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Eureka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!

[It's probable that only British readers will understand the joke in the headline. Everyone else: just pretend it's an uproariously funny pop-culture reference and we can move on.] This morning, the Times published a list of its 30 best science blogs and I'm incredibly honoured to be on it. Twice. Once for Not Exactly Rocket Science, and again for my efforts at Cancer Research UK's Science Update blog. A bit of background - the Times recently launched a monthly science supplement called Eureka and every issue, one of its writers selects their favourite science blogs. This list is a…

I'm not going to be able to vote for anyone, ever, am I?

Once again, politicians are going on little, petty crusades to help the government economize, and as usual, they go for cheap shots that do nothing, other than to reveal their screwed up priorities. Here's Joe Biden, letting us know where the real problems lie. Did you know that the government spends millions to maintain buildings that have sat vacant for years? Or that your tax dollars pay to needlessly ship copies of the Federal Register to thousands of government offices across the country even though the same information is available online? And I bet you didn't know that your tax…

History of Science Society Annual Meeting

The preliminary program for the History of Science Society's annual meeting (November in Pittsburgh) has been placed online and it looks like the best series of sessions in a long while with the organizers managing to avoid scheduling sessions on similar themes at the same time. It's a three-day meeting but I'll only be around for the Friday & Saturday. Here's what my preliminary schedule looks like: Friday 9:00 - The Hard Parts: Paleontology and the Evolutionary Synthesis. Some nice papers here on Sewall Wright, species concepts, Osborn, random drift, and ID. 12:30 - lecture by Gar…

Facebook and and the Future of Science Communication

Facebook and similar social networking sites hold vast potential for reaching non-traditional audiences for science. As the NY Times reports today, Facebook has 25 million users and growing as the company plans bold new features and opens up its user base to almost anyone with an email account. Social networking sites are important new platforms for science communication since they facilitate two of the key strategies I have pushed in the past in reaching broader American audiences about science. First, they have the potential to facilitate incidental exposure, in other words they can…

The treadmill bike: a brief review

Given that today is April 2nd, directly following April Fool's, it seems like an ideal time to bring up the treadmill bike - a odd piece of exercise equipment which appears to be legit, but could very well be a hoax. So what is a treadmill bike? It's rather self-explanatory, really - "a treadmill on wheels." And what's the point of this gadget, you might ask? According to the company selling the product, Bicycle Forest: "Have you ever wished you could get a quality treadmill workout without paying expensive gym prices? Look no further than the Treadmill Bike by the Bicycle Forest. The…

Add emoticons to your emails!

I was looking for some information on the intertubes and google dropped me onto a website that it thought would help. I found a large block of ad content on the site that said "Add emoticons to your emails!" with a collection of the ever-stupid animated gif images that wink, grin, clap, and do all the other idiotic things that invariably attract the clueless. I started wondering what sort of business model would these folks - the ones who put these ad out - have. So, I clicked on the ad (I am on a Mac using Safari, which is important to note). And, no surprises here, it downloaded a windows…

A croc is a fish?

Lawmakers ponder the meaning of fish ... Here is a case in which taxonomic categories are defined by political and legal considerations. In order to regulate the use of marine species for commercial reasons, to enforce export controls over crocodile (archosaurian) products, shellfish (molluscs), and prawns (arthropods). So the Bill (currently not online, due it seems to a Microsloth IIS error, *sigh*) treats these all as "fish". Reuters notes wryly that this is somewhat in contradiction to the definition in the Australian English dictionary, but that is less of concern than the fact that we…

The Essentialism Story

Historian Mary P. Winsor published recently (2006b, in the December 2006 edition, but it just came out) a paper discussing how the Essentialism Story was constructed by Arthur Cain, Ernst Mayr, and David Hull. The Essentialism Story is the claim that before Darwin systematists and biologists in general treated natural kinds such as species as being defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. That is, to be a member of a species, an organism has to have all the right properties. After Darwin, goes the story, "population thinking", which denies that there are such necessary properties…

Do wine and yoga mix?

