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The uncertainty of uncertainty

There is a paper by Roe and Baker out in Nature Science arguing that Both models and observations yield broad probability distributions for long-term increases in global mean temperature expected from the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, with small but finite probabilities of very large increases. We show that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system. Predictably enough it will get misinterpreted, and indeed Nature itself leads the field in doing so. See-also Grauniad. For a general take, you'll want to…

Expelled redux? Creationists Misrepresent Historians

From the NCSE: Three historians of science are unhappy about their treatment in a creationist movie about Darwin, as they explain in a note in the July 2009 Newsletter of the History of Science Society. Peter Bowler, Janet Browne, and Sandra Herbert write, "We have recently been featured in a documentary film, 'The Voyage that Shook the World,' produced by Fathom Media of Australia and directed by Stephen Murray of Synergy Films, New Zealand. We were led to believe that the movie was being made to be shown as an educational film on Australian broadcast television and possibly elsewhere.…

Cool scientists, #2

Id like to take a minute to expand upon my post from yesterday-- What I find odd about 'Science Rock Stars' is the way scientists and rock stars were awkwardly mashed together. Like mixing peanut butter and Twizzlers. They are both good independently, but unless youve got a real, obvious reason to mush them together, its weird. I think it would make more sense, if one was deeply concerned about coolness, to utilize innate 'cool' aspects of scientists lives. As many pointed out in the comments, it would make more sense to interview scientists who were actual rock stars. Or if music was…

ATTN MIT kids! How to communicate science

You laugh, you lose: Learn to better communicate your research to non-scientists at the Workshop on Communicating Science & Engineering with Chris Mooney When: May 24, 2010-9am-1pm. Lunch will be provided. Where: MIT- Room/Bldg TBA Why: These days, amid ongoing media controversies over climate change, the teaching of evolution, the safety of vaccines, and many other scientific topics, researchers are increasingly asking themselves questions like these: Should I be doing more to communicate about my work to the public? And if so, how should I go about preparing for media encounters--and…

Just an observation.

DRAMA-LLAMA-DING-DONG! Just an observation. Move along, unless youre bored on a Sunday afternoon. So you all know how I 'debated' Charles Jackson a few months ago? Like over 9,000 hours of presentation and Q&A? Well, I answered a lot more Qs after the Q&A, after we had officially 'stopped'. A nice young man came up, a little sheepishly, and as delicately as he could, asked me how I could be 'good' without his God. He was very concerned that this question might offend me, and kept gushing about how nice I was and such, so I was happy to give him a nice answer, and not the usual '…

What have you got against nuclear power, anyway?

Sooner or later, at least one member of the audience that has turned out to see me present Al Gore's climate change slide show wants to know why I haven't included nuclear power in the list of technologies that can help cut our carbon emissions. The question is usually put by the likes of a retired engineer who actually understands the physics and technical aspects of nuclear power. I have to admit that I don't welcome the question, because it tends to lead to a drawn-out debate at what is already a longer evening that most attendees bargained for. But I do have an answer: time. I've written…

Technologically conservative young scholars – you’re surprised, really?

At the PSP Pre-Conference (see my notes), Dr. Harley of the Higher Education in the Digital Age program reported being surprised by their finding that young scholars were unwilling or unlikely to experiment with new scholarly communication (tools/practices/channels). There was a question from the audience that showed the person's disbelief of this finding. No matter how many times this myth is debunked, it remains firmly entrenched. Here are some variations on it: when generation {x,y, millennial, etc} gets in {university, grad school, the workplace}, {collaboration, communication, search…

"Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size

I've been deemed a pusher, and that's a good thing. The accuser is Colin Schultz, a busy, curious, and inquisitive young journalist who awarded a story of mine his first annual prize for "push" science journalism. First of all let me say I'm pleased, mainly because the story, " A Depression Switch?", about neurologist Helen Mayberg's experiment using deep brain stimulation to treat depression, is one of the most fascinating, enthralling, and rewarding I've ever worked on. But what is this push journalism business? Push science journalism, says Colin, is science writing that…

