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Weekend Diversion: And now, they're coming for me. Yeah, me. Because I write for you.

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." -Alfred Whitney Griswold Those of you who read my weekend post have some inkling that I'm a bit of a sucker for beautifully done covers of songs. But when they give me chills listening to them, that's when I know I've really found a special one. This week, I'm proud to introduce Rebecca Loebe to you, whom I discovered while watching her audition at NBC's singing competition: The Voice. Have a listen…

n00b Science Blogging 101: Part 3 - Blogging in Grad School

Welcome to part 3 of the Science Blogging 101 series. You can find part 1 here, in which I discussed my own experiences with blogging, and part 2 here, which I discussed some of the big questions regarding audience, purpose, and so forth. How do you balance blogging with the rest of your work? Do you see it as an extension or part of what you already do in keeping up with the literature or do you just enjoy blogging? Well, I certainly enjoy blogging, otherwise I wouldn't do it. That said, blogging about research is a fantastic way to keep up on the literature. I read through (or, at least…

How much does it cost to get a scientific paper?

The Backstory:  As it stands today,when one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides the funding for a scientific research project, and those results are published, they must be made freely available to public, within a set period of time.  The reasoning behind this requirement is that taxpayers funded everything about the research except for the final publication, and so they have already paid for access. The Research Works Act (#RWA), HR 3699, is a bill in the House of Representatives that would roll back this requirement.  If it passes, taxpayers will most likely have to pay…

Harvard law professors flunk Harvard's college bookstore

So the Harvard Coop fiasco goes into yet another day with lawyers at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society giving the book sellers (part of the Barnes and Noble College Division) a much needed lesson in copyright law. To recap (see also here and here), Harvard undergraduates running a comparison-shopping textbook service online were copying down course book ISBN numbers in the Harvard bookstore and were told to leave. On a second occasion The Coop (the name of the bookstore) called the cops, who, however, refused to intervene. The Coop's reasons were that the ISBN…

World AIDS Day: Educational Breakthrough

By Aman Cross-posted with permission from Technology, Health & Development Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and instead of âbarraging you with [another set of] statistics, gruesome photos, or heart-wrenching storiesâ (quote credit to Mr. Casnocaha), I want to alert you to something we prefer here - solutions, problem solving, technology, and creative thinking. Piya Sorcar, a doctoral student in Stanfordâs Learning, Sciences & Technology Design program has used her considerable skills to figure out how to reach the minds of children in devleoping countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS…

Finding And Classifying Forgotten Sites

I haven't blogged much about my research lately. One reason is that I am only working with it at ~50% this academic year since I'm teaching in addition to my usual 25% editor's job. Another is that I'm in an intensive desk-based data collection phase, which gives rise to a lot of hypotheses and hunches but not much in the way of analytical conclusions. Here's what I'm doing. I've got a great big database of about 400 Bronze Age finds from the Lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren provinces. This sample is delimited thusly: a) datable finds b) that are not demonstrably from graves or settlements c)…

Fieldwork in Hov and Vretakloster

Polyhedrical weight. 9/10th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. (Martin here, posting from the hostel of Norsholm on the Göta canal, using my handheld and the cell phone network. To get the post on-line, my dear scibling Janet has kindly agreed to act as go-between.) Coin struck for Heinrich II, King of Germany. Mainz 1002-1014. Dbg 785. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. This is the third April in as many years that I'm reporting from a week of fieldwork in Ãstergötland with my metal detector buddies. I intend this to be the final expedition before I complete my book about late-1st…

Nematodes see without eyes

The humble nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a millimeter-long roundworm which eeks out its existence in the soil and feeds on bacteria. Because it lives in a dark environment, and lacks specialized light-sensing organs, the nematode has always been assumed to be completely blind. However, a new study published online in Nature Neuroscience shows that C. elegans they possess neurons which are sensitive to light. As well as showing for the first time that C. elegans has a rudimentary sense of vision, the findings also shed some light on the evolution of the eye. Despite lacking eyes,…

Healthy Skepticism Toward "Ethically Sound" Stem Cells

I would be remiss if I didn't address the latest stem cell news, since it's already all over the place. An article from today's issue of published in advance online yesterday by Nature describes a technique for deriving a line of human embryonic stem cells by removing a single cell from the eight-cell blastula (created for in vitro fertilization). According to the paper, the blastula can still be implanted and allowed to grow and develop normally, without any apparent damage to the embryo. Not surprisingly, the press has painted this as a potential solution to the "moral reservations"…

Unsolicited words of advice for those participating in online discourse.

