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Pandora's Tim Westergren comes for a visit

A very exciting day here in the Southland as Tim Westergren, Pandora co-founder, comes to the area for town hall meetings with Pandora listeners at UNC and in Durham. Have you used Pandora and its Music Genome Project algorithm for listening to music and learning about bands like those you already like? I've got four stations setup, one each for Wilco, Dire Straits, the Avett Brothers, and Modern Skirts. The system then allows you to "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" each song so that the algorithm refines your musical tastes for future selections. Well, the Music Genome Project is on the road…

John McCain was for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act before he was against it.

A little spat that John McCain is having with YouTube has gotten a bit of press lately. Basically, he's not happy because YouTube has been taking his videos down whenever they get a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice from a copyright holder. Apparently, this has happened to McCain fairly often, possibly because his campaign has gotten into the habit of using other people's material without their permission. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an internet service provider (like YouTube) is only immune from copyright infringement suits if they promptly take down…

CNN and atheism - it's boycott time.

Update: It appears that CNN will be re-airing the story at 8 pm Eastern tonight (Thursday, 8 Feb). The original panel will be replaced by an interview with Richard Dawkins. A recent CNN story on atheism has sparked a great deal of outrage from the online atheist community. The story, which was broadcast on the January 31st edition of Paula Zahn Now (transcript) (video) detailed the plight of two families of atheists who say they were ostracized from their communities as the result of their beliefs - in one case, just for having identified themselves as atheists, and in another for objecting…

Silencing the climate deniers: A cautionary tale from LinkedIn

Over at Linked In, the professionally oriented social networking service, there's a discussion group called "Climate Change - I care!" Most of its members are those who share a concern for what anthropogenic global warming is threatening to do to civilization as we know it. Until this week, membership was open to anyone. But the moderator just ejected one member who has, shall we say, a contrarian point of view. Was that a wise thing to do? The member, Leigh Haugen, only posted pseudoscientific rants about the conspiratorial nature of the entire climatology community, and if he does actually…

Science blogging conference

The 2007 NC Science Blogging Conference came off as a great success thanks to the vision, passion, and general butt-busting of Anton Zuiker, Bora, Brian, and Paul and the sharing of wisdom by all the speakers. A fellow health professional-turned-journalist remarked to me that professional meeting planners couldn't have done a better job. Organization, advertising, facilities, securing sponsor support, and publishing a blog anthology would have been overwhelming to a group five times the size. Thank you all! A comprehensive list of posts surrounding the entire conference was put together by…

Perry's Arcana

From 1810-11, architect and amateur naturalist George Perry published The Arcana, a lavishly illustrated, serial natural history magazine. Although Perry intended for the serial issues to be assembled by his subscribers into a book, only thirteen complete copies are known to survive today. More than a third of the known copies are in Australia - perhaps fittingly, as Perry was the first to publish an illustration of the koala (above). Perry's work is not well known; in researching this post, all I could find online were auction listings and occasional references to a recent facsimile…

Grappling With Stigma: Influence of Social Media

A while back, href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2007/11/sherwin_nuland_a_history_of_el.php">Gred Laden and href="http://ectweb.blogspot.com/2007/10/video-of-lecture-on-electroconvulsive.html">Dr. Shock independently linked to a remarkable video.  In it, a famous author-surgeon-professor reveals that he had had an episode of severe depression.  Moreover, he underwent treatment with electroconvulsive therapy.  It worked, he got back to work, and went on to have a distinguished career.  The video can be seen here -- href="http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/189">Sherwin Nuland…

Upcoming Events

For those in the Boston metro area. First up, next Friday, November 9th, there will be a conference being held here at the Medical Campus entitled Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences. Not only is fellow blogger Anna Kushnir part of the organizing committee, but Bora Zivkovic (from A Blog Around the Clock) is one of the invited panelists. Here is the program: "Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences" Friday, November 9, 1:00 - 6:00 pm TMEC Walter Amphitheater, Harvard Medical School 260 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115…