This is too late for The Friday Fermentable, but the NYT has a great travel article yoga and wine retreats to be offered at DeLoach Vineyards in California's Sonoma Valley (one of my favorite zinfandel producers). Of course, this Americanization of an Eastern practice is not without its detractors: "Kundalini does things to balance your nervous system," Ms. Elkes said. "And then for you to go do something that changes that? It's going to affect your nervous system after you've done all this work to balance yourself. You'll soon find out that drinking and Kundalini don't go well together."…

ResearchBlogging.Org 2.0

If you've gone to ResearchBlogging.org lately, you may have noticed that it's been given a face-lift. Actually, it's more than just a face-lift, as cofounder and president Dave Munger points out, including these new features: Multiple language support (and 30 new German-language bloggers!) Topic-specific RSS feeds Post-by-post tagging with topics and subtopics "Recover password" feature Email alerts when there is a problem with posts Users can flag posts that don't meet our guidelines Customized user home pages with bios and blog descriptions Blogger photos/other images displayed with each…

Dispatches

*Scientists inaugurate new mental health condition so vague it applies to everyone over the age of 12, Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. The hallmarks of the condition include "worrying about life, feeling tense, restless, or fatigued, being concerned about their weight, noticing signs of aging, feeling stress at work, home, or finding activities they used to enjoy, like shopping, challenging." *A Philadelphia-based technology company brings us one step closer to the Brave New World by marketing MRI-based lie detection testing to Corporate America as a…

Come help defend evolution

NCSE wants your help: The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for a position in its Public Information Project. Staff members in the Public Information Project provide advice and support to local activists faced with threats to evolution education in their communities. They also provide information on evolution, evolution education, and related issues to the general public, the press, and allied organizations, and contribute as needed to NCSE's publications, both in print and on-line.…

Over in secular Europe

Irish atheists challenge new blasphemy laws: Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court. The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to â¬25,000 (£22,000). It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number…

Acidic Oceans

This is the most depressing story I've read in a while. I normally don't worry about the fate of my future grandchildren, but Elizabeth Kolbert's new New Yorker article kept me up late last night, fretting about their dismal world. The article isn't on-line, but here's an excerpt: Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have burned enough coal, oil, and natural gas to produce some two hundred and fifty billion metric tons of carbon. The result, as is well known, has been a transformation of the earth's atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air today is higher…

A New State of Mind

My profile of Read Montague and the dopamine prediction-error hypothesis is now online. I wanted to write this article for two main reasons. First of all, I think the dopamine story is incredibly exciting and remains one of the best examples of how subtle shifts in neural firing rates can allow the brain make sense of the real world. Yes, I know there are caveats, but the prediction-error hypothesis is still a very powerful paradigm. Wolfram Schultz should win a Nobel Prize. Secondly, there's so much crappy fMRI research out there - and it always get so much press attention - that I wanted to…

Friday Flotsam: the cost of Vesuvius erupting, dome collapse at Colima and the deepest volcanic vents

Hard to believe, but there is other volcano-related news in the world ... So, with all deference to Eyjafjallajokull, here it is: Dome collapse on Colima in Mexico, image taken March 30, 2010. The new Smithsonian/USGS GVP Weekly Volcano Activity Report was issued, with news about increasing signs of activity at Egon in Indonesia, a possible plume at Miyakejima in Japan and more dome growth at Soufriere Hills. A study on the economic effect of a new Vesuvius eruption was released and the finding show the potential for a staggering $24 billion of economic damage directly related to an…

Maccarone and cheese Einstein!

There's a new scientific paper online today about a very special and rare type of star: an ultracompact X-ray binary star. (One of the authors is surnamed Maccarone.) Let's start by explaining what these things are, how they work, talk about this one in particular, and what it all means. You've heard of binary stars before; these are systems where, instead of having one fusion-burning star in it (like ours), there are two. It turns out that most star system in our galaxy are binaries. If Jupiter were about 70 times more massive, we'd be living in a binary star system ourselves. Well, let's…

Christine Hardman reflects on 1960 Durham visit by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Among the many things that LungMutiny2010 has taken from me is the chance to take advantage of all the rich cultural offerings in the North Carolina Research Triangle area during Black History Month. Regular readers will remember that I wrote a few months ago about the segregation era sit-ins, beginning with the 1957 Royal Ice Cream sit-in in Durham and the immortal 1960 Greensboro Woolworth's sit-ins that garnered national attention. Those who came to the ScienceOnline2010 session with me and my colleague, Damond Nollan, will also remember that I spoke at length about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther…