(It's worth noting, however, that this may also be useful advice for interactions with others offline.) I don't know what's in your heart. I don't know what's in your mind. I don't have direct access to either of those (because I'm a distinct person from you), and if I did, you'd probably feel violated. The only sensible data I have on what's in your heart and your mind when I'm interacting with you online is how you present yourself -- and your regard for others -- through your words. Here's the thing: words are an imperfect tool for communication. There are lots of them, which makes it…

Mapping the lives and deaths of workers: An emerging way to tell the story of occupational health and safety

When Bethany Boggess first debuted her online mapping project, she didn’t expect it to attract so much attention. But within just six months of its launch, people from all over the world are sending in reports and helping her build a dynamic picture of the lives and deaths of workers. The project is called the Global Worker Watch and it’s quite literally a living map of worker fatalities and catastrophes from around the globe. When you go to the site, you’ll see a world map speckled with blue dots, each representing a reported occupational death, illness or disaster. Here are just a few I…

The dichloroacetate (DCA) "self-experimentation" phenomenon hits the mainstream media

It figures. Whenever I go away for a conference, things of interest to me that I'd like to blog about start happening fast and furious. Indeed, I could only deal with one of them, and I chose to post my challenge to the Paleyist "intelligent design" creationist surgeon, Dr. William Egnor. Now that I'm back, I'll deal with the other major issue that's been a frequent topic of blogging over the last couple of months and bubbled up again into the blogosphere over the weekend. Remember all the posts that I did on dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that targets the…

The fundamental intellectual dishonesty of Eric Merola and his promotion of Stanislaw Burzynski

About a month ago, Eric Merola screened his second movie about "brave maverick doctor" Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as "Burzynski II"), a screening that Brian Thompson and an unnamed colleague from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) attended, took notes, and even managed to ask a question. At the time, I took advantage of Brian's awesome commentary about his experience on the JREF Swift Blog, his copious notes, and my read on Eric Merola's trailers for the movie, what he said in the first movie, and his own promotional…

Birds in the News 168

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Male Scarlet Tanager, Piranga olivacea, photographed in Newton Hills State Park in South Dakota. Image: Terry Sohl, 7 June 2008 [larger view]. Photo taken with a Canon 20D, 400 5.6L. Birds in Science and Technology Climate change will force bone-weary birds migrating to Europe from Africa to log extra mileage, with possibly devastating consequences, according to a study released recently. The annual voyage of some species, which fly north in search of food and suitable climes, could increase by as much as 400km, the…

10+ Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn

NEW: Very first look at Ubuntu Linux 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta Mate Flavor See: Ubuntu Unleashed Here is a list of things to do after you have installed Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. There is some discussion of whether or not you should upgraded to 14.10 here, but the short version is, for most people an upgrade from 14.04 is not necessary but not a bad idea, and an upgrade from any earlier version is a very good idea. Mostly, though, you should just upgrade. One could ask the question, should you be installing Ubuntu with Unity. You have to like Unity. I personally like to have a wider range…

Why The Iraq Failure Was Predicted

Not predictable. Predicted. Over at DailyKos is a powerful diary by the wife of a Vietnam & Iraq I war veteran. During a discussion with a bunch of conservative college students, the following happened (italics mine): A little blonde got up enough nerve to say something. My husband wouldn't tell me exactly what she said, but I can picture it. My nieces, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are fairly typical college students. They back Bush 110% because he's the president and a Christian and God chose him to be president instead of that arrogant Al Gore or that CATHOLIC LIBERAL John Kerry ( cps…

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson Is Wrong Again About Social Security

