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ScienceOnline2010 session videos - Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything Part 4

Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything Saturday, January 16 at 10:15 - 11:20am E. Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything - Pal MD and Val Jones. Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications? Some preliminary reading can be found here.

ScienceOnline2010 session videos - Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything Part 2

ScienceOnline2010 session videos - Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything Part 1

so you know

Astrology is crap You can not buy a star name Yes, there really was a Big Bang

Tetrapod Zoology Book One is here at last

Earlier this year (July) my children's book on Mesozoic reptiles - Dinosaurs Life Size - appeared in the shops. People seem to like it (yikes, even if some of the 'life sized' animals are scaled wrong). July also saw the publication of Dorling Kindersley's Know It All (Baines 2010): I didn't write the whole book, just the section on prehistoric animals. Today I'm pleased to announce that my third book for 2010 - Tetrapod Zoology Book One (Naish 2010) - is finally available. Tetrapod Zoology Book One is a compilation of over 40 articles from Tet Zoo ver 1, and as such only includes articles…

Online social networking isn't for everyone

As we race headlong into a future full of opportunities for online social networking, as we try and build systems to engage students, scientists, librarians or others, we have to remember one thing. When we build these systems, we need to build them for everyone. Not just the coolest and most technophilic. We have to build for who our audience really is, not who we wish they would be. And sometimes we just have to recognize that not everyone will be interested in what we have to offer, even if they seem to fit our profile in other ways. Wayne Bivens-Tatum does a very good job of…

To those who do not like the democratization of knowledge

[Comic strip taken from Unshelved] The anti-technology curmudgeons are back. Not just worrying about technology in classrooms (for which Dave has a great response), but culture in general. Nice to see a couple of good responses to the doom-and-gloom crowd. First we: DIGITAL_NATIVES by Jonathan Imme: There used to be a time when we would be called 'nerds' or 'techies'. Strange people with a near-obsessive compulsion to embrace new technology, and who'd rather communicate with their friends online than offline. People for whom the Internet itself was the ultimate source of information for…

The Great Firewall of Collaboration

A fellow quantum computing researcher of mine recently joined FriendFeed. Along with another researcher we got involved in a discussion about a paper concerning a certain recent claimed "disproof of Bell's theorem." (arXiv:0904.4259. What it means to "disprove a theorem" like Bell's theorem is, however a subject for another comment section on a different blog.) But, and here is the interesting thing, this colleague then made a trip to China. And FriendFeed, apparently, is blocked by the great firewall of China, so he had to email us his comments to continue the conversation. Which got me…

Advancing and Promoting your Research on the Web

I received an email a couple of weeks ago from Daniel Cromer of the Hrenya Research Group located in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His group was interested in expanding their online presence and had stumbled up the presentation I'd given a couple of years ago on Academic Blogging: Promoting your Research on the Web. He asked me if I could explore those same ideas in a short presentation to the group. That was Monday. Sadly, I wasn't able to actually go to Colorado for the presentation -- it was all online using the…

More on the World Poker Tour Lawsuit

There is now a webpage devoted specifically to the lawsuit filed against the World Poker Tour by 7 of the top poker players in the world. You can find the text of the complaint here. I haven't had much of a chance to go over it yet, and I know next to nothing about antitrust law, but perhaps some of the legal eagles here can shed some light on the issue. At issue, essentially, is whether the WPT can require the players to sign away all rights to their own likeness in order to play in a WPT event, even if the WPT uses that likeness to promote something other than the tournament or the TV show…

From the Archives: Einstein: His life and universe by Walter Isaacson

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Einstein: His Life and Universe, is from March 24, 2008. ======= Walter Issacson's 2007 biography of Albert Einstein was one of the best reviewed books of that year, appearing on nearly all the year end lists of…

Online Culture IS The Culture

Online Culture IS The Culture View more documents from tim parsons.

Even more me

Yet another interview with PZ Myers from Pharyngula is online now.

Some Domestic Matters

This evening we have two topics to cover in the area of domestic engineering. The first has to do with shopping (for groceries) and the second has to do with dishwashers. First, and this will be brief, on the shopping for groceries: Grocery Shopping You know how each person goes up to the conveyor belt and puts their purchase items down, and perhaps places a plastic stick (provided by the store) behind your items (or if necessary in front as well) in order to separate the items that you are purchasing from those of other shoppers? Well, you're doin' it wrong!!!! Or at least, some of you…

Does Buying Local Matter?