Global Water Dancing is Imminent

It happens on June 25th. This is going to be a little like the Rapture but it's not the end of the world and it really will happen .... Water Collection: Ethiopia from water.org on Vimeo. The Event : Global Water Dances Initiative - "Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere" 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. ... These dances will use dance and music to…

CONvergence and SkepchiCON

Convergence is an annual science fiction and fantasy convention that is held over July 4th weekend in Minneapolis. The Skepchicks organize a "track" at Convergence called SkepchiCON, which is a series of discussions about skepticism and stuff. At the risk of getting into all sorts of trouble, I'm going to be on some of the panels in this track, and I'm planning to attend a few events that I'm not empaneled for. And, just so I'll know where to find it later when I need it, I thought I'd blog my tentative schedule. (Please note: The price to register for the CON goes way up on May 15th, so if…

Tibet Protests Widen in Scope

There is trouble in Tibet. And some reports indicate that things are only going to get worse in the near future. Protests over Chinese Rule, controlled by both police and Chinese military, have spread beyond Lhasa, according to recent reports, and the Dalai Lama has called for an international inquiry into the deaths of many protesters. The clashes in Aba, known as Ngawa in Tibetan, happened around 1200 local time on Sunday, according to Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet.... "According to reliable reports the police opened fire," said Ms Saunders, who is in London but…

And the lovliest of all was a Ceratophrys ornata...

The fungal fate awaiting our amphibian friends has frog-lovers everywhere concerned. Now, a group of biologists from the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago are preparing to help the endangered species the best way they know--providing an artificial habitat: Now scientists are scurrying to collect frogs and put them in temporary tanks in hotel rooms and people's houses until the building's ready, Caballero said. Plans to save 65 species have been downscaled to the dozen or so most endangered--including the beautiful, iridescent Panamanian golden frog. The species is a cultural icon for its people as…

Cheap as chips: 23andMe slashes the price of personal genomics

23andMe is one of three companies currently providing chip-based personal genomics assays, which provide information about up to a million sites of common variation throughout the human genome. These companies provide insight into a limited but informative slice of your genetic diversity, as I discussed yesterday, giving you information about variants contributing to the risk of a number of common diseases and other traits. Since their launch earlier this year, 23andMe and competitor deCODEme have offered their genome scan services for a fraction under $1,000. Now 23andMe has announced a…

ScienceOnline 2010

ScienceOnline 2010 is underway, and for those not lucky enough to be in attendance, there are other ways to participate. On The ScienceOnline 2010 Blog, Coturnix tells us how to keep up with the latest discussion via social networking outlets, and on Discovering Biology In a Digital World, Sandra Porter offers an even more radical alternative. Coturnix writes "a record number of SciBlings will be in attendance" this year, and overall the conference will have over 250 participants. Along with online civility which we covered last week, another topic at the conference will be the future of…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Hope Leman is a Research Information Technologist at Samaritan Health Services. She runs ScanGrants (a free, subscribable (via email or RSS) online listing of grant opportunities, prizes and scholarships in the health and life sciences and community service fields), tweets and blogs on Significant Science. At the conference, Hope will do a demo of ScanGrants. Ernie…

Psychology of Political Ideology

There is a new manuscript online which I will undoubtedly find interesting, I bet, once I find time to read its 52 pages (OK, double-spaced TXT with a long list of references and an Appendix of stats): The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind (pdf) by Dana R. Carney, John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling, Kate Niederhoffer and Jeff Potter. ABSTRACT: Seventy-five years of theory and research on personality differences between political liberals and conservatives has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and…

Two Developments in DTC Drug Marketing

Jeanne Whalen of the Journal reports that European officials are taking a step towards allowing drug marketing: The European Commission proposed legislation Wednesday that would let drug companies give consumers "objective and nonpromotional" information about their medicines in print and online. Currently, drug companies can't provide any information to European consumers, except on leaflets found inside drug packaging. The legislative proposals must be approved by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers before becoming law, a process that could take years. Meanwhile, in the US, it…