I like constancy. Knowing that, come spring, the forsythia will bloom is a good thing. But I don't like knowing that, when Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson writes something about Social Security, it will be error-filled and disingenuous. Sadly, this too is a constant. A few years back, Samuelson inspired me to invent the Samuelson Unit, which, like the Friedman unit, is a period of time, X units in the future, at which point something will happen. Like Zeno's Paradox, we never seem to reach that point, which, even given the past couple of years, is still 27 years away*. Well,…

Why We Really Don't Have a Social Security Crisis

One of the maddening things about the Social Security 'debate' is the assumption that Social Security will be 'insolvent' in several decades (oddly enough, every year like clockwork, the several decades prediction is renewed....). It won't be. The Social Security Trustees release three estimates of the long term health of the Social Security program. These three estimates differ in the assumptions of how the economy will perform, and can be described as: mild historical underperformance, sucky, and 'Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die!' These estimates are mandated by law. Typically,…

Today is The Fifth Blogoversary For Living the Scientific Life

Today's my fifth blogoversary, so suggest a few things for me and my readers to do. My celebrations have been somewhat complicated by the fact that I have a 2-inch diameter blister on the bottom of my foot. Even though I drained it (twice, actually), it is still quite painful to walk on. Boo! Thanks to a reader, whom I am dragging all around the city with me, here is my celebratory list: Today: Go to the Whitney Art Museum to see the Edward Hopper Exhibit. Eat Ice cream. Walk around Central Park and (hopefully) pick up tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park. Go to Josh Rosenau's's…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Merry Christmas

It's not just Sunday, but it's Christmas Eve. Time for my annual In Praise of Christmas Sermonette. Because, yes, I am a big fan of Christmas. As a proud member of the godless, I am not a bit embarrassed or chagrined. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely secular holiday. I'll explain why, but I also know the winter holidays can be a difficult and sad time for many people. The darkness of the season and the emotional freight of family associations contributes, no doubt. My views are not even shared by everyone in my own family. So this is not meant to be why everyone should like Christmas.…

Prying the gun out of my cold live hands

Old folks are dangerous enough. I should know. I am one. Bad enough you allow me to hurtle down the highway in semi-control of a couple of tons of steel while thinking about science (at least I'm not thinking about decking some young thing or even decking some young thing while hurtling down the highway in semi-control of a couple tons of steel). But put a weapon specially designed for my cold, arthritic hands? (OK, they're not arthritic, but they probably will be soon). This story (hat tip reader emc) is almost too bizarre: A US company claims to have received federal approval to market a 9…

Poker Report - July 7th

Last night we were back to our normal game of 1/2 pot limit holdem, and boy am I glad. But it was a very odd night all the way around. Out of 8 players, only two finished with any money left at all, 6 had busted out completely. Thankfully, I was one of those two, the other being Jeff, who got run over by the deck as completely as I have ever witnessed. He simply could not lose, and if you know Jeff, you know he tried his damnedest to do so. He was staying on crap hand after crap hand and hitting the cards. He'd stay on 3 9 offsuit and hit two 9's on the flop. It was simply unreal to watch. He…

Friday Miscellany

I got book edits this week, gave an exam on Thursday, and pre-registration for our spring term classes is just beginning, so I have a parade of students begging to get into this course or that one to deal with. So I have no more time for detailed blogging, but will do a bit of tab-clearing to end the week. This piece about bimodal exams resonated well with my experiences in intro classes. I see a lot of the same thing, though with less statistical power, given that our maximum class size is 18. But in general, the "well-prepared students are bored, poorly-prepared students hopelessly lost"…

Help Me Locate Kooks

The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book is currently envisioned as a look at the misuse of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using the "Search Inside This Book" feature to locate good manglings of quantum theory in the service of quackery. I feel vaguely dirty. I also spent some time on the web page of Bob Park's favorite shills, BlackLight Power, which provides another example of the appropriation of quantum concepts for…