The Introvert Advantage

Introversion is a loaded word. Just look it up in the dictionary and here's what you'll find: Introversion: The state or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life (Mirriam-Webster Online) Doesn't sound so good, does it? Sounds downright narcissistic. And this is no accident. Sigmund Freud coined the term "introvert" to describe one of the traits associated with narcissism. In Freud's view, introverts were neurotics who had taken "a turn from reality to phantasy [sic]." According to Freud, introversion denoted "the turning away of the…

From The Desk of Zelnio: Scientists & Students FLEXE Their Scientific Muscles!

Going on as we speak is an experiment of monumental proportions. It may not seem that way to you sitting in front of your computer this moment, but to a kid in middle or high school I guarantee that it is their world! At least the highlight of their school day anyways... As part of the GLOBE program funded by NASA, NSF and the U.S. Dept. of State, the Pennsylvania State University. in cooperation with scientists from the RIDGE and InterRIDGE communities, is leading the way for students to explore science From Local to Extreme Environments (FLEXE). "FLEXE students study aspects of their…

Astrology? Give me a break.

Well, I've never followed this "Jerome" fellow's stuff at MyDD, with the recent accusations that he may have done some dubious things in the stock market and was a promoter of astrology, but the Commissar thinks I'm going easy on him because the Left thinks astrology is an acceptable pseudo-science, so I'll take a moment to disabuse that silly notion. I don't expect anyone let alone a right-wing apologist like the Commissar, to be familiar with everything I've written, but no, I have not been kind to woo-woo nonsense, I was shocked at Berlinski's defense of astrology (although he…

The Environmental Cost of Parking

Salon.com has a really interesting article about the hidden and expensive costs of parking. There's lots of interesting stuff in the article, but this bit really stood out (italics mine): Americans don't object, because they aren't aware of the myriad costs of parking, which remain hidden. In large part, it's business owners, including commercial and residential landlords, who pay to provide parking places. They then pass on those costs to us in slightly higher prices for rent and every hamburger sold. "Parking appears free because its cost is widely dispersed in slightly higher prices for…

Framing Versus Filters: The Lesson of the Bush-Gore Debates

It isn't always the message, sometimes it's the medium. Or the media actually. Framing only goes so far. Often, getting your message out there comes down to schmoozing, intimidation, and hard work. This applies to politics and science. The Daily Howler rebuts neuroscientist Drew Westen's take on the Bush-Gore debates of 2000 in Westen's book, The Political Brain (italics mine): For example, he explains what he thinks Gore should have said at several points in the Bush-Gore debates. We've spent a lot of time on the incidents he discusses; we think his examples are highly salient. But we…

Thanksgiving; the sacred and the tryptophan

Since it's Thanksgiving I was going to do a shortish post about the tryptophan hypothesis being the cause of sleepiness after a turkey dinner, but the real expert on sleep cycles, my ScienceBlogs comrade Coturnix, beat me to it by a day. Which is good because without his excellent post I would certainly have made a science fool of myself. Which of course I would blame on being tired after eating a big turkey dinner. I won't repeat most of his post. You should read it foryourself. It is extremely interesting. But I will give you a bit to whet your appetite (sorrry!) and take the opporutninty…

Understanding Darwin: The legacy of evolution

As I've already mentioned, I was off in Philadelphia this past weekend, participating in a symposium entitled "Understanding Darwin: The legacy of evolution". I was a bit amazed to be there, since this was primarily a history and philosophy event with several big names in those fields, and I'm an itty-bitty biologist with more of a popular following than an academic one, but I was also glad to be involved and learned quite a bit, hob-nobbing with the big shots. Here's a short summary of the content of the talks. John Beatty talked about Natural Selection of & Versus Chance Variation. He…

What makes these quacks different from all other quacks?

