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Looting the Treasury

That graphic is only a teaser, it is only peripherally related to theis post, and is not scientifically valid.  Still, it is nice to see.  It is from an article on msnbc.com, href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10561966/">Spying, the Constitution -- and the 'I-word'.  The article is from 2005.  It used to link to an online poll.  The link in the article is gone, but href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904">the poll is still live.  Every once and a while some pro-impeachment citizen links to it, so the results have gotten wildly skewed.   This post is about an awful thing, that…

Doushantuo embryos dethroned?

Almost ten years ago, there was a spectacular fossil discovery in China: microfossils, tiny organisms preserved by phosphatization, that revealed amazing levels of fine detail. These specimens were identified as early animal embryos on the basis of a number of properties. The cells were dimpled and shaped by adjoining cells, suggesting a flexible membrane—not a cell wall. This rules out algae, fungi, and plants. The number of cells within each specimen was usually a power of 2. This is something we typically see in cleaving embryos, the sequence from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 cells. They were…

Birds in the News 105

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Song sparrow, Melospiza melodia. Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU. [larger size]. Birds in Science Dinosaurs like Velociraptors had one of the most efficient respiratory systems of all animals, similar to that of modern diving birds like penguins, fossil evidence shows. The bipedal meat-eaters, the therapods, had air sacs ventilated by tiny bones that moved the ribcage up and down. "Finding these structures in modern birds and their extinct dinosaur ancestors suggests that these running dinosaurs had an efficient respiratory…

There's just one of me. As far as I know, anyway...

It's been a while since I've posted a meme here, but I was recently tagged by Dr. Vector and I simply must continue this one. Indeed, I've been hit with the Writing Meme, which says that I should; 1. List 3 writing tips 2.Tag 3 people whose writing style you admire. When Matt tagged me he wrote "I want to know how he writes so damn much all the time. It's embarrassing!" so I'll use that as a starting point; 1. Coming up with little gimmicks like "Photo of the Day" or "Osteometric Point of the Day" help to keep me consistent. (I nearly wrote "help to keep my regular," but I don't want to…

The Friday Fermentable: New Zealand's Central Otago Region, by Erleichda

My colleague and guest wine blogger, Erleichda, wrote previously on his birthday trip to New Zealand's wine destinations. I accidentally posted his writings in reverse, with his description of wines of the Marlborough district here. Below was intended to be the first of the two columns. Another Wine Escapade: New Zealand's Central Otago Region by Erleichda Having reached another even decade of aging, I decided to celebrate by visiting a destination I had wanted to experience, New Zealand (NZ). (I could have chosen Tahiti, but I'm saving that one for when the prospect of climbing onto…

Chemistry: on the internet or in cyberspace?

I'm at a workshop on eChemistry today, and we were asked to prepare position statements. I'm not going to blog the conference - it's a private thing - but figured I would post my position statement here. We were asked to answer some questions. I chose to answer this one: "do you assess the potential of new web-based communication models in Chemistry, i.e. their benefits or liabilities, their transformational power, and their chance of success?" Full text is after the jump. A good place to start is the transformation of scholarly communication from "using the internet" to "existing in…

Ya burnt! 12-year-old Marco Arturo responds to attacks by antivaccine bloggers

Last week, I noted with great approval how a 12-year-old boy named Marco Arturo made a pro-vaccine video that was short, simple, and effective. Even better, it was as Insolent as anything Orac could expect to manage, making it that much more delicious. Indeed, I can’t resist including it again for those of you who haven’t seen it yet: This video went viral, and, not surprisingly, antivaccine activists, particularly one antivaccine blogger, were not pleased. Oh, no. Not pleased at all. In response to Arturo’s video, he received a fair amount of abuse online. One blogger in particular, the…

A truly tiny Cretaceous theropod... from England?