It's Unfortunate That Nobody Ever Talks About Darwin

'cept these folks: Slate, on Janet Browne's new edition of Origin and on Darwin as a writer. Jonah's digging it too; and so is fellow Virginian Jason. The Economist on the globalizing trend of evolution-creationism debates The Chronicle of Higher Education dishes up an essay that discusses these: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (Viking Press, 2006) The Creation: An Appealto Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2006) Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, by David Sloan Wilson (University of Chicago…

The War on Christmas escalates

Now the Catholic League — you know it's going to get ugly when Bill Donohue joins the fray — has bought a billboard near the American Atheists' billboard. The pro-superstition sign says, "You Know It's Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus". Isn't that sweet? It's just like the religious side to proclaim a falsehood. Anyway, they're welcome to buy the ad space. The real winners here are the commercial enterprises marketing billboards and selling, selling, selling…and when you get right down to it, isn't that what Christmas is really all about? Meanwhile, the British have their own weird version…

Money Can't Buy You Love

Money also can't buy you happiness. It's been reported before, but it's always worth repeating: the rich aren't happier than the rest of us. In the last issue of Science, a team of researchers (including Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman), reported that "The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory...People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities." Of course, this isn't…

Friday Sprog Blogging: animals at the zoo.

Last weekend, the Free-Rides visited the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Here are some of the animals we saw: The giant panda. Younger offspring: It eats a lot of bamboo. Elder offspring: Would do great living in a Chinese restaurant if it had a hundred bucks. Dr. Free-Ride: Why a hundred bucks? Elder offspring: To buy bamboo, of course. Younger offspring: We really only saw them eating. The red panda. Younger offspring: The red panda loves climbing and eats bamboo like the giant panda. Elder offspring: They're more closely related to raccoons, but they still love bamboo. Younger…

Some definitive bad news about preservatives

It's nice to a see a good study every once in a while and after about 30 years of debating whether preservatives cause hyperactivity/attention deficit. I can't go into all the studies that have been done because there are too many. Suffice it to say that the methodologies were always lacking, and the results uneven (whether positive or negative). Now a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial has been conducted and published in The Lancet (you can get it here for free!). They took 153 3-year olds and 144 8-9 year olds and gave them a sweet drink with either sodium benzoate, a common…

Visiting Weekend Horror Stories

This weekend is visiting weekend for the accepted graduate students in the Cognitive, Brain and Cognition and Visual Cognition and Human Performance divisions of the Psych department at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. This is where a whole bunch of awkward prospective graduate students come out to Champaign and we try to convince them that even though there are no buildings over a few stories, no trees outside of campus (only soy and corn), no hills over 10 feet and the town smells a little funny when the Kraft plant is cooking up something or other, that they should come here…

The Mark of the Devil strikes again.

When I was a kid, my friend Karl and I illegally snuck into a movie theater to see "The Mark of the Devil" (or words to that effect) then just out. We didn't sneak in because we didn't have the money. We snuck in because we were 13 or so and that was the only way we could see the movie, which we knew, by the way, was fiction. But some people don't know that this whole "Mark of the Devil" thing is fiction. There is apparently a lawsuit going on right now by some farmers in Michigan, including but not limited to Amish farmers, claiming that te legally required tagging of livestock with…

A devil's catechism

My review of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (currently at #4 on Amazon's bestseller list!) is in the latest issue of Seed, which showed up at my door while I was flying out East. They changed my suggested title, which I've at least used on this article, in favor of the simpler "Bad Religion". You could always buy the magazine to read it, but I'll give you a little taste of what I thought. Oh, yeah…Seed does that nice plus of having an artist render a portrait of the author, so there's also a picture, artfully ruggedized and made much more attractive than I am in reality. Not…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Cassie Rodenberg

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 Cassie Rodenberg 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)…

Homeless Veterans

Hat tip to Majikthise and Steve Gilliard for bringing my attention to this article about vets from the Iraqi war becoming homeless after leaving the military. I'll quote just a little bit of the story from one returning Iraqi vet: A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He got divorced. He said that after being quickly pushed out of the military, he could not get help from the VA because of long delays. "I felt, as well…