I've never been very good at hiding

"I am not a pretty girl - that is not what I do." Ani DiFranco A few weeks ago, I received a facebook message. It was from a male admirer of my blog (and his fiancée, coincidentally). In it, he said "You are GORGEOUS, and your tits look absolutely incredible." I froze. I know it was meant as a compliment, but it made me really uncomfortable. It was a sentiment that was much more muted in other comments I'd gotten. You know, ones like "wow, you're an amazing writer AND you're hot?" or "who would have thought a pretty girl could be so good at science?"Of course, if you point out to any of…

The annals of "I'm not antivaccine," part 15: California SB 277, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the vaccine "holocaust"

Later today, I'll be on my way to New York City to take part in the Science-Based Medicine portion of NECSS. I'm very much looking forward to it, not the least because I haven't been to New York in five years but even more so because I look forward to meeting up with the rest of the SBM crew and those interested in science and skepticism and trying, in my small way, to impart some little bit of what I've learned over the years about quackery, pseudoscience, and how to counter them. As a result, blogging might be more sporadic than usual for a few days. I mean, I haven't even quite finished my…

Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy

Just over a year ago, I joined fellow science bloggers Shelley Batts (Of Two Minds) and Tara Smith (Aetiology) in setting out to catalogue the accomplishments--and pitfalls--of the scientific blogosphere and to explain why people should pay attention. In a sense, we wanted to say "We are the science bloggers; hear us roar!" And, in order to make our case, we drew from the collective experience of our fellow science bloggers, far and wide, asking how blogging had affected their work, their careers, and their lives--both positively and negatively. The results were astounding. Across the…

Eric Merola apparently doesn't like what Orac writes about Stanislaw Burzynski

As our great Lord Draconis Zeneca promises, besides the fantasies of filthy lucre in the minds of our opponents, there are other rewards to being one of his shills and minions besides getting to blog to my heart's content about the pseudoscience and quackery that is "alternative" medicine. One of them is that sometimes I find out that my victim target subject notices me. So it was, when I became aware on Facebook that Eric Merola noticed me. Merola, as you might recall, is the producer of that paean to Stanislaw Burzynski, entitled, unimaginatively and awkwardly enough, Burzynski the Movie -…

Naturopathic quackery wins licensure in Massachusetts

I was busy last night doing something other than actually blogging. Perhaps I was recovering from the one-two punch of the antivaccine rant penned by the director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute followed by Donald Trump's meeting with antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Whatever the case I crashed early. However, I can't help but note still more bad news. I woke up this morning to this headline Naturopaths get their own licensing board in Mass.: Governor Charlie Baker on Wednesday signed into law a bill that creates a licensing board to regulate naturopaths, alternative…

Preclinical research has a problem, but that doesn't mean religion is better

Remember Vox Day? Sure, I bet you do, at least if you've been a regular reader of this blog more than a year or two. If you're a really long-timer, you probably remember him even better. Let's just put it this way. Vox is a guy who has a much higher opinion of his intellectual prowess when it comes to science than is warranted by the bleatings that he calls a blog would warrant. I do have to thank him though. Besides giving me occasional material to apply some well-deserved not-so-Respectful Insolence to from time to time, on rare occasions he even points me in the direction of interesting…

Public health: starting the conversation in earnest

Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience gets pretty short when I see these tomes…

Public Health: starting the conversation

by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure Yesterday Flu Wiki founding editor and DailyKos frontpager DemFromCT reviewed three recent report cards on public health, one each by the American Public Health Association (APHA), The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the American College Of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It was a great a service in two ways. The first is to remind us that "health reform" is hollow without making sure the public health infrastructure is sound. And second, he reviewed these reports so the rest of us don't have to. Believe me, that's a service in my eyes. My patience…

My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse

tags: My Guy Barbaro, horse racing, horses, Kentucky Derby, Edgar Prado, John Eisenberg, book review Like most of America, I fell under the spell of the talented athlete, Barbaro. I was riveted by his brilliance and ability. Despite Barbaro's tragic end, I wanted to read a book that told his story, that gave him a voice without being maudlin or poorly-written. So thanks to one of my readers who kindly purchased this book for me, I was pleased to have the opportunity to read My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse (NYC:…