PLoS Medicine is Five

Five years ago, PLoS Medicine, the second journal in the PLoS stable, sent its first call for submissions. It has quickly gained reputation as one of the top medical journals. In the editorial published last night, the Editors look back at the five years so far, and also look forward into the future: In the age of the Internet, five years can seem like an eternity. PLoS Medicine issued its first call for papers five years ago and the inaugural issue went live online five years ago this October--for those of you who are nostalgic, check out the original call for papers [1]. Anniversaries often…

ScienceOnline09 - arts and humanities

Let's look at few other sessions on the Program - on topics that are rarely seen at either tech or science meetings: Art and science -- online and offline: This session is moderated by Jessica Palmer and Glendon Mellow: Art is not just illustration. And it is not the opposite of science ("Two Cultures"). How can the two work together and help each other? Web and the History of Science: This session is moderated by GG, Brian Switek, Scicurious and John McKay: Why is History of Science important for scientists? How to blog about it. How does Open Access and the Web in general (Google Books in…

Tweetlinks, 9-21-09

Seven keys to building healthy online community Is your work cited in journals which are not ISI listed? Publish or Perish God And Prosperity - Ronald Bailey sums up a new paper by Gregory Paul in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Why the news media became irrelevant--and how social media can help UCLA Art | Sci Center & Lab - UCLA Art/Sci Center promotes Third Culture: collaboration between (media) art & (bio/nano) sciences. How Bad Papers Get Published in Good Journals Begging meerkat pups Sea Stars Grow Faster as Water Warms AT&T 1993 "You Will" Ads - In 1993, you couldn't…

Let's meet in New York City next week

I will be on a panel, Open Science: Good For Research, Good For Researchers? next week, February 19th (3:00 to 5:00 pm EST at Columbia University, Morningside Campus, Shapiro CEPSR Building, Davis Auditorium). I am sure my hosts will organize something for us that day before and/or after the event, but Mrs.Coturnix and I will be there a couple of days longer. So, I think we should have a meetup - for Overlords, SciBlings, Nature Networkers, independent bloggers, readers and fans ;-) Is Friday evening a good time for this? Or is Saturday better? Let me know. You can follow the panel on…

Call for Action: guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

In the USA: Effective this week, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have proposed FY08 spending bills that direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that NIH-funded researchers are required to deposit copies of NIH-funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine. This is big step toward making the policy a success -- we need your help now more than ever. The bills now go to the full House and the Senate for approval. To help ensure success there, we ask that all supporters contact their Representatives AND…

Coyne on Unscientific America

An important tip to book authors who want to decry the ability of others to engage a consensus: don't alienate the literate, thinking part of your readership yourself. Mooney and Kirshenbaum make much of the fact that those wicked "New Atheists" are going to drive away support for science, a fact not in evidence, but they seem oblivious to the fact that their recommendation to hush up a significant element of the public voice of science is going to alienate us, and it's working to bite them in the ass right now. In other words, Jerry Coyne's review of their book is online. I'll start with my…

Personal DNA test

This test is a little more involved than most, and probably takes 10 minutes to complete, unless your neighbor's wireless connection that you are piggybacking crashes on page eight, as happened to me. In that case, it will take a little longer to complete. So what are your results according to this test? Do you agree with these results? What did you think of the questions? I found many of the questions very difficult to answer because the situation causes me to react differently to a similar scenario. For example, the question regarding a familiar/new dish at a familiar/new restaurant…

Are You an Evil Genius?

So one of my blog siblings and fellow evil genius, Janet, poses a simple question; what are you going to do with your idiocy/genius? She then proposed this test as a means of quantifying this. Considering that I am unemployable, and therefore, doing nothing worthwhile whatsoever with my energy, rumored brain space or heck, with my life (well, except entertaining you, dear readers!), I decided to give her proposed test a go. I am 59% Evil Genius. Evil courses through my blood. Lies and deceit motivate my evil deeds. Crushing the weaklings and idiots that do nothing but interfere in my…