These quacks are in a bit of trouble. The FTC and FDA have decided that they are sick of bogus cancer cures, and have sued a handful of companies. WHAT THE HELL TOOK THEM SO LONG? And more important, are they going to go after more snake oil salesmen? There is nothing special about the companies the FTC is going after. They make the usual bogus claims---"our particular magic herbs detoxify, boost immunity, and cure cancer." Hopefully, ChrisH will weigh in on some of the legal issues, but one of the interesting facets of these cases bears directly on the Quack Miranda Warning. According…

Listeria and public health infrastructure

Last Friday, CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report included a report on the listeriosis outbreak associated with Jensen Farms cantaloupe (the grower is recalling the melons; look for "Rocky Ford" on the label). So far, 84 cases have been confirmed in 19 states, and 15 of these victims have died. The number of cases may continue to rise, because even though the contaminated cantaloupes are at or near the end of their shelf life, the illness has a long incubation period (usually 1-3 weeks, but as much as 70 days). People who ingested the bacteria in late September might still experience…

Are bills regulating fireworks there to protect stupid people from themselves?

Yes. But don't assume you know a stupid person when you see one. Our governor just vetoed a bill passed by our Pointy Headed Republican Legislature which would have significantly reduced regulation on dangerous fireworks in the state, allowing everyone access to explosives that are currently banned. Which reminds me of a story. When I first moved to the Twin Cities, I was told by people at the University that there was only one Saint Paul neighborhood to live in. All other neighborhoods were inadequate. The same exact people who told me that then later said things that confirmed that…

I think the creationists would rather just forget about Expelled

As I've already mentioned, the makers of the Expelled movie have gone bankrupt, and the movie itself is on the auction block…and a few people on the side of goodness, light, and knowledge are making a bid to buy it. There's some reasonable interest there: the Expelled crew did a lot of interviews, and only a small portion of them actually made it to the screen. Personally, I can tell you that they spent about three hours with me one afternoon, and maybe a minute of that total made it to the movie. I was actually surprised that that one bit was all that made the cut, and even it was absurdly…

Stanford Prison experiment posted on YouTube

The Stanford Prison experiment was a very famous -- now infamous -- experiment in social psychology that was conducted in 1971 by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, Stanford psychology professor. You probably remember him if you took a high school or college intro to psychology course because he made a very popular set of instructional videos on psychology that are often used in such courses. The experiment randomly assigned male undergraduate students to participate in a two week mock prison. They were randomly assigned to be guards and inmates. However, things went horribly wrong. The guards faced a…

The burden of addressing institutional problems.

I've been having a great email exchange with another blogger about the current flare-up of the battle over women in academic science, and he brought to my attention a bothersome feature of this New York Times interview with Dr. Ben A. Barres: Q. How does this bias [that men have an innate advantage in science over women] manifest itself? A. It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants. And then, and this is a huge part of the problem, they don't get the resources they need to be successful. Right now, what's fundamentally missing and…

Flock of Dodos

With all this talk about Expelled!, the creationist movie, I thought it was about time to resurrect the review I wrote many moons ago of Flock of Dodos by Randy Olson, along with some updated information. Flock of Dodos is a much better film than Expelled!, and explores the same issue, with somewhat different conclusions. So, for instance, if you are going to use one of them in a school or church to explain the ID/Evolution controversy, I recommend Flock. (That's a picture of Randy with some big birds at the Tribeca Film Festival.) Plus, since its been out a bit longer, Flock of Dodos is…

Top Science Stories of 2010: 6 Degrees of Microbial Separation

Thanks to Viktor at StrippedScience for letting me borrow his microbe New Year's cartoon! Happy New Year! I was catching up on my blog reader and came across the NatureNews top science stories of 2010. I was curious how many of these stories would have something to do with microbes... turns out quite a few do. Of the 12 science news-worthy events/discoveries selected, 3 were directly related: the claim of Arsenic-based life story, the new HIV drug Truvada (including viruses with microbes), and the synthetic genome from the Ventner institute. In the style of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon I…

Willful ignorance is not an effective argument against personal genomics

Camilla Long's appallingly bad op-ed piece about personal genomics in the Sunday Times is a true masterpiece of unsupported criticism, and an ode to willful ignorance. I'd encourage readers to discover their own favourite errors and misconceptions (there are plenty to go around), but here are some of the more glaring flaws: Direct-to-consumer genetic testing is not illegal in the UK. Long claims: Although most of these tests seem pretty harmless and are marketed as "educational" rather than "diagnostic", in the UK such over-the-counter kits are outlawed. She's completely wrong. In fact…

Boyd Haley finally does the right thing, but is it for the wrong reasons?