Competing Constitutional Interpretations

In a discussion on the religion law listserv last week, in an exchange with Jim Henderson, senior counsel with Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, the issue of constitutional law and original intent came up. Mr. Henderson was arguing that the original intent of the framers was the primary tool for constitutional interpretation and I, while agreeing with him that it is a very important tool, made the argument that it was not quite as simple as he seemed to think. The most obvious reason is because the framers themselves often disagreed on the meaning of various provisions. In…

The "Ruthlessness" Gene -or- 4 Caveats in Interpreting Behavioral Genetics Studies

I saw this news story in Nature a couple days ago about finding a gene for "ruthlessness." I realized that I always say the same thing about these behavioral genetics stories -- stories where they claim to find a gene for ____ (where blank is a behavioral abstraction like empathy). These studies are notoriously misinterpreted by the media, so I figure I will reiterate some caveats to remember about them. In this study, Knafo et al. compared performance in the Dictator game to genotype for a particular allele of the vasopressin receptor AVPR1a. In the Dictator game -- which isn't much of a…

Evolution: Having Some Fun With It

Ok, you caught me! This post wasn't originally one of my Evolution series. It was written long before, and published in The Open Laboratory 2008. But it IS a post about evolution, and this week is all about evolution on Observations of a Nerd, so I say it counts! It seems that you can't have a conversation about evolution that doesn't end with everyone involved feeling frustrated. You can't even mention the word 'evolution' without bringing up a political philippic, religious rant or scientific squabble. Unfortunately, this keeps everyone from the conversations that really matter - of course…

Colloidal silver: The real Blue Man Group

People never cease to amaze me. Sometimes it's in a good way, when a person whom I would least expect to be capable of it does something really kind or brilliant. Sometimes it's in a bad way. One of the bad ways people never cease to amaze me is how someone can continue down a path that has obviously caused them harm. I was reminded by this by a news story that's been making the rounds of the media. I first saw it a couple of days ago on the local ABC affiliate, and it seems to be making the rounds of many affiliates nationwide. It's the story of Paul Karason. Paul Karason is blue, and an…

I am the über-nerd. Bow before me.

Janet, Janet, Janet. What have you wrought? I know you're hosting the Skeptics' Circle next week, which gives you much cred in my book, but why this now? Annoyed at being shut out of the hottest scienceblogger list, you decreed a nerd-off, and then everybody had to get into the act, including Nick, Chad, Janet again, Joshua, PZ, Shelley (who in reality should be automatically disqualified, having been elected the hottest scienceblogger), John Wilkins, Afarensis, Razib, and Mike Dunford. (Bora tried to deny that he is a nerd, but I detect serious nerdiness underneath that seemingly cool…

Whence Uroplatus and... there are how many leaf-tailed gecko species now?? (gekkotans part VII)

Time to press on once more with gekkotan lizards, and again with yet more on the remarkable leaf-tailed geckos (Uroplatus) of Madagascar. So far, we've been introduced to these lizards and have also looked at their anatomical pecularities and on a little bit of their history within the herpetological literature [image below shows U. phantasticus - I think - photographed at Mandatia; courtesy of Mary Blanchard]. But there's lots more to look at: at the recently named and soon-to-be-named species, at their phylogenetic position within Gekkota and, sadly, at their inevitable plight at human…

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for "success" (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim "positive results" from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has not yet been subjected to testing in human trials, and invite me to check out new testimonials. Because DCA is a small molecule that is inexpensive to produce and can't itself be patented (although a patent for its use in treating cancer, a weaker form of patent, is possible), pharmaceutical…

Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Magical thinking versus Tumor Biology 101

Late yesterday afternoon, I was lazily checking my referral logs to see who might be linking to Respectful Insolenceâ¢, as most bloggers like to do from time to time (and any blogger who claims otherwise is probably feeding you a line), when I noticed a fairly large number of visits coming from one location, namely here. I was wondering when this would happen, but it looks as though the regulars at The DCA Site have finally noticed some of my writing. Surprisingly, what they say about me is not that bad, although that's probably because they seem to have found the least--shall we say?--…

Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis

One of the most significant papers ever published in the annals of science appeared recently; it deals, for the first time ever, with one of the biggest scientific questions ever faced by the scientific community, and uses cutting-edge technology and awesome powers of deductive reasoning and logic to reach shocking, paradigm-shifting conclusions. I refer, of course, to Don Henderson and Darren Naish's Journal of Theoretical Biology article 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'. I'm sure you've already read it and have…

Dr. Jay Gordon: Get away from my alma mater!

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned this before at least a couple of times, but I am an alumnus of the University of Michigan twice over. I completed a B.S. in Chemistry with Honors there and then I stayed on to do obtain my M.D. Several of my longtime friendships were forged or solidified during those years. Consequently, I still care about the place. That's why it distresses me when I see my alma mater shoots itself in the foot. Now, I'll grant you that what I'm about to discuss probably doesn't bother me as much as the plight of the Michigan Wolverines bothers me, given that never before…

CBO Scoring, Deficit Reduction, and Bad Assumptions: Why Most Economic Projections Are Flawed

I'm holding off on a couple of genomics posts, and instead wearing my Mike the Mad Post-Keynesian hat, since global financial system might get...shaky. During the ongoing pandimensional clusterfuck that is the debt ceiling negotiations, one thing that is used to bolster the prophecies of budgetary DOOOM!! is the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimates. These estimates lead to claims that future budget deficits are 'unsustainable.' We must therefore make Grandma eat catfood cut funding for the disabled and needy engage in fiscal austerity. But, as I've noted many times about Social…

Al Gore and Framing or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Scientific Data

We can't stop arguing about framing, can we? I've been pondering the subject much of late, especially while I waited these past four days for Duke Power to get us back on the grid following Sunday's windstorm, and I think I've got something relevant to contribute. I know Matt Nisbet has got lots of social science research that suggests people's eyes glaze over when a scientist uses data to explain something, but that's not my experience. Which is: As some may recall, I'm a member of The Climate Project, a team of some 1,000 volunteers that Al Gore trained to present his Keynote/PowerPoint…

Re: Nidal Hasan's Weapons

God help me, I resisted mightily. If my fellow SB friend Greg wants to spin the Ft. Hoot shooting as a cause for gun control then frankly there's pretty much nothing further to say. You'd think a @#$% major in the @#$% army on a @#$% army base just might not have been terribly inconvenienced in procuring weaponry even if every civilian gun in the hemisphere vanished in a puff of sunshine and wishful thinking. But I was going to leave it alone, assuming that that particular point makes itself. To each his own. But he wrote a follow-up post asserting a few points of fact, pretty much all of…

Two Points on "An Inconvenient Truth" (Point Two: Carbon Footprints)

Its a bit overdue, but I wanted to address the second point in regards to "An Inconvenient Truth"---whether or not carbon off-sets do any good and whether Al Gore is hypocritical for using jets (which pollute) to attend meetings, etc. This issue was first raised over at my SciBling's blog Stoat, during his review of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." During that review he said: How would we stop global warming? Since Gore fervently believes in it, clearly we should - emulate his lifestyle! Yes thats right, fly around the world and visit all kinds of interesting places. Um. Maybe not so…

God has an awesome PR department

Only the religious could turn a disaster into a mark in the plus column for God. Jim Downey has found an amazing series of books with some impressive titles, all with the point of giving credit to God for personal catastrophe: Thank God For Accidents Thank God For Mistakes Thank God I Adopted Thank God I Am A Bitch Thank God I Am A Dwarf/Midget Thank God I Am A Network Marketer Thank God I Am A Senior Citizen Thank God I Am A Single Parent Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Dad Thank God I Am A Stay At Home Mom Thank God I Am A Virgin Thank God I Am Afraid Of Commitment Thank God I Am An…

Extreme Dinosaur: Nigersaurus, the Mesozoic Cow!