Steve Sweetman and I have just published a paper on a new maniraptoran theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wealden Supergroup of East Sussex, England (Naish & Sweetman 2011). As you might know if you're a regular reader, much of my technical work has been devoted to Wealden theropods and I publish papers on them fairly regularly (recent articles: Benson et al. (2009), Naish (2010); see links below). I still have yet to publish one of my most significant contributions - the monographic description of the tyrannosauroid Eotyrannus lengi (the follow-up to the rushed and…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Kerstin Hoppenhaus

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 Kerstin Hoppenhaus from Germany 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 (…

The Need for Health and Biomedical Science Education Programs Aimed at Grades K–12 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Recent reconfiguration of federal funding for STEM education has resulted in important programs at the NIH losing their funding. Below is information on Health and Biomedical Science Education Programs Aimed at Grades K–12 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). _________________________________ In the proposed FY 2014 budget, President Obama has set a policy that all STEM education funding be consolidated into three institutions, the NSF for graduate and undergraduate training, the Dept. of Education for K-12 STEM and the Smithsonian for informal education. Justification for this…

John Lott's online book reviews

This is an annotated list of John Lott's on line reviews at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble. Most of his reviews were posted anonymously or under a false name, and he used this anonymity to post many five-star reviews of his own books and to pan rival books. When you post a review at Amazon.com, you can choose to post it anonymously (in which case it is attributed to "A reader"), or under a pseudonym that you choose. Lott posted some his reviews using pseudonyms: maximcl and href="#sherwinrl">sherwinrl, the names of two of his children and washingtonian2 and href="#maryrosh"…

Could Rationing Be Made Palatable?

The realities of climate change and energy depletion mean that at some point, we will encounter situations where there is not enough of an energy resource or one of the things it enables - whether food or transport or whatever, to go around. In fact, eventually we will enounter many of these shortages. Whether they arise initially from a situation in which there are actual shortages or whether the shortages are structural problems of transport or caused by inequity and dishonesty almost doesn't matter - we are going to run bang up against problems of access to resources. When that happens,…

The Friday Fermentable: Mediterranean and Nearby Island Wines, by Erleichda

Recent Wine Experiences - Mediterranean (and nearby) Island Wines by Erleichda Sweetpea and I enjoy (gentle) hiking vacations, and we share this fondness with a small group of other likeminded hiker friends. I attempt to steer our selected destinations to places where grapes grow, and this has brought us, so far, to Sicily and the Greek islands. So when the theme for the latest gathering of Jim's Disciples were wines of the Mediterranean and nearby islands, I was excited by the opportunity to explore some wines not heretofore tasted, and whose origins might provide the basis for future…

Blog Carnivals And The Future Of Journalism

This June 01, 2005 post from Science And Politics has been reposted (with mild edits) at several different places by me and others, including on June 01, 2005 on Idea Consultants and on June 10, 2005 on DailyKos. This post, in some way, turned me into some kind of carnival "guru".... What is a blog carnival? A blog carnival is a blog-post that contains links to posts on other blogs. How does that differ from a linkfest, or for that matter from most of the stuff that early blogs (and many blogs today) routinely did? In the early days of blogs, there was no original content - blogs WERE…

Saturday Sermon: On the Harms of Rising Income Inequality

From former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich: It's about time a presidential budget unequivocally redistributed income from the very rich to the middle class and poor. The incomes of the top one percent have soared for 30 years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, the top-earning one percent of Americans took home eight percent of total income in the 1970s; as recently as 1980, they took home nine percent. After that, total income became more and more concentrated at the top. By 2007, the top one percent took home…

BirdNote Radio Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary

tags: education, public outreach, BirdNote Radio Program, Bird Note, birding, Bird Watching, birds, nature, environment, conservation, NPR, National Public Radio, Seattle Audubon Society, mp3 Are you trapped on a crowded subway or in a traffic jam of honking, stinking cars? If so, you might be interested to know that you can transport yourself to a different world, a cool green space where you can feel the earth breathe in time to the music of birds. Your personal vehicle is BirdNote, a 2-minute radio program about birds and nature. "We want to help people connect to the natural world and…