A reader asked me to comment on this video critiquing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's challenge to Ontario consumers to spend ten more dollars a week on local, Ontario produced food. My first comment is that people who speak like affectless zombies probably should stick to the written word, rather than making videos, but that's more of an aesthetic critique. Beyond that, however, there is the tiny germ (if you can find it under the same old economist free market babble) of a real question - how much impact does switching our dollars into local foods and products actually have? Most of the…

If Atheists Ruled the World

Taken word for word from online fundamentalist forums(contains some graphic language).

Occupational Health News Roundup

Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a proposed rule that would make public much of the injury and illness data employers are already required to collect. Large employers (those with 250 or more employees) would be required to electronically submit their injury and illness records to OSHA each quarter. In certain industries with high injury and illness rates, establishments with 20 or more employees would have to submit summary data to OSHA on an annual basis. "OSHA plans to eventually post the data online, as encouraged by President Obama's Open…

Making sacrifices for our country

($1.93? Can you get them cheaper if you buy them in bulk at Costco or Walmart?)

Science Poem Manifesto

Earlier this year, I received a charming email from a pair of Helsinki-based artists and designers who work under the name of OK DO. OK DO is a socially-minded design think tank and online publication; they dug Universe and wanted to know if I'd contribute to a new publication and exhibition project they were working on. The project, Science Poems, was perfectly up my alley: a variety of articles and work loosely structured around the "poetry and multi-sensorial aesthetics of natural sciences rather than their functionality and logic." For the occasion, I wrote a short piece about the…

Moving the Therapist's Office Online

CNNâs Elizabeth Landau reported yesterday on new research suggesting that online psychotherapy is an effective way to treat depression. The original study, published August 22 in the Lancet by Dr. David Kessler and colleagues in the UK, examined the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) delivered by a therapist online in real time. When compared to usual care only, a combination of online CBT and usual care led to higher rates of recovery at follow-up eight months later. Despite logistical and policy issues â health insurance coverage of online therapy, legal questions about…

What are teachers for?

Just as I posted this clip about the way kids use blogs and social networks, David Warlick posted this intriguing analysis of the way kids use online technologies. Dave posted an interesting graph that shows that kids assess that they acquire various skills equally in school and in off-school online environments. What? Yes, there used to be a time when you went to school to learn A, B and C: facts, learning skills, social skills with peers, and then went home to learn skills D, E and F: how to deal with adults, perform acts of personal hygiene, and learn to do household chores. But today, the…

Online Mental Health Fair and Conference Call with the Experts Regarding Bipolar Disorder

tags: online mental health fair, bipolar disorder, manic-depressive illness, manic depression, Revolution Health It has come to my attention that Revolution Health is currently running an Online Mental Health Fair, with a special focus on reaching college students and their parents. College is a particularly challenging time for students struggling with depression or bipolar disorder because students' mood disorders are complicated by being away from home and family for the first time. Thus, Revolution Health's goal is both to raise awareness on college campuses and to help raise money for…

Gambling is Evil....Except When It Isn't

Tuesday's vote in the House on HR 4411, the bill that bans internet gambling nationwide, was supported, to no one's surprise, by those denizens of moral rectitude on the religious right. Agape Press reports on the strong support that "family" (read: anti-fun) organizations had for the bill, including Focus on the Family and Concerned Shrews Women for America. No doubt a sizable percentage of those in Congress who supported the legislation take a view similar to this: "Right now, we have enough problem and pathological gamblers to fill more than 214 NFL stadiums to capacity," Hills says. "…

Archaeology Magazine Jan/Feb

Blogging's been low what with many boxes to unpack and no broadband connection. But things are getting into shape at home. Hope I find the electric drill tonight so I can get some of the paintings up off the floor. Archaeology Magazine is a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America and so tends to concentrate on areas of the world where US archaeologists work. I recently got a complimentary subscription and received the Jan/Feb issue, whose cover story is a richly illustrated feature piece about Maya beauty ideals (abstract available on-line). My dentist was fascinated to see the…

eBay used as behavioral laboratory

This study from the University of Michigan used eBay to determine whether a seller's reputation helped them get higher prices: "People with good reputations are rewarded and people with no reputations are not trusted as well as people who have established reputations," said Paul Resnick, professor in the U-M School of Information and the study's principal author. The study is the first known randomized controlled look at the value of eBay reputations in the natural setting of actual eBay auctions. The findings showed that eBay's feedback system--the cornerstone of the online auction site--…