Today is a super-exciting day for me and I hope you will find it exciting as well. Why? Because today PLoS ONE published a paper I am very hyped about - Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur by Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al. Simultaneously with the publication of the paper at 10:30am EST today (and such perfect synchrony took a LOT of work, sweat and nail-biting!), the fossil itself will be unveiled at the National Geographic in Washington D.C. (and you'll see some snippets from there on TV tonight - more information on channels and times later). First,…

Foreign Accent Syndrome and Different Types of Aphasia

A boy from Britain who had a case of viral meningitis had to undergo surgery to drain the fluid from his brain. When he awoke and recovered, he had a new accent: William McCartney-Moore of York was struck down with viral meningitis last March and needed brain surgery after doctors found he had a rare strain called empyaema. "He lost everything," said his mother, Ruth. "He couldn't read or write, he couldn't recognise things, he had no recollection of places he'd been to and things he'd done and he'd lost all his social skills. He went from being such a bright, lovely, wonderful eight-year-…

Political Science

As a blogger, I usually willfully delineate a giant chasm of non-communication between myself and political issues, preferring to dabble in the absolute: time, space, theoretical technological infrastructures, and, recently, aliens. I wrote one very reticent entry in 2005 about chimeric research, prefacing it with the pronouncement that "this blog will rarely concern iself with Pressing Science Ethics Issues," a statement that has proven in the intervening years to be true. However, I can't deny that my love of the sciences has blossomed under the steely wing of one of the most anti-science…

Switching to Linux: One man's personal experience

Photographer Scott Rowed has penned an excellent essay on his experience making the switch to Linux, and he's agreed to place it here as a guest post. Please read it and pass it on to people, school districts, small island nations, and others who may benefit: Switching to Linux by Scott Rowed Changing operating systems is not a task to be taken lightly. I generally follow the philosophy "if it ain't broke don't fix it." A year ago, however, the family notebook was broken, hopelessly crippled by a nasty virus or worm. I'd been regularly updating the virus software and running complete checks…

How to Get a Small College Job

We've been running a search to fill a tenure-track faculty position for next year, and I've spent more time than I care to recall reading folders and interviewing candidates. Now that the process is nearing completion, I'd like to do a quick post offering advice for those thinking about applying for a tenure-track position at a small liberal arts college. Yes, this is too late to do any good for people thinking of applying for the current job, but then, we wouldn't want anybody to get an unfair advantage by reading my blog. The following statements are entirely my own opinion, and should not…

What is there to say about the credit crunch?

(This is sort of a round-up of comment on the economics news. I don't have much to say about it yet.) It would appear that the economy has just gone from bad to really bad, although if you wanted to be technical it was probably bad already. Prices just hadn't fallen to reflect the true magnitude of that badness until recently. Take the now-to-be-bought Bear Stearns. It's price was 70 dollars two weeks ago and about 170 a year ago. Did that market value simply vanish over two weeks? I rather doubt it. (Particularly considering that their New York office building is supposedly worth more…

The Discovery Institute wants my money

I got a begging email from our good friends at the Center for Science & Culture. They're going to have to work a lot harder to persuade me. Dear PZ: Wait. Dear PZ? I'm having a tough time imagining any of those bozos addressing me as dear. But let us continue. Intelligent design is a common sense idea. Research has shown that children intuitively recognize design in the world around them. You and I make design inferences every day. It has taken a long time for the scientific community to catch up with the kids. But that day is coming. Intuitive and "common sense" assumptions are often…

Between Jellies and Stars

The next Scientiae Carnival topic is How We Are Hungry. scientiae-carnival We spent the Memorial Day holiday weekend at Mom's house, so hunger and food are topics much on my mind. Sunday we had a cookout at my brother's house; the weather was perfect, and Brother Zuska was in his element at the grill/smoker, delivering up enough grilled meat to feed at least three times as many people as we had there. Food - feeding each other, sharing meals - has always been a big deal in my family. Are you familiar with the Wedding Song? One time my sisters and I made up parody lyrics to it,…

Woo infiltrates one of the premiere trauma hospitals in the U.S.

