the cause of the hook-up culture as well as the perception of it as being negative. Much younger, sarahmeyers looks at the setting for the hook-up culture and identifies her own - highly urban, career-oriented, highly-connected (online and offline). Possibly…

Scitable

Maxine: Nature Education, a new division of Nature Publishing Group, has launched Scitable, a free online educational resource for undergraduate biology instructors and students. Scitable, which currently covers the field of genetics, is built on a library of overviews of key science concepts compiled by Nature Publishing Group's editorial staff. Scitable's evidence-based approach explains science through the lens of the scientific method, with links to milestone research papers. Topics of investigation include: ⢠Chromosomes and cytogenetics ⢠Evolutionary genetics ⢠Gene expression and…

Science in the 21st Century

Bee and Michael and Chad and Eva and Timo and Cameron will be there. And so will I. And many other interesting people. Where? At the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ontario) on Sep. 8th-12th 2008. And it will be fun. This is the blurb of the meeting: Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these…

A kick-ass Conference: Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity

Unfortunately, due to the Murphy's Law of conference dates, I will have to miss this fantastic meeting, because I will at the time be at another fantastic meeting, but if you can come, please do - registration will be open online in a few days. Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity The conference theme is about bringing scientists and humanities scholars to talk about ways that science is changing human life. November 8th, 9th, and 10th, the National Humanities Center will host the second ASC conference. And the program features a Who's Who list: Thursday, November 8th Frans de Waal Martha…

I'm In The Minority ..

Are we becoming a nation of pajama-wearing web-surfing loners? (Orphaned image). Zogby International and 463 Communications recently polled 9,743 Americans online regarding their attitude towards the internet. They found that a significant minority of equal numbers of men and women would consider the internet to be a surrogate significant other: 31% of single political progressives and 18% of single political conservatives felt this way. Wow, amazing, huh? I didn't know that so many Americans found 3.5 inch floppies so attractive! But weirdly, only 11% of Americans said they would implant…

Senses Challenge

Do your eyes deceive you? Can you really trust your senses, or do they sometimes deceive you? Take this quiz to find out! It's a lot harder than you think. This quiz also includes an explanation for each question that helps you understand how your brain is "tricked" by your senses. My score: 14/20. I guess all that Anatomy and Physiology teaching served me well! (i got 19/20 on the second try -- that line graphic is tricky). I found it interesting that a crying baby is so danged loud (I thought my perception was simply a measure of my own annoyance level) -- nearly as loud as a pop concert…

Irreticences

I found this wonderful word (below) in a book by the amazing and incomparable Virginia Woolf, entitled Mrs. Dalloway. As soon as I read this word, I was certain that she had invented it for her own purposes, and a quick look in the online dictionary revealed that she had. So dear readers, this is perhaps the first time this word has been formally defined on the internet; Irreticences (ir-RET-uh-suhn-ses) [Latin ir- not reticÄre; to be silent] n. outspoken, to speak freely; talkative; voluble. lack of restraint. Usage: I can't keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as they marched up…

How Nerdy Are You?

I displayed this quiz result on my original blog for quite a long time, until I decided it was having a negative impact on my social life, whereupon, I removed it. However, because I no longer have a social life, not any sort of life whatsoever, I realize it probably wouldn't hurt to put this quiz result back, especially because I can ask all of you to tell me how nerdy you are! Did you know the identities of the two men whose pictures were shown in the quiz? Why do you suppose they didn't show a picture of Darwin and ask you to identify him, instead? I guess it is because he is probably…

Save the Earth, help a student, party down with the nerds

It's a busy busy day today. It's Earth Day. I'm going to spend a little time this morning with a community group helping clean up part of the town. It's a new student registration day at my university—this afternoon, I advise and help next year's freshman figure out what courses to take. Tonight is the Geek Prom! Right after registration, we have to rush to Minneapolis; I hope we make it in time for the Grand March at 7PM. Chuck Olson of the vlog Minnesota Stories is going to be taping the Geek Prom, so you might get a chance to watch us nerds online later this week…but come on, if you read…