Energy, Food, Revolution - an Inextricable Link

If you want to see it in color, all you have to do is google image up a history of the price of oil and superimpose it on the price of various staple crops. Take a look at oil and then rice, soybeans, wheat and corn. Look closely at 2008, and at the present. I will put up a visual presentation of this material myself later this week, but if you'd like to see it sooner, it is right there to look at, no great challenge. What we see is fairly simple - and incredibly complicated. The intertwining of markets, of energy and food, tied by biofuel production and national policies, and the fact…

The Water Fountain

Like everyone in the rich world, I carry bottles of water with me everywhere I go. Were someone from the past to spot me, they'd be stunned by the sight of all the people, clearly headed on long treks into the uninhabited jungle, carrying water lest they die of dehydration. Because, after all, in historical terms, at least in the US, one carries a canteen or other source of water while camping or otherwise engaged in a trek to uncertain, undeveloped lands. In populated areas, folks 30 or 40 years ago, would have told a thirsty person - "wait until we get to the water fountain." You remember…

Do sponges have circadian clocks?

Much of the biological research is done in a handful of model organisms. Important studies in organisms that can help us better understand the evolutionary relationships on a large scale tend to be hidden far away from the limelight of press releases and big journals. Here's one example (March 30, 2006): -------------------------------------------------- Short answer: nobody knows. Nobody has looked yet. Most of the research in biology is, quite rightfully, performed in just a handful of standard models. A sponge is not a standard animal lab model. Should one expect sponges to have…

Do sponges have circadian clocks?

Much of the biological research is done in a handful of model organisms. Important studies in organisms that can help us better understand the evolutionary relationships on a large scale tend to be hidden far away from the limelight of press releases and big journals. Here's one example (March 30, 2006): -------------------------------------------------- Short answer: nobody knows. Nobody has looked yet. Most of the research in biology is, quite rightfully, performed in just a handful of standard models. A sponge is not a standard animal lab model. Should one expect sponges to have…

Resistance to Science and Overthinking

Everybody's abuzz about the article by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg (the link goes to a reprint at Edge.org; you can find an illicit PDF of the Science article if you poke around a little) about research into why people don't automatically believe scientific explanations. From the article: The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The last several decades of developmental psychology has made it abundantly clear that humans do not start off as "blank slates." Rather, even one year-olds possess a rich…

Maryland-Duke

It's been an absurdly good hoops week at Chateau Steelypips-- Syracuse won a big one to take over the (admittedly meaningless) #1 spot in the polls, and now Maryland beat Duke in a tough game to move into a tie for the top spot in the (admittedly down) ACC. If both Duke (home to UNC) and Maryland (at UVA) win this weekend, they'll split the regular-season not-a-title. Go Tar Heels! Kind of a weird game. It was Senior Night for Greivis Vasquez, Eric Hayes, and Landon Milbourne, which is always a risky business-- especially for a player as volatile as Vasquez. They came out all fired up, with…

Coyne in DC

Jerry Coyne is is on tour for his new book Fact Versus Faith: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. That title's a little vague. What do you suppose the book's about? It turns out that he was making a stop in Washington DC. Since that's not so far from my digs in Harrisonburg, I decided to go. Then again, much as I love Jerry, DC is far enough so that I wouldn't make the drive just to see him. So I found someone to proctor the exam I was giving in my summer course, and decided to make a whole day of it. Of course, since this is a post about Jerry Coyne, I feel honor bound to show…

Building bridges with HIV-1 Deniers

From building bridges with anti-vaxers to building bridges with animal liberation maniacs, Chris Mooneys 'building bridges' plan is revolutionizing the way scientists interact with insane people! Its even changing the playing field with HIV-1 Deniers. Long-time readers know I have relatively little patience with HIV-1 Deniers. Everyone involved with HIV Denial, from the 'professional scientists' to the 'Average Joe snake-oil salesman' are complete and utter morons. So, frankly, they are only good for one thing: lulz. So while I like writing about the latest HIV-1 findings on ERV, I rarely…

November Basketball: SU-Cal, UNC-OSU

Kate and I went to the two games of the "semifinals" of the 2K Sports Classic Supporting Coaches vs. Cancer, Your Name Here for a Prince pre-season "tournament" last night (the scare quotes are because the four teams playing last night were guaranteed to be playing last night, regardless of what happened in the earlier "rounds"). We were in section 329 of Madison Square Garden, which aren't great seats in an absolute sense, but are pretty darn good for a game-day impulse buy. Not that there was any trouble getting seats-- the lower levels were maybe 3/4 full. The first game saw Syracuse beat…