Regular readers know that I've long been dismayed at the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based "alternative" medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It's gotten such a foothold that it's even showing up in the mandatory medical curriculum in at least one medical school. I've speculated before that academic medical centers probably see alternative medicine as both a marketing ploy to make themselves look more "humanistic" and a new revenue stream, given that most insurance companies won't pay for therapies without solid evidence of efficacy, meaning that…

Open Source Science? Or Distributed Science?

I was asked in an interview recently about "open source science" and it got me thinking about the ways that, in the "open" communities of practice, we frequently over-simplify the realities of how software like GNU/Linux actually came to be. Open Source refers to a software worldview. It's about software development, not a universal truth that can be easily exported. And it's well worth unpacking the worldview to understand it, and then to look at the realities of open source software as they map - or more frequently do not map - to science. The foundations of open source software are…

A month in dinosaurs (and pterosaurs): 1, therizinosauroid fuzz

First of all, many many thanks to everyone (both here and at SV-POW!) for the congrats regarding baby Emma. I am, shall we say, a little tired right now, but as you'll know if you've visited SV-POW! this morning, the good news as goes blogging is that I've been able to get lots of stuff prepared in advance. In theory, therefore, things won't be so different here on Tet Zoo. The one thing I haven't had time to prepare is 'the reveal' on that mystery picture from the other day, but I'll get round to that soon, thanks for your patience. Ok, to business... I think I've said before that I tend…

Dichloroacetate and cancer

So many people have sent me this sensationalistic article, "Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice", that I guess I have to respond. I sure wish it were true, but you should be able to tell from how poorly it is written and the ridiculous inaccuracies (mitochondria are cells that fight cancers?) that you should be suspicious. The radical, exaggerated claims make the truth of the story highly unlikely. Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic…

Africa Fighting Malaria's Wedge Document

The wedge document is the Discovery Institute's secret plan to defeat scientific materialism and promote Creationism. Below is Africa Fighting Malaria's wedge document. One part of the wedge is to use a simple message: "banning DDT spread malaria and killed people" to drive a wedge between environmentalists and public health people. The second is a wedge between first world and third world countries by arguing that first world concerns about pollution from DDT were killing people in third world countries. The document is a pitch to Philip Morris to fund their activities because the World…

Where do geoscientists get their ideas?

I've recently submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation, and it's got me thinking about how I find ideas for research. The proposal was for an instrument to enable research*, and that meant that, for the first time in years**, I had to write something that could convince other people that my research is interesting, important, and worth doing. Out of all the things I do in my job, that's the thing that I find the most difficult. I love teaching - teaching is fun, and makes everything worthwhile. (Even grading isn't so bad all the time.) And doing the research itself is fine, too…

Another Week of GW News, January 22, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsJanuary 22, 2012 Chuckles, Horn of Africa, Keystone XL, WFES, Intimidation, Open Science Subsidies, Global Legal Framework, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…

ScienceOnline'09: Interview with Bob O'Hara

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Bob O'Hara of the Deep Thoughts and Silliness blog to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? My name is Bob O'Hara, but I comment on blogs and such places under the absolutely…

Will there be new communication channels in the Obama administration?

There is quite a lot of chatter around the intertubes about changes in the communication environment that happened between the last and this election and how those changes may be affecting the way the new White House communicates to people as well as how the new White House will receive communications from the people. A lot of people are impatient - they want to see everything in place right this moment. Easy, guys! The inauguration is on January 20th. Until that time, Bush is the President and the Obama communications folks have time to think through, design and implement communication…

Unscientific America, the gift that keeps on giving

Mooney and Kirshenbaum have been so stung by my criticisms of their book that they have launched a multi-part rebuttal to my review. Here's my reply to their reply. We didn't get personal, and we didn't attack atheism in general! Hmmm. Here's a sampling of what they do say: "Myers' actions were incredibly destructive and unnecessary". I "set the cause backward". New Atheists believe that "religious faith should not be benignly tolerated". The "New Atheists" are "nasty bullying". They're "shrill". In last year's voting for best science blog, I was the "devil's choice". Blogging brings out…