No Penalty For Lying

Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero describes this conversation with a respected journalist about the manufactured smear of CBS reporter Lara Logan's coverage of the Haifa Street battle: Well, recently, I was at dinner with a friend who is a major journalist at a major media outlet in New York City. (I will not identify the person further, including whether my friend is male or female, or what kind of media s/he works for - video, print, or online). In the course of the conversation, I brought up the Lara Logan video and s/he said, with certain authority, "I know about that. Y'know, there's a lot of…

A Scientific Road Trip

Right above the tree tops -- where most people might think there is just air -- Prof. Dan Yakir sees a distinctive atmospheric layer in which all sorts of complex exchanges are taking place. CO2, of course, is one of the important ones, and we still don’t understand all of the ins and outs of its flux through the forest, soil and atmosphere. Moisture, heat (and by extension light) and oxygen all cycle through the interface between the forest canopy and the lower atmosphere, as do a number of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by many trees. These compounds may contribute to the…

The Week in ScienceBlogs

8.13.07 to 8.19.07 Homepage Buzzes 8/13: Science Panel on C-SPAN On Saturday, C-SPAN aired a televised broadcast of the "Science, Politics, and Activism" panel that took place on August 3 at the YearlyKos Convention. The video of the panel, moderated by Tara Smith and featuring science bloggers Sean Carroll, Chris Mooney, and Ed Brayton, is available online. 8/14:Karl Rove Out Karl Rove, who has been a political adviser to President Bush for over 10 years, has announced his plans to resign as White House deputy chief of staff. He will leave his position on August 31, bringing to an end an…

My picks from ScienceDaily

We're Sorry This Is Late ... We Really Meant To Post It Sooner: Research Into Procrastination Shows Surprising Findings: A University of Calgary professor in the Haskayne School of Business has recently published his magnum opus on the subject of procrastination -- and it's only taken him 10 years. Joking aside, Dr. Piers Steel is probably the world's foremost expert on the subject of putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. His comprehensive analysis of procrastination research, published in the recent edition of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin,…

OSHA urged (again) to revise PSM standard

Members of Congress George Miller (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Corrine Brown (D-FL)  sent a letter to acting OSHA chief Jordan Barab urging the agency to expand its process safety management standard (PSM) to address reactive chemicals.  Reactives are highly unstable that can violently generate heat, energy and/or toxic gases when they come into contact with air, water or other substances.   The letter reminds Mr. Barab that members of Congress wrote to his predecessor, Asst. Secretary Foulke, in January 2008 asking him to begin the rulemaking process to address the hazards…

Salvaging EPA Libraries

Remember how EPA library closures and record purges were threatening public access to important environmental information? Now Congress is requiring the agency to restore library services, reports Katherine Boyle of Greenwire: U.S. EPA must craft plans to reopen regional libraries shuttered from a Bush administration cost-cutting effort under a provision in the agency's fiscal 2008 budget. Congress allocated nearly $3 million for restoring library services and requires the agency to report its progress to lawmakers within three months. At issue are EPA libraries that were closed in Chicago,…

Breaking FDA's User Fee Habit (2)

By David Michaels The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), through which the FDA collects money from drug makers in exchange for faster reviews of their new products, gets skewered again â this time in a piece by Christopher Moraff in the American Prospect Online. (We've been covering the issue here at TPH; more materials on the link between PDUFA and the drug safety crisis are also posted on DefendingScience.org). Following hot on the heels of yesterdayâs Washington Post/Bloomberg critique by Cindy Skrzycki, Moraff summarizes the shortcomings of PDUFA raised by the Institute of Medicine,…

Hippos are photographed biting a crocodile to death

You've probably seen - presumably on TV - Nile crocs Crocodylus niloticus interacting with Common hippos Hippopotamus amphibius (if you've seen it in real life, lucky you). By and large the two seem to keep apart. Having said that, there are certainly photos of the two sharing the same sandbanks. And then there are those instances of hippos scaring crocs away from carcasses, the weird reports of hippos mouthing and chewing the backs and tails of resting crocodiles, and those cases where crocodiles have been seen to walk or run across hippos' backs. What can certainly be said to be the most…

RoboCroc

Tales of animals that have undergone reconstructive surgery, or end up with prosthetic attachments, always make the news: wheels in place of tortoise legs [example] and that sort of thing. As reported in the Mail online (and other sources) a few days ago, during December 2008 an unfortunate 3-m long, wild American crocodile Crocodylus acutus was run over by a car, in Florida. The animal sustained substantial head injuries: apparently its snout was 'hanging limp' and it was unable to feed. It was captured and taken to the Miami MetroZoo [images below © Barcroft Media]. Here, plans were made…

The Open Laboratory 2009 - the excitement begins!