Sean Wilson: Pop-the-Cap leader and Fullsteam Brewery founder named Tar Heel of the Week

I should really save this new item for next week's Friday Fermentable but I was too excited walking back from picking up the NYT and local fishwrapper from the cold, rainy driveway this morning. Beer enthusiast, brewer, and public policy wiz, Sean Wilson, is staring back at me on the front page of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer as "Tar Heel of the Week," in a Josh Shaffer article entitled, "Brewer to blend mad science, local flavor." Each week, the N&O recognizes a citizen making substantial and often unique contributions to the state's economy, community, cultural patina, or all…

One month inside the Empire...

About a month ago, I migrated from the safe, stable climate of Wordpress to the unknown but promising habitat of ScienceBlogs. With four weeks having flown by, this seems like a good a point as any to have a bit of a navel-gazing retrospective about what's changed since the move. And the answer is... erm, not that much, at least not on a qualitative level. Take a look at the posts I've written in the old and new versions of the site and I think you'll find that there's remarkably little difference in the topics covered or the style of writing. It's really important that people realise that…

An Odious Mixture

Mark Twain once discovered to his horror that his story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" had been hideously translated into French. He went so far as to publish the original story, the translation, and his own retranslation of the French back to English to show just how badly it had been abused. "I claim that I never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life," he declared. I was reminded of Twain's experience when a reader drew my attention to a creationist attack published yeserday against an article I recently wrote for National Geographic. It…

The $83,000 question: how affordable is health insurance?

One of the alleged facts that President Bush loves to point at when he's trying to justify his veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) expansion is that the new bill would have allowed New York to enroll children from families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that works out to an annual income of about $83,000. The President and his staff appear to find $83,000 to be a very impressive number. It's certainly one that they talk about a heck of a lot - as far as I can tell, everyone from the White House who has said anything about the…

David Kirby and sour grapes

It's always a shame to see a once confident man reduced to whining. Well, maybe not always. Sometimes it's immensely satisfying, particularly when that man happens to be David Kirby, who, through his book Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, was one of the two men most responsible for publicizing the pseudoscientific scare-mongering that claims that mercury in thimerosal, the preservative that was until late 2002 used in childhood vaccines, causes autism. (The other was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) Unfortunately for poor ol' David, time and science…

Would you eat wormy sweet corn?

A 2003 paper in the British Food Journal by Powell et al described an experiment that found that, given a choice between genetically modified sweet corn and the regular kind, consumers preferred to buy the GM corn by a factor of 3 to 2. However, Stuart Laidlaw reported that the experiment was flawed -- there was a sign above the regular sweet corn saying "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?", while the corresponding sign over the GM corn said "Here's What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn". The experiment shows that consumers prefer GM corn to wormy corn, but they may well prefer regular…

To every flu there is a season. But why?

One of the enduring scientific mysteries about influenza is what causes its marked seasonal pattern. A new paper in the Journal of Virology provides a useful mini-review of the many theories. [PubMed says its free online, but it seems to be behind a subscription firewall; maybe that will change. Here's the cite: Lofgren E, Fefferman NH, Naumov YN, Gorski J, Naumova EN., "Influenza seasonality: underlying causes and modeling theories", J Virol. 2007 Jun;81(11):5429-36. I have a print copy only.] The most surprising thing to most people who don't follow this is that this is still a mystery. We'…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Corkscrewing