Chief Scientist in the State Department

Prof Nina Fedoroff is to become Chief Scientist at the State Department and science advisor to Condoleezza Rice Good week for Nina, she got the National Medal for Science yesterday Prof Fedoroff is a prominent biologist and an advocate of genetic engineering of plants and animals, in particular for food crops to improve yield and nutritional quality. She is the author of Mendel in the Kitchen A very interesting, shorter article on the issue appears in the current issue of Penn State Science Journal, here is a link to the online version The most interesting point she makes is on how little…

How much is that doggy in the window?

Pet cloning is back! Pets are funny things. Some owners find their pets to be closer than some human friends, other owners never really bond with their pets at all. BioArts, a California biotech company, founded by ex-CEO of the now defunct Genetic Savings & Clone, is counting on the strength of those human-dog emotional bonds . I've had several pets during the course of my life; dogs, cats, fish, scorpions, spiders, frogs, turtles, gerbils, and a hermit crab. Some pets were really easy to train and live with and some - well, let's just say some were more challenging. So, I…

What are the Potential Social and Ethical Implications of the $100 Laptop?

That's the topic for the most recent Schubmehl-Prein Prize for Best Essay on Social Impact of Computing. The Schubmehl-Prein Prize for best analysis of the social impact of a particular aspect of computing technology will be awarded to a student who is a high school junior in academic year 2009-2010. The first-place award is $1,000, the second-place award is $500, and the third-place award is $250. Winning entries are traditionally published in the Association for Computing Machinery's Computers and Society online magazine. The winners of the 2009 contest are published in the most recent…

Who is Your Daemon?

Everyone is talking about The Golden Compass -- a movie that I had no idea was being made or released or even premiered this past weekend -- a movie that is based on a series of books that I've never read and have only vaguely heard about. But my readers have fixed that literary oversight for me because you have sent the entire "His Dark Materials" trilogy to me, and I plan to start reading it as soon as I get a couple book reviews finished in the next few days. (Oh, I also plan to see the movie as soon as I've finished reading the first book). But a quick look around the internet has yielded…

South America chokes as Amazon Burns

"South America chokes as Amazon Burns" is the headline on an online Independent news article. Apparently the annual practice of fall burning to clear forest land so we can eat hamburgers and get fat has spun out of control this year. The world's largest forest has become a bit of a "tinder box" due to drought conditions thought to be a result of climate change. Vast areas of Brazil and Paraguay and much of Bolivia are choking under thick layers of smoke as fires rage out of control in the Amazon rainforest, forcing the cancellation of flights. Satellite images yesterday showed huge clouds…

Important Note for My Students

A while back, I noted that one student wrote on the all-important course evaluation form "He should wear more pink." I'm still not sure what that meant. Given that the second most ridiculous comment in that class was "[student name] is the worst Warcraft player ever," I should probably point our majors to this interview with an addiction doctor (via Jake): Having treated all types of addictions for more than 15 years, Orzack says there's little difference between drug use, excessive gambling and heavy game playing. And with millions of gamers hooked on mega-popular massively multiplayer…

Know Your Gadfly Theorists

One of the perks of this semi-pro blogging gig is that people have started sending me free copies of books about physics. I'm halfway through a new book on quantum mechanics at the moment, and a copy of Lee Smolin's forthcoming The Trouble With Physics is on its way. If you can't wait to hear what I have to say about the book (which might take a while, as I don't have much reading time any more), Bee at Backreaction has an advance review posted already. And if you can't get enough of Lee Smolin (Loop Quantum Gravity theorist and string theory opponent), she also has an interview with the man…