As you may have heard, the strike is over. That doesn't mean the crisis is over, nor does it necessarily mean that I will be staying with ScienceBlogs, but I view management's response as a positive move that may be enough to keep me here. Now management needs to lose the Google ads for quackery, and then we have something to talk about. It seems that every time our benevolent overlords kill one set of quack ads, they disappear for a short while, only to reappear in a different guise. I think they understand that. At least I hope so. In the meantime, I will speak no further of these issues,…

A Fish That Starts With "X": Children's books about the Sea

My understanding of what makes a good children's book changed dramatically about 15 months ago, when my baby daughter Clara Lynn was born. Before that time, I thought a good children's library would be a mix of Dr. Seuss, Dick and Jane, Sesame Street, and Winnie the Pooh. These were the stories I grew up with in the Seventies. I knew to beware of hypnotic modern characters like Barney and Elmo who could steal your child's mind and win their affections. I pictured myself reading the Hobbit from a rocking chair at nighttime, while my daughter stared lovingly from under a cozy blanket. All that…

Bush's Instincts

It's one of those tired cliches: Bush makes decisions with his irrational "gut instincts," instead of relying on "careful analysis". Paul Krugman, in today's Times, end his columns by repeating this cliche: Luckily, we've got good leadership for the coming storm: the White House is occupied by a man who's ideologically flexible, listens to a wide variety of views, and understands that policy has to be based on careful analysis, not gut instincts. Oh, wait. That's what an economist would say. Classic economics assumes that everybody - even George Bush - is capable of rationally analyzing a…

Around the Web: Research Works Act & Elsevier boycott

Note: this post is superseded by: Around the Web: Research Works Act, Elsevier boycott & FRPAA. This post has superseded my previous post which focused solely on the Research Works Act. I have added some coverage of the Elsevier boycott which at least partially grew out of opposition to the RWA. I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott as for the RWA. Some relevant resources: The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier (Boycott declaration site) Notes on the Research Works Act a wiki maintained by Peter Suber, hosted by the Berkman…

We Can 'Print Prosperity': On Ersatz Fiscal Constraints and Idle Real Resources

One of the annoying claims by the so-called fiscally responsible is that we can't "print prosperity"--that is, we can't deficit spend in order to help the real economy. It's derided as unrealistic and 'ideological' (whereas fiscal austerity is implied to be 'common sense'). Peter Cooper explains how it is fiscal austerity--the worship of deficit reduction--that elevates ideology over real-world consequences (italics mine): The phrase "print prosperity" is shorthand for the common message board accusation that MMT [modern monetary theory] ignores real resources and gets bamboozled by money…

Friday Fun: To Life, Death and Beyond: The Music of Magma -- Crowdfunding the Strangest Band of All Time

Magma, the strangest rock band of all time, needs you to help finance a documentary film about their life and work. So here goes. Up until a year or so ago I'd never heard of the French prog rock band Magma, or at least their music had never penetrated my consciousness. But last year while spending the month of May in Paris, I visited a bunch or record stores (and book stores and comic stores...) and noticed records and CDs by this band Magma prominently displayed, like I should know who they are or something. It took me a while to notice enough that I forced myself to dig a bit deeper and…

Not an "accident": Jose Alfredo Isagirrez-Mejia, 29 suffers fatal work-related injury at construction site in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

[Updated below (9/5/14)] Jose Alfredo Isagirrez-Mejia, 29, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, July 21 while working at a construction site in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The incident occurred on a $15 million project managed by Miller Construction Company. It’s the future site of a BMW/MINI dealership and service complex. Local10.com reports the following about the incident: a ceiling roof beam “came crashing down” three workers were lowering the beam in place with a crane. “Something went wrong and it struck all three workers.” The Sun-Sentinel reports: a carpenter who was an eye-…