You really think I am going to put this above the fold? No way - you have to click: Today's lesson is on the reproductive anatomy of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), which probably applies to the wild species in the pig family as well. Although we may reflexively think about invertebrates when pondering diversity of copulatory organs, mammals are not too bad in that department either. After all, the sperm is delivered in some species into the vagina (e.g., dog), in others into the cervix (e.g., pig) and in yet others into the uterus (e.g., horse), so different strategies are needed…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Multitasking Is No Problem, But Double Talk Overwhelms Us: We can listen to a car radio and drive while keeping an eye on changing traffic conditions -- separate complex tasks completed without much trouble. But if two people are talking to us at the same time, our perceptual frequencies get jammed. Tarantulas Produce Silk From Their Feet: Researchers have found for the first time that tarantulas can produce silk from their feet as well as their spinnerets, a discovery with profound implications for why spiders began to spin silk in the first place. Dinosaurs' Climate Shifted Too, Reports…

Turn your blog archives into a book (and sell it)

Some ideas from November 17, 2005: So, you've been writing a blog for quite some time now. You are proud of some of your work. You are particularly proud of some of your old stuff, now burried deep in the archives never to be seen again. Who reads archives, after all? You don't want to repeat yourself over and over again, and have never felt at ease with constantly linking back to your old posts (I never had such qualms). So, what can you do to make your old stuff more accessible and available? Well, now you can turn it into a book form - yup, the real, physical book - and sell it through…

OSHA Secrecy? Chemical Safety Board Secrecy?

The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward posted two items yesterday at Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog concerning records related to the August 2008 explosion at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, WV that killed two workers  (previous posts here, here, here, here), and OSHA's and CSB's reticence in making certain records available to the public.  In OSHA Secrecy? Ward describes his attempt to obtain a copy of Bayer CropScience "notice of content."  This is the official communication sent to OSHA by the company indicating that they are challenging the OSHA citations.  The…

Lithgow mega-cat footage goes live

Those of you interested in the whole Australian mega-cats issue may recall my discussion of the Lithgow footage, filmed in 2001 by Gail Pound and her husband Wayne on their camcorder. I first saw the footage at a 2006 conference where it was shown and discussed by Australian cryptozoologist Paul Cropper... To remind you, here is what I said about the footage in that previous blog post... We start with a daytime shot of a perfectly normal grey domestic cat, sat on a shrub-covered hillside near a stand of trees. Then the camera pans to the right. From behind the trees slowly emerges a big…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Corkscrewing

You really think I am going to put this above the fold? No way - you have to click (First posted on July 7, 2006): Today's lesson is on the reproductive anatomy of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), which probably applies to the wild species in the pig family as well. Although we may reflexively think about invertebrates when pondering diversity of copulatory organs, mammals are not too bad in that department either. After all, the sperm is delivered in some species into the vagina (e.g., dog), in others into the cervix (e.g., pig) and in yet others into the uterus (e.g., horse), so…

What's an office for?

You build a mine where the ore is. And facilities right next to the mine, to extract the metals from it. And a factory next to it that turns the raw metal into parts and objects. And a train station or a port next to it, so you can move the objects to the stores you built where the people are. And you also build a town where all your employees will live. That's how it's always been done. You cannot work the land, without living on it and getting your boots muddy. If you are hoarding something valuable, you need to hire night-guards who will actually show up at work. I understand, there…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Corkscrewing

You really think I am going to put this above the fold? No way - you have to click (First posted on July 7, 2006): Today's lesson is on the reproductive anatomy of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), which probably applies to the wild species in the pig family as well. Although we may reflexively think about invertebrates when pondering diversity of copulatory organs, mammals are not too bad in that department either. After all, the sperm is delivered in some species into the vagina (e.g., dog), in others into the cervix (e.g., pig) and in yet others into the uterus (e.g., horse), so…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Corkscrewing

You really think I am going to put this above the fold? No way - you have to click (First posted on July 7, 2006): Today's lesson is on the reproductive anatomy of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), which probably applies to the wild species in the pig family as well. Although we may reflexively think about invertebrates when pondering diversity of copulatory organs, mammals are not too bad in that department either. After all, the sperm is delivered in some species into the vagina (e.g., dog), in others into the cervix (e.g., pig) and in yet others into the uterus (e.g., horse), so…