A little bit more shameless self-promotion in the service of an important message about Stanislaw Burzynski

As regular readers know, I was quite happy that Skeptical Inquirer (SI) agreed to publish articles by Bob Blaskiewicz and myself about the highly dubious cancer doctor in Houston known as Stanislaw Burzynski. Indeed, Bob and I have been busily doing our best to promote it, appearing on various podcasts, including Point of Inquiry and, most recently, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, where once again we've called on skeptics to help us put pressure on our elected officials to prevent Dr. Burzynski from continuing to take advantage of desperate cancer patients, many with incurable disease,…

Around the Web: Librarians & tenure, The gangs of academia, Women & the Internet and more

Do Librarians Need Tenure? Depends on Which Ones You Ask. The Hunt Library, Innovation, and Tenure Academic Freedom! Huh! What is It Good For? My Thoughts on Faculty Status for Academic Librarians How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang An Academic Cartel? Women and the Internet in Four Parts: Online and Offline Violence Towards Women; Context Collapse, Architecture, and Plows; Sexytime, Gender Roles, and Credit Where Due; Feminism's Twist Ending The Gendering of Technology Work Academic scattering We Are Not Hypnotized (rejecting the extremes wrt online ed) Libraries in the Time of MOOCs The…

Tatjana in NYTimes!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove. Or you can remind yourself by checking this, this, this, this and this. If you came to ScienceOnline09 (or followed virtually) you will remember that she co-moderated two sessions there: Open Access in the networked world: experience of developing and transition countries and How to paint your own blog images . Well, today, Tatjana is in New York Times! I hear from those who get the papers in hardcopy, that the article starts on the front page, but the part with the interview with Tatjana and her husband Doug is on…

Sullum on Internet Gambling Arrests

Our government has arrested yet another executive from an online gaming company, this time Peter Dicks, chairman of the board of Sportingbet, a British company. Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason.com, captured this whole situation perfectly a few weeks ago: If an executive of a U.S. media company were arrested in Beijing for violating a Chinese law against "subversive" online speech, or in Tehran for creating "indecent" Web content viewed by Iranians, Americans would ask what right these countries have to impose their illiberal policies on us. Sadly, our government is giving people in other…

Blogging on the Brain: 3/10

Recent highlights from the best in brain blogging: Online experiments at the Harvard Visual Cognition Lab! Less invasive brain-computer interfacing, for video games. Brain-computer interface implants: videos. A new weapon in the Israeli arsenal: the VIPER robot. The current state of the art in robotics, as reviewed by Cognitive Daily. Guiding pigeons with remote controls. Hunting by single-cell organisms: the slime mold. Relatively complex reasoning revealed in rats (improved! now links to the correct page). Mental representations in non-human animals: signs of animal intelligence? Evolving…

Is Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo A Sign of Failure?

Possibly, according to this piece in the New York Times. Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, pushed by Mr. Ballmer, was hostile. And during a conference call Friday with analysts and in a subsequent interview, he never once uttered the word "Google," referring to the Internet search giant that has humbled Microsoft only as "the leader" in the online world. Mr. Ballmer, 51, is a famously fierce competitor. To him, failure is never an option. "If we don't get it right at first, we'll just keep coming and coming and coming and coming," he said in an earlier interview. Microsoft's bid for…

Online Reputation Management

You may remember some time ago a brouhaha erupted when an upper Midwestern Blogger was told he had to erase a post that said something bad (yet truthful) about Cheri Yecke, who was at that time competing for the job of head of Florida Education. The company was a "scrubber" which promised to find bad things on the internet about a client, and get rid of them (the bad things, not the client) for a fee. My response to the company's efforts to scrub the Yecke is here: Arrrrg. Avast ye 'defenders' ... Well, not this sort of company has evolved (ha! evolution is real!) from "scrubber" to "…

A Shout Out for The Scientific Activist

The Scientific Activist received a shout out yesterday in the latest issue of the Ventura County Reporter in Sandra Sorenson's article stressing the continued importance of blogs and how they likely contributed to Time Magazine's recent Person of the Year announcement: However you view Time Magazine's decision to name every somewhat cognizant citizen "Person of the Year" a cop-out, flattering the deadline-burdened staff got something right: There is increasingly active dialog between the average citizen and the mainstream media. And it isn't always amicable.... But what of the blog, that…

Comments?...I Don't Have to Show You Any Stinkin' Comments!