Friday Fun: 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror

Continuing my strange obsession with lists of books... Locus Magazine is the bible of the sffh business -- both in print and online. Every year they poll their reviewers and various other industry people and come up with a pretty extensive recommended reading list for the year. Their categories include: sf novels, fantasy novels, YA books, first novels, collections, original anthologies, reprint anthologies, best of year anthologies, non-fiction, art books, novellas, novelettes and short stories. I'm obviously not going to reprint all their lists here -- just the sf novel one to give you a…

What Pet Would You Be?

tags: pet, online quiz I actually could be either of two pet types (the second pet type is below the fold); You Would Be a Pet Bird You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance. You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them. You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a…

A little justice in Wisconsin

Last year, Kara Neumann died of juvenile diabetes. Her death was slow and painful, and entirely unnecessary — her parents believed in the power of prayer and allowed her obvious symptoms to go untreated except for entreaties to an invisible and inert god. They weren't opposed to technology in general, since they did sent out an email to an online ministry requesting 'emergency prayer', but they did neglect the only technology that mattered, a simple injection of insulin. There was some concern at that time that there was actually a loophole in Wisconsin law that seems to say that Christianity…

Not an “accident”: Eric McClellan, 55, suffers fatal work-related injury in Chesterfield County, Virginia

Eric McClellan, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 25 while working at Reynolds Metals in Chesterfield County, Virginia. WTVR reports: Mr. McClellan was “caught in a machine.” His widow said her husband worked for Reynolds Metals for 25 years and was a seasoned machinist. The incident occurred at the company’s packaging plant on Reymet Road. Reynolds Metals is a subsidiary of Alcoa. Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Virginia OSHA has conducted an inspection at this Reynolds Metals facility, at least going back to 2000. A Reynolds Metals plant…

Not an “accident”: Gary Keenen, 26, and Kelsey Bellah, 27 suffer fatal work-related injuries near Colgate, OK

Gary Keenen, 26, and Kelsey Bellah, 27 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, December 19 while working on a drilling rig two miles west of Colgate, OK. News reports provide some initial information on the workers’ deaths: The explosion and fire occurred at a rig owned by Pablo Energy. A representative of the State Fire Marshall’s office indicated that three other workers were injured. “Two were transported to trauma centers in critical condition, while another sustained burns to his hands." Current reporting does not indicate whether the deceased and injured victims worked for Pablo…

Speaking at TEDxAlbany, December 3

I've known this for a while now, but they just announced it officially: I'll be speaking at TEDxAlbany this year, on "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning": You might think that the bizarre predictions of quantum mechanics and relativity– particles that are also waves, cats that are both alive and dead, clocks that run at different rates depending on how you’re moving– and only come into play in physics laboratories or near black holes. In fact, though, even the strangest features of modern physics are essential for everything around us. The mundane process of getting up and getting…

Sea ice: oh no, not again

Yay, more nonsense about sea ice: the traditional "US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 201x", where this time x=6. Does anyone actually believe this rubbish? If so, I have money just sitting around, bored, twiddling its little green fingers and waiting to take your bet. If "summer ice free" means "oh yeah, not actually ice free, but less than 1 million square km" then please form an orderly line. Even odds, let's say £1k. Who's first up? Do I see Nafeez Ahmed there? Or Wieslaw Maslowski? No? How odd. Found by the lost [*]: * Ed Hawkins @ed_hawkins: Brave prediction by Maslowski for…

links for 2008-01-31

Jacks of Science â Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory "Ever since I saw the painting shown above, I've wanted to suffocate birds in my very own home laboratory. As I got older, the desire to destroy life subsided, but the desire for a home laboratory remained." (tags: science biology chemistry silly gadgets) The Washington Monthly "Congratulations then, cold and flu, on prevailing over typhoid and cholera." (tags: US politics silly) Confessions of a Community College Dean: Administrative Personae Academic adminstrators as movie characters. (tags: academia education movies silly)…