Internet Radio Severely Threatened

I'm a big fan of Pandora.com, a smart on-line radio station. It first asks you to name a number of songs, albums and artists that you like -- you can actually start with a single song. Then it figures out (with the aid of a huge database where music has been classified in detail according to a large number of parameters) what other stuff you might like -- and plays it to you. As you rate the songs it throws at you, it gets a better and better idea of what to give you next. But us Swedes are out of luck now. Because of a huge and sudden increase in the licencing rates Pandora has to pay, they'…

Anthro Blog Carnival

The forty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Hot Cup of Joe. Archaeology and anthropology, and all intended to recreate the lost 1921 short drama film The Great Day! Cast Arthur Bourchier - Sir John Borstwick Mary Palfrey - Lady Borstwick Marjorie Hume - Clara Borstwick Bertram Burleigh - Frank Beresford Adeline Hayden Coffin - Mrs. Beresford (as Mrs. Hayden Coffin) Percy Standing - Paul Nikola Meggie Albanesi - Lillian Leeson Geoffrey Kerr - Dave Leeson Lewis Dayton - Lord Medway Mrs. L. Thomas - Lord Medway's Mother L.C. Carelli - Semki Submissions for the next carnival…

Moving on Up...

I just bought a new house and today begins the process of moving in to it. If everything goes well, I'll be back online this evening after the cable installers leave. But I won't have phones until Friday morning when they come to set up all my phone lines (4 total, 2 business lines, a personal line and a fax line). All of my phone numbers will have changed, but my email address should remain the same. Tomorrow I move the heavy stuff, followed by days of moving the light stuff (mostly boxes of books) bit by bit. And all of that interrupted on Saturday by an end of the summer season lake party…

Science Promotions on the Web

Two links to things promoting science on the web: 1) What's the Greatest Innovation? Spiked online asked a bunch of famous people to describe the greatest innovation in their field, and compiled the responses. As with most of these things, there's some interesting stuff in the responses, and a lot of predictable answers of the form "The greatest innovation is the one that led to my personal research." 2) String Theory in Two Minutes or Less. Some time back, Discover ran a contest for videos describing string theory in two minutes or less, and they've put the top entries up on the web for a…

Fred Clark, Jim Henley, and Daniel Davies

Timothy Burke is disgusted with the New York Times, and soliciting nominations of people who would be more interesting on the Op-Ed page than the Times's current stable of established writers: As an extension of my last post, let me start the nominations for online writers that you feel like could serve as better columnists for the New York Times than most of the current group. Basic things to consider: reasonably good writers in stylistic terms, evidence that they could handle writing regularly and could write within the space constraints, evidence of the ability to surprise either in their…

Tara Smith: New Staph Strain Found in U.S. Pigs

A strain of drug-resistant staph identified in pigs in the Netherlands five years ago, which accounts for nearly one third of all staph in humans there, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, according to a new study. Seventy percent of 209 pigs and nine of 14 workers on seven linked farms in Iowa and Illinois were found to be carrying the ST398 strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The study marks the first time researchers have tested for the strain in the U.S., so there's no way yet to tell when or how it arrived or how widespread it may be, says Tara Smith…

Good Times in Richmond

I had a pleasant trip down to Richmond on Wednesday. I spoke to a small crowd of twenty people about evolution and creationism and all that jazz. I think most of the audience was to the left of me on these issue. Whenever I said something about evolution challenging religion it was all smiles and encouragement. When I said something about how many religious folks have made their peace with evolution, suddenly everyone was sucking on lemons. At any rate, I felt a little cheated that I did not have any frothing creationists giving me grief during the question period. The talk itself, alas, will…

Uncertain Dots, Episode 4

I didn't advertise it heavily this time, but Rhett and I did another G+ hangout yesterday, and the video is online now: We talked for a while about the wonders and importance of VPython coding (including some "Oh, I should totally do that..." moments), where we get post ideas (including a discussion of luge physics), briefly about how we put stuff together for posts, and a bit more about physics education research and why it's really difficult. I had hoped to throw together a quick post about the luge thing for today, but that's probably not going to happen, so you'll have to settle for the…