CSAs, Deflation and Japan Relief

Sundry stuff on a busy day - and a day when everyone is transfixed by world events. First, my colleage at Dean's Corner has offered a good guide to high tech ways to donate money to Japan relief. There are 10,000 people in Japan who haven't eaten since Friday by the best estimation, and events are adding to the horror. If you want to help, these are some simple ways. Second, the always thoughtful Kurt Cobb has a great essay everyone should read about the deflationary impact of high oil prices: The logic is so simple it's hard to understand why smart people with advanced degrees can't see it…

Food Preservation and Storage Class Syllabus

This is the the time of year for most of us when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us. The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's overflowing in our gardens and markets to get you familiar with the basics of preserving the…

Light Rail and Obesity in one NC City

As we try to figure out how to curb an unhealthy increase in obesity, one of the factors under consideration is the built environment. Those who in live in places where few destinations are within walking/biking distance, public transit is limited, and the environment is unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists may find it harder to get the recommended amount of physical activity. Studying the built environment's effect on obesity is challenging, though. People who live in pedestrian-friendly areas with good public transit may be more likely to get enough activity and less likely to be obese…

Worker electrocuted, not trained, $29 billion firm should know better

This morning, I read MSHA's fatality report for the April 7 electrocution death of Tadd M. Bainum, 36.  Mr. Bainum was a supervisor, and was doing electrical-related work, but had NOT received appropriate training in electrical tasks.  MSHA's investigators noted: "Failure to train [him] in performing the task constituted more than ordinary negligence and is an unwarrantable failure to comply with a mandatory safety standard." Mr. Bainum's work-related death left behind his wife April and three children, Tristan, 12,  Holly, 6 and Lacy, 3.  At first glance, the dredging pits where Mr.…

In today's 'Guardian'

Web journals 'narrowing study' by Linda Nordling: Online publishing has sparked an explosion in the number of places where academics can showcase their work. Today, no field of study is too obscure to have its own dedicated title. But have platforms such as the Journal of Happiness Studies or Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy News made academic publishing more democratic? Far from it, says Alex Bentley, an anthropologist at Durham University. "We're just producing so much wordage that nobody has time to read anything. It makes academic publishing, and even science itself, a bit like trying…

Introducing: The Replacements!

Jay Rosen, on Twitter: "Hey @Boraz: Scientists (mainly, me) are close to announcing a branching off from the curmudgeons, a new species, almost. The Replacements." My response on Twitter: @jayrosen_nyu I am all ears! The Replacements! Sounds like a superhero comic strip, a movie one day! Jay, on FriendFeed: The Replacements are those who mistakenly believe that crowing for the 1,000 time that bloggers cannot replace journalists is an important and insightful act. Identifying feature: they make a show of disagreeing with the hordes of writers who think bloggers CAN replace (newspaper)…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Climate Change Does Double-whammy To Animals In Seasonal Environments: Plant-eating animals in highly seasonal environments, such as the Arctic, are struggling to locate nutritious food as a result of climate change, according to research that will be published in the 21 May 2008 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Led by Penn State Associate Professor of Biology Eric Post, the research, which focused on caribou, suggests that not only are these animals arriving at their breeding grounds too late in the season to enjoy the peak availability of food--the focus of…

Push vs. Pull strategies in science communication

Danielle Lee, who just defended her PhD last week (her defense was livestreamed and livetweeted and liveblogged - Congratulations!!!!!!!!!) wrote a very thought-provoking post this morning - Understanding push-pull market forces and promoting science to under-served audiences. Go read it now. If general public will not actively seek science content ('pull') than perhaps we can have the content come to them wherever they are ('push'). But people are scattered over gazillions of media places! How do we get to them everywhere? One answer is to try to get many people to contribute science-y…

KITP: Exoplanets RIsing

Well, I'm back at the Kavli Institute attending the Exoplanets Rising workshop. We have a full schedule of talks over the week, and I'll be intermittently blogging the events as we amble along. Bunch of interesting sounding talk on the schedule, and hopefully some interesting news and discoveries that we will hear about. We kick-off this morning with Mayor and Marcy, and the Fischer and Charbonneau after the break, looking forward to it. Not seen planets around M dwarfs with mass less than 0.3 solar masses, but that is likely a bias - lower mass dwarfs are fainter, duh. Talks will be online…