One of the more interesting "problems" in Science 2.0 is the lack of commenting on online articles. In particular some journals now allow one to post comments about papers published in the journal. As this friendfeed conversation asks: Why people do not comment online articles? What is wrong with the online commenting system[s]? I think this is one of the central issues in Science 2.0. Or as Carl Zimmer commented on comments appearing at PLOS One a few years back: What I find striking, however, is how quiet it is over at PLOS One. Check out a few for yourself. My search turned up a lot of…

Darwin's Neglected Crabs

tags: Charles Darwin, crabs, crustaceans, University of Oxford, Oxford Museum of Natural History, online database Fiddler crabs are easily recognised by their distinctive asymmetric claws. This specimen was captured in May 1835 when the Beagle arrived in Mauritius. Image: Oxford University Museum of Natural History [larger view]. The University of Oxford Museum of Natural History has electronically catalogued Charles Darwin's crabs that had been collected by the famous naturalist while he was making his voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836. These crustaceans were…

This Week in the Journal of Previously Solved Problems

Over at the Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson complains about the uselessness of comments on journals: Comments in online scientific journals have been notoriously poor -- either too much material of uneven quality or too little discussion to amount to a hill of beans. All too often, commenting has to be shut down because internecine and tiresome debates break out, creating more noise than signal. The best comments are scholarly, and borrow extensively from the form of letters to the editor. After more than a decade and millions of blogs, it seems one main lesson practitioners are learning --…

The Wheels of Ethics Grind Slowly... Or Else

Inside Higher Ed has a report on a new frontier in administrative idiocy: After passing a new online test on ethics required of all state employees, [a] tenured professor in the English department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale received a notice from his university ethics officer and from the state inspector general that he was not in compliance with state ethics regulations, a failure that state officials said could result in punishment that included dismissal. The reason? He had completed the test too quickly. Yes, that's right. Professors were asked to read a bunch of…

"Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!"

What happens when about 80 people wearing blue shirts and khakis enter a Best Buy store in New York? Confusion.

Civility and/or Politeness at ScienceOnline2010

If you have been following sciency blogosphere, or my blog, or tweets about #scio10, or checked out the Program of the conference, you may have noticed that I have predicted that the "overarching theme" of the meeting will shift from last-year's focus on Power to this year's, hopefully, emphasis on Trust. Several sessions will, directly or indirectly, address the question of trust - who trusts whom, how and why: With no non-verbal clues available online (apart from an occasional smiley-face), one has to convey not just meaning, but also intent and mood, using only language. And intent and…

Debristling Psittacosaurus?

The skull of Psittacosaurus. From Osborn 1923. Despite the large amount of evidence that birds are the direct descendants of a group of theropod dinosaurs some researchers continue to protest the association, one of the most vocal opponents of the idea being Theagarten Lingham-Soliar. Working with Alan Feduccia and Xiaolin Wang (two other outspoken critics of the same topic), Lingham-Soliar published a paper last year proposing that the "protofeathers" on the fossil Sinosauropteryx were collagen fibers and not feathers at all. I didn't buy the hypothesis (see this summary for an excellent…

Water Bath Canning 101

Note: This is the first kind of canning you should try, and the most basic, and IMHO, most useful kind. It is definitely worth experimenting with when you've got an excess of produce, which many people do this time of year. If you don't have your own overproductive garden, perhaps you can offer to preserve some for a friend with a garden, in exchange for some food - and most farmers offer bulk prices if you can buy in quantity. Try shopping at the end of the day, when farmers don't really want to take the food home anyway! It is starting to be time to think about preserving food. Why…

#scio10 preparation: Things I like about having conversations online.