Physics Research Survey and Contest

One of my colleagues at Union is doing a physics education research project with a summer student, and is using an online survey to collect data. Obviously, the more people respond to the survey, the more scientific it becomes (subject to the limitations imposed by relying on self-selected Internet samples, of course), so I offered to plug it here. Here's the blurb and link: I'm doing a summer research project at Union College with a student, and I need as many people as possible to fill out a survey that we created. If you complete the survey by 11:59pm (EST) on Sunday, August 11, 2013, you…

links for 2009-02-24

editors / 23 / 02 / 2009 / Views / Home - Inside Higher Ed Inside Higher Ed has done a comprehensive redesign of the site, including a bunch of new features. The best online academic journal just got better. (tags: academia computing internet) The Reality-Based Community: Annals of sexist oppression "In the middle of a long thread on a writers' list-serv, provoked by my post on fashion models, it occurred to me that one of the unrecognized ways women are kept dependent and threatened is simply denying them pockets. This is more important than one might think, right up there with hobbling…

The Chronicle morning round-up

Waiting for that coffee to take effect but want it to appear you are doing something scholarly? Have a look at this pair of highly-read posts at The Chronicle of Higher Education: We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research The most-viewed article of the last two days at the online presence of the nation's leading higher ed publication, this team-authored position piece has been a magnet for criticism. The thread of 102 comments (thus far) is as worthy of your time, if not more, and the humorous and insightful payoff by commenter #100 is clever and spot-on, IMHO. Why 'Female' Science…

Just posted: tenure-track cell biology assistant professorship at Univ of Colorado Denver

Here's a new tenure-track faculty position just posted at Science. A great position in a great department at a great school in a great place to live. IMHO, of course: The University of Colorado Denver Department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the School of Medicine We invite applications for an Assistant Professor faculty position in the areas of cellular and molecular biology, broadly defined. Successful candidates will be expected to establish a vigorous, innovative and independent research program and participate in teaching. They will join a highly interactive, interdisciplinary…

On the Road: This Week at Stanford; Next Week in Boston at Northeastern University

On Friday I will be taking part in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University, speaking to attendees about how the public uses science information online. Whether news, YouTube, blogs or social networking sites, what does research tell us about the best way to engage key audiences? Sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold program "advances environmental decision-making by providing academic scientists with the skills and connections needed to be effective leaders and communicators." Next week, on Wed. Sept. 12, I will be in Boston at Northeastern…

Project for Excellence in Journalism Releases First Weekly News Agenda Analysis

Every Tuesday, the Project for Excellence in Journalism will be releasing their weekly news index report, an analysis that tracks the major stories across media sectors including daily newspapers, online news, network TV news, cable news, and radio. Last week was the first report for 2007. According to their numbers, the top story across all outlets was the official takeover by new Democratic Congressional leadership, which made up 15% of the overall newshole. That was followed by the death and state funeral of Gerald R. Ford (12%). The debate over U.S. Iraq policy finished third at 9%. By…

It's Come to This: I'm Outsourcing Blogging to Australia

I have been meaning for some days now to point your attention to my new article in the June issue of Scientific American called, "What Is A Species?" The hard copy is worth tracking down because it's got a lot of excellent illustrations and sidebars. SciAm has the full article online for subscribers, and I've posted the text over at carlzimmer.com. There's so much I could say on the topic--pointing out how the recent news on polar bear extinction raises the question of how distinct polar bears are, for example--but I am scurrying in the shadow of a rising wave. (Attention people of Portland,…

Blogger personality type

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) attempts to classify each pesonality into one of 16 types described by the four letter codes in the table below. TypeLogic has descriptions of all the types, as well as a FAQ. You can find your out own type in this on-line test. If you have a blog you can enter your type in the table below. [Go here to see the table and the form.](http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/survey/myersbriggs.html) Google Directory has a huge pile of links on the MBTI. I think some of those people take it way too seriously. This page has some…