October Pieces Of My Mind

From Current Archaeology #284: "The 'Great Hall' was entirely excavated in 2012, and represents one of the largest structures of its type". Cf. "Dr. Rundkvist belongs to one of the handsomest archaeologists in his generation." The reason that there are no Neanderthal sites in Sweden is apparently that the Romans never invaded the area. Guy two seats from me on plane was clearly very drunk and very afraid of flying. Complained loudly and moronically to his wife for entire hour-long flight. Sounded like mentally retarded 9-y-o. A character failing of mine is that when confronted with…

I get email

Oh, no! Neal's comments haven't been getting through, so he sent me a friendly email message to let me know. (By the way, the filters have been acting up in a horrible way lately — about 10% of the comments have been held up for moderation when they shouldn't, and it's irritating the heck out of me. I go in and approve broad swathes of arrested comments whenever I can, but it means sometimes your words get held up unnecessarily long.) Warning: you might find these comments inoffensive if you are a longshoreman or attended Catholic school. Otherwise, watch out. Some of you know Neal by…

The secret inner workings of PLoS ONE revealed

I have obtained a document that describes the secret, inner workings of the on line publication PLoS ONE. The document also exposes future plans for the enterprise. The link is below the fold. The link for the PDF of the document is here. Don't tell anyone where you got it. From the Abstract, which I have decoded for you: PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed Open Access academic journal published by the Public Library of Science, was founded in 2006 with the intent of reevaluating many of the aspects of the scholarly journal. As a result, PLoS ONE has taken elements of the traditional publishing…

2008: The Year in Ants

Another year passes.  The economy is in the toilet.  Violence spreads in the middle east.  In these trying times, one question must weigh on the minds of concerned citizens: "What's happening in world of ant science?" Of course.  Here are the myrmecological highlights of 2008: The Demise of the Standard Ant.  That is the title of a review by Juergen Heinze, but the idea that our basic conception of how ant colonies work is overly simplistic receives plenty of additional support from the research community.   For instance, Smith et al document the complexity of caste determination in…

Motor imagery enhances object recognition

THOUGHTS and actions are intimately linked, and the mere thought of an action is much like actually performing it. The brain prepares for an action by generating a motor simulation of it, praticising its execution of the movements by going through the motions invisibly. Seeing a manipulable object such as a tool, for example, automatically triggers a simulation of using it - a mental image of reaching out and grasping it with the hand that is nearest to the handle.   Motor simulations and movements are known to influence thought processes. Magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex influences…

The mirror movement mutation

MIRROR movements are involuntary movements that mimic, and occur simultaneously with, voluntary movements on the opposite side of the body. The movements are known to occur because of a failure in communication between the two sides of the nervous system. They are thought to be normal during infancy and early childhood, but usually diminish with age and disappear altogether by the age of 10, following maturation of the corpus callosum, the massive bundle of nerve fibres connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain. A large genetic study published online in the journal Science now…

Harvey Cushing photo journal

Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) is considered to be the father of modern neurological surgery. In the early part of the 20th century, he developed basic techniques and instruments for operating on the brain and, as a result, founded the discipline as a distinct surgical speciality. Before Cushing began his career, brain tumours were considered to be inoperable, and the mortality rate for any surgical procedure which involved opening the skull was around 90%. Early in his career, Cushing dramatically reduced the mortality rate for neurosurgery to less than 10%, and by the time of his retirement in…

Librarian Basics: The Reference Interview

This is the first in a series discussing things that librarians do.  Stephanie Willen Brown pointed me to this hilarious video from UT Arlington. Actually, the other librarian's reference interview isn't the model of perfection, either, but we'll talk about that. The purpose of a reference interview is for the librarian to understand the patron's information need - what information will be useful to them to resolve a problem or learn about something or whatever.  When done right, the patron can go from a sort of general unease (anomalous state of knowledge[1]) to information in hand/on…

New site for young women who love science

I sporadically get press releases from organizations trying to promote themselves to our readers. This time, I'm actually going to manage to post it in a timely fashion. The Feminist Press with IBM have just launched UnderTheMicroscope.com, a new site to involve young women in science and to encourage them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The site is part of the Women Writing Science, a project initiated by The Feminist Press at the City University of New York and funded by the National Science Foundation. The site features personal stories of women scientists…