In the comments on my last post, a number of people made the suggestion that something about the nature of online interactions may encourage people to say things they would never say to someone's face, or to be more impulsive in their responses, or surf on waves of free-floating anger, or what have you. While this may sometimes be the case -- for some people, in some circumstances -- my initial reaction is that there are a lot of features of online conversations (on blogs or the comment threads following them, in online fora, etc.) that I find can make for better conversations than many that…

In Search of Online Excellence

In yet another sign of the growing respectability of the online world for communicating science, this year the National Academies have set up a new "online/Internet" category for their annual communication prize. Here's what they want: Entries original to the Web which published in English online in 2007 will be considered. Entries should include up to six online articles, hypertextual documents, podcasts, commentaries, etc., or any combination thereof, that constitute a formal series or that may have appeared individually on a topic or common theme. So if you haven't applied yet, now's your…

The world is ending, again

I'm sorry to have to mention this again, but there's a chance the world will end on Wednesday. The same guy with the website that was designed to make you vomit from your eye sockets, who has been predicting the imminent end of the world over and over again, is predicting the apocalypse again. Ho hum. Anyway, I think he's been stung by his repeated failures, and this time he's imbedded his prediction in a conditional. Smart move. Expect further sliding deadlines for the apocalypse, all coupled to improbable pre-conditions. For instance, if a yeti starts nesting in my armpit hair, you should…

Friday Fun: Mobile phone technology set to revolutionise things we already do quite easily

After a week like this, I think we all need something a little on the lighter side. Mobile phone technology set to revolutionise things we already do quite easily One of the biggest launches at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the I-open; an app which allows you to open your front door by just twisting your phone as if it was a door handle. ‘This is breakthrough technology’, said marketing manager Chris Davies, ‘the phone’s action even works with a gloved hand which is a big advantage when compared to the friction deficit presented by traditional door handles if used with…

Oil on troubled waters

There's a lot of concern about the environmental effects of drilling for oil off the US coast, but I don't buy it. Yes, I know it won't produce any meaningful amount of oil, ever, and no oil at all for years. But that's a technicality. Politically it's a compelling idea and even though it won't do any good, what's the harm? Drilling for oil in coastal marine environments is perfectly safe. Experts from the oil and gas industry have said this is true and who would know better? In fact, who has more experience with oil on the high seas? These guys have been shipping oil on the world's oceans…

Are we Press?

Hsien reports that the CEO of b5media (organization that hosts her blog) left a comment on Panda's Thumb (why not on her blog which is, after all, a b5media blog?) in which he states that: All it takes for us to issue bloggers accreditation is that we - are you ready for this? - issue them press badges and register those badges with one of the two dozen journalist associations in north america. That's not how it sounds from what the AAAS person said, but OK, we'll see how it all develops. So, if I want to get a paper that is under the embargo in order to have sufficient time to read it and…

Download Dawkins' God Delusion In Arabic For Free

Bassam Al-Baghdady (@Al_Baghdady on Twitter) is a Swedish film writer. He's translated Richard Dawkins' 2006 best-seller The God Delusion into Arabic. Bassam tells me the file may be disseminated freely, so go ahead and download Dawkins' God Delusion in Arabic for free! وهم الاله بقلم ريتشارد دوكنز. Two disclaimers, though. 1. Despite numerous contact efforts over many weeks, I haven't received any response from Richard Dawkins or his staff when I've asked for permission to put the book up for download. The reason that I am going ahead anyway is that there is no official Arabic translation of…

A Message from the Chair

The message is: "I have a chair!" SteelyKid's new chair is a kid-sized black fake-leather armchair from Target. We originally set out looking for a kid-sized table and chair set that she could use to draw on, but the only ones on offer at Babysaurus were chintzy particle board things with Disney characters all over them, and we're trying to limit our consumption of both of those. The armchair is kind of silly, but she was too cute climbing in and out of it for me not to buy it. She's talking more and more these days, and has started to pick up adult hand gestures. Here she is explaining to…

Vertical Agitation

As part of an ideas series for 2010 at The Tyee, I wrote a piece on vertical agitation -- the idea that to make a real difference, you need to go straight to the top. Here are the first two paragraphs: People who buy green products can apparently more easily justify subsequent greed, lying and stealing. A study, released earlier this year by researchers from the University of Toronto, showed that participants who were exposed to green products in a computer-simulated grocery store acted more generously in experiments that followed, but that participants who actually purchased green products…

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