Now that the Open Lab 2008 is done and up for sale, it's time to turn our sights towards the next year. If you read the comments on Sci's post and my post (as well as some chatter I picked up on Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed and privately), the pick for the 2009 editor is a Big Hit! I am truly looking forward to the year of collaboration with SciCurious on the next edition of the anthology. But, as you know, the anthology is a collaborative project of the entire science blogosphere. Thus, we need to get started! That means YOU! First, you need to go into your blog's archives and look at your…

Extreme Solar Systems VII - extreme habitability

Extreme Solar Systems conference has finished, and the lovely WiFi service at Athens airport just crashed and wiped out what I wrote... aargh. Hrmph, the previous version was much snappier and comprehensive, with amusing and informative hyperlinks. Ok, before my battery runs out, here goes... Lots of new instruments coming online. Some new dedicated or semi-dedicated planet hunting telescopes. Good prospects for near future space missions. Shortage of time for followups. we're probably missing stuff because of slow followup and poor cadence on good targets, this will get much worse as…

16th Century Campaign Archaeology

My buddy Claes Pettersson is a field archaeologist in Jönköping and always has a lot of fun projects going. Last year he told me about an undocumented manor park he had studied through geophysics. Right now he's digging bits of Jönköping's obliterated castle. And recently he sent me an intriguing little fieldwork report (available on-line for free). It's a piece of, not exactly battlefield archaeology, but campaign archaeology, which is rare. The back story is short and nasty. Sweden fought the Northern Seven Years' War from 1563 to 1570 against Denmark-Norway, Lübeck and the Polish-…

Rotational Motion of a Bouncing Football

I followed up my ranty-y post about "Sports Science" with an experimental investigation over at Forbes, tossing a football around on the deck out back and then doing video analysis of the bounces. This provided a wealth of data, much of it not really appropriate for over there, but good for a physics post or two here. One of the trajectories I looked at was this "forward bounce": Here's the trajectory reconstructed in Tracker: Trajectory of a football bouncing forward. This is notable because not only does it bounce forward, it includes one of those big pop-up bounces that take people off…

The Growth of My Digital Photography

Over at Wired, Rhett has a post providing mathematical proof that he takes too many photos. As is traditional, he includes homework at the end of the post, specifically: Now it is your turn. Find the number of photos you have taken each year. Is it possible for you to detect changes in your life by significant changes in the image rate? Maybe you purchased a new phone or had a new addition to your family which resulted in an increase in images. That would be cool if you could see that in your data. Well, I can't really resist a challenge like that, so I went looking at my own photo…

January Pieces Of My Mind #1

We built a snow entity. I shall miss Cousin E. Waiting to blow The introductions to academic paper anthologies often consist of descriptions of the contents. I never read them. That information is in the title to each contribution. Pointless. H.G. Wells became public domain on 1 January! My new project is writing a Latin grammar in Pidgin English. Have you ever been to a Yule Spruce Looting event? The blotter pad at the bottom of a supermarket meat tray would probably work well as a wound dressing or a panty liner. Be it known that I cooked 1/4 of a goose with wine, garlic, onions,…

Two Women-in-Science Notes

Two things I was forwarded or pointed toward this week, that interact a little oddly. First chronologically is from the New York Times, which has a story about how Harvey Mudd College has boosted the number of female computer science majors, by committing serious resources to reforming the intro course (which is required of all students there): Known as CS 5, the course focused on hard-core programming, appealing to a particular kind of student -- young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. This only reinforced the women's sense that computer science was for geeky know-…