Pimp Me Old Papers

As seen in a recent links dump, gg at Skulls in the Stars posted a fun challenge for science bloggers: My "challenge", for those sciencebloggers who choose to accept it, is this: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it. I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, "in your basement"-style science. There's a lot to learn not only about the ingenuity of researchers in an era when materials were not readily available, but also about the problems and concerns of scientists of that era, often things we take for…

links for 2008-03-06

The Quantum Pontiff : Twins in Donut Space Mmmmmm.... Paradoxical Donuts...... (tags: physics relativity theory) Laelaps : Preaching to the choir "Has there ever been a time when science has been highly valued by the general public? " (tags: science society class-war culture history) Shockwave traffic jam recreated for first time - tech - 04 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech Japanese scientists create flawless simulation of Washington, DC. Make sure to watch the video. (tags: physics psychology science video youtube) Richard Feynman Needs His Orange Juice | Cosmic Variance What can I…

Anatomy of an Error

If you've been following the Taxonomy Fail and subsequent Myrmecology Win, you'll know that the real Fail was my own. That blurry mash of legs and cuticle is indeed an ant, and I missed it. That I failed to discern an ant in the original image doesn't bother me. After all, the photo was the equivalent of an amber inkblot, with key bits out of focus, and the paper itself provided no support for the identification. I stand by my comments about the burden of proof lying with the authors- the paper did not adequately justify its conclusions. Partly, this is less the fault of the authors than the…

DukeResearch Features our Key West Botanical Garden Talk

Many thanks for some blog publicity go out to Karl Leif Bates, editor of Duke University's online research monthly magazine, Duke Research, and co-founder of Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC). Many of you who attended this past weekend's ScienceOnline'09 gathering may recognize Karl as he was in attendance. Completely independent of any coaxing (Karl was *not* present at my free, Friday Fermentable wine tasting), my post is currently the February 2009 feature on the Duke Research section, Voices: Science in Conversation. The backstory is that, during our December vacation, we…

RadioLab: Experiments in Science Communication

Season 3 of New York Public Radio's RadioLab is coming soon, in May 2007. Seasons one and two are available on-line, at WNYC. Have you heard? It isn't Talk of the Nation -- Science Friday, with Ira Flatow. But it is co-hosted by NPR Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich. He hosts with youngish public radio guy Jad Abumrad. This is good stuff. Along with the very great range of forms of science communication, and of places where science, art, and humanity cannot be separated into strict academic categories (oh, for example, like this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this), radio…

The Promise, the Hype, and the Reality: It's a Different Perceptual Era for Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Over at the Knight Science Tracker, Charlie Petit has a round-up on news coverage of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine's first significant research grants for stem cell research. Though much of the focus in California and nationally has obviously been on the promise of embryonic stem cell research, only four of the 14 funded projects involve these type of stem cells. The emphasis is on projects that could lead to the most immediate clinical results, a strong if not "tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future" writes Andrew…

Some fundamental definitions

Someone in all this brouhaha (I can't remember whom and can't find the comment online) claimed that only creationists use the phrase "Darwinian Fundamentalist". The phrase actually originated with Stephen Jay Gould (New York Review of Books, June 12 1997) for the "conviction that natural selection regulates everything of any importance in evolution, and that adaptation emerges as a universal result and ultimate test of selection's ubiquity." He cites Maynard-Smith, Dawkins and Dennett as being "ultra-Darwinists" and thus Darwinian fundamentalists. In fact, Dennett (speaking in March 2006)…

Microcosm: Ars Technica feature, and more podcasts

The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what's called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Science writer Carl Zimmer took that reductionist approach and applied it to a pretty big issue: life itself. For Zimmer, the system that serves as a model of all life, and of humanity's often uncomfortable relationship to it, is the unprepossessing gut bacteria, Escherischia coli. Covering all of life is a big task, and Zimmer made the…

Pray4PZ!

Some gomer has set up a website about prayer with a subsection dedicated to an experiment: they're going to pray for PZ Myers. They're rather vague about what they're praying for, which I guess is tactically useful, since if I stay healthy or drop dead they can then claim success either way. I'm also going to confound their experiment since I'm going to tell everyone to not Pray4PZ, and since their site traffic is so minuscule, I'm going to overwhelm their results. They also have a post titled "Can PZ Myers be reasoned with?", which is amusing — I guess the prayer effort wasn't doing much, so…

Science Reveals How To Lose Weight And Keep It Off

Well, it was a long time coming.  Between the myriad of diet plans on television, magazines, online, and everywhere, someone was bound to finally come up with conclusive evidence on what works and how to make sense of all the (excuse the term) dietary diarrhea. No doubt, you've also noticed that low-fat, high fiber, extra protein, pills, germs, and steel floods every sensory organ we have on a hourly basis. Personally, I've never been all that interested in skinny, but healthy suits me just fine.  I'm not one for regiments or counting calories, but do give thought to what I consume and prefer…

The AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy

One week ago I left for the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy...So what went on over two days in our nation's capitol? LOTS! The event was fantastic! In fact, with so many wonderful contributions, there's no way I could possibly do it justice with a single post, so I'll highlight some of the details of my session here and encourage readers to check out the presentations, listen to talks, read transcripts, and view photos as they're posted throughout the week. My panel was on 'Science and the New Media' along with Seed's Adam Bly and Dr. Anthony Crider, who teaches…

Traumatic Thursday

Yeah, yeah, why is she blogging about Thursday, when it's already Friday? Well, folks, it's gonna take me more than one night's sleep to lower the cortisol levels that shot up in my body yesterday. Lemme share the highlights. An 8 am meeting with the dean. A meeting in which the dean turned the whole organizational structure of the department inside out and left some of us wondering about our professional futures at Mystery U. I'd love to say more, but I think it's probably unbloggable for now. An apparently missing $2000 piece of field equipment purchased with my start-up funds. 45…

Making an exhibit

To follow up on my previous review of KC Cole's book about the Exploratorium, here's a nifty exhibit called "How People Make Things." It's a traveling exhibit (by the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, not the Exploratorium) that demonstrates the basics of manufacturing processes like injection molding and assembly. It's interesting to compare the experience you may imagine having in the exhibit room above to the experience of the website, which uses a one-directional lecture mode (warning: be prepared for the Mr. Rogers cameo). It's ironically difficult to successfully translate hands-on…

Three games was the morning...

If you're poking around, looking for some relaxing diversion before you have to go back to work tomorrow, you've come to the right place. Lately, I've been writing a few casual game reviews for Casual Gameplay, better known as JayIsGames.com. Jay has offered reviews of the best in online casual gaming for many years, and has earned quite a reputation. Being a loyal fan of the site, I love the chance to help Jay and his staff out with the occasional review. OK, well, truth be told, it's a good excuse to relax, something most of us need. Here are a few reviews I've done over the past few months…

The Ethics of Being an Open Access Publisher

BioMed Central advertises itself as "The Open Access Publisher" (see their logo floating next to this text). They publish a lot of journals, but I think the Public Library of Science (PLoS) has the lead when it comes to being THE open access publisher. That's because everything published by PLoS is Open Access -- it's free to read, distribute, and reproduce, provided there is proper attribution. BioMed Central, not so much. That's right, BioMed Central, The Open Access Publisher, publishes paid-access articles. In fact, it publishes entire journals that are not open access. That includes…

A New OpenSource Online Office

"After going premium and suffering some community fragmentation, the OpenOffice.org open source office suite is being taken in a new direction by a company named Ulteo. A brainchild of Gael Duval, founder of Mandriva Linux, Ulteo's mission is to serve as a platform for putting applications onto the web. Using this approach, Ulteo has released a public beta of Online OpenOffice.org, which quite literally puts OpenOffice.org inside a browser." [source] The community fragmentation referred to here is a bit disturbing but not too surprising. You have to figure that Sun is in the OpenSource…

Dover III in Texas?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that the school board in Polk County, Florida looked like they were going to try and get creationism into the classroom when the school science standards are revised in January of 2008, and now it looks like some of the members of the Texas Education Agency might be gearing up to try the same thing. By now I'm sure that most of you have heard of how the Texas Education Agency's director of science, Christine Comer, was forced to resign after forwarding a message about a Nov. 2 lecture by philosopher Barbara Forrest on called "Inside Creationisms Trojan Horse" to a…