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Darwin Quotes

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Various updates

Not everything gets posted on the blog (though people who follow me on Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook may catch some of these blips), so here's a quick summary of the past few weeks: =========== Most important news first - there is a new kid on the block! Not exactly my block, but close enough - this is a small town! Welcome Oliver Anton Zuiker to the world! So, no surprise Anton's been busy lately - for all the good reasons. Congratulations, my friend! ============= These brief respites from what is usually deemed "work" do not stop us! We are - though in a slower, summer-style tempo -…

Darwin Quotes

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Mississippi! You've been keeping secrets!

I was amused by this infographic about sex toys, especially by some of the data. Did you know that Mississippians buy more anal sex toys per capita than any other state? I always knew there was something squirmy about Trent Lott.

Stacy's Aard T-shirt Design

Here's the second t-shirt design suggestion, from Stacy Mason! Compare the first one from Jim Allen/Sweeney. And Barn Owl has volunteered to distribute the shirts! So unless a third design comes my way soon, I'll set up an on-line poll to decide which image goes onto the Aardvarchaeology t-shirts, and then place the order.

Unscientific America: Is the (new) media to blame?

In this post, I continue working through my thoughts in response to Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's new book, Unscientific America. In this post, I focus on their discussion of the mainstream media and of the blogosphere. You might guess, given that I'm a member of the science blogosphere, that I have some pretty strong views about what blogs might accomplish in terms of helping the public engage with science. You would be correct. A fair portion of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (reviewed here) explores conditions of American life that make it…

Lightspeed Magazine: Sci Fi and Reality collide

There's a slick new online Sci Fi rag called Lightspeed. I like this one because they also publish nonfiction pieces that are relevant to their fiction stories. Ok I'm a bit biased because they asked me to write a nonfiction piece for them. In the same issue there was a story called Manumission by Tobias Buckell, which used intentionally created memory loss as a plot device for a story that is part noir, part Heinlein, and all funky fun. My piece loosely relates to the story, but explores a bit more of what memory loss means for an individual's perception of themselves. Do drop by and…

Bill & Daniel's Excellent Open Publishing Manifesto

A few weeks ago Bill Gasarch published his Journal Manifesto 2.0 on the Computational Complexity blog. Basically, his idea was to start a scholarly publishing revolution from the inside: Keep in mind: I am NOT talking to the NSF or to Journal publishes or to Conference organizers. I am NOT going to say what any of these people should do. I am talking to US, the authors of papers. If WE all follow this manifesto then the problems of high priced journals and limited access may partially go away on their own. To be briefer: To the extend that WE are the problem, WE can be the solution. It's a…

One Reason Why the Imminent Demise of Printed Books Is Ridiculous (and Scary): Libraries

There's been some recent discussion about what eBooks will mean for publishing (ScienceBlogling Chad Orzel has a good roundup). As it often is, my take on this is 'follow the money.' Maybe my reading habits are skewed*--or more accurately, my book acquisition habits are skewed--but about eighty percent of the books I read I check out from the library (it's lower for fiction, nearly 100 percent for non-fiction). I don't think most books, especially non-fiction, where it's really hard to judge from reviews if a book is any good, are worth the full hardcover price (or even a twenty to thirty…

Old MacDonald speaks to a geneticist

OLD MACDONALD: Do you want to buy some beef? GENETICIST: If the beef is not tainted with mad cow, then I would be very much interested in purchasing your beef. However, as there have been a few recent outbreaks of this disease in North America, I think I will abstain for now. OLD MACDONALD: What is mad cow? GENETICIST: Mad cow is a term that refers to something known as bovine spongiform encephalitis, a curious infectious agent that is neither a virus nor a bacterium. Despite this, it is still an infectious agent that can cause the brain of said infected cattle to turn into a sponge, which,…

The Friday Fermentable: Mass-produced winners

Readers of this near-weekly feature have been the beneficiaries over the last few weeks of the wisdom from my scientific and wine colleague, Erleichda. Now with the feature back in my hands, I am now realizing that one difficulty in keeping up is finding wines of value that are widely accessible to readers, geographically and financially. For example, I would love to share with you a glass of what I am enjoying currently this Friday evening: an indulgent glass of 2003 Thorpe Reserve Shiraz from the McLaren Vale of South Australia. Crafted by expert winemaker, Linda Domas, the best way I…

McCain's Healthcare 'Plan': Paying More for Healthcare Is a Feature, Not a Bug

Magic ponies: they're not just for Iraq, but healthcare too! (from here) Yesterday, I described how families would pay more under McCain's healthcare plan. But one point that I neglected to mention is that this is supposed to be a good thing. The logic (of a sort) is that if you end up paying more for treatment, then you will choose not to receive unnecessary treatment. Like heart surgery. Roger Hickey explains: ...McCain wants to tax workers' health care premiums that are paid for by employers. Ask any expert, conservative or liberal, and they will tell you the result will be…

More nuttiness from Indonesia on bird flu

Indonesian Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, has reiterated her refusal to share isolates of H5N1 virus (it's unclear if this is her decision alone or is the considered decision of the Indonesian government). This came at the current inter-minsterial conference on bird flu on underway in Delhi (how many of these conferences are there, anyway? It seems like every week there's another one.) Her demand is that every isolate have a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) requiring a statement each time the isolate is shared with another laboratory, stating it is only for diagnostic purposes and not…

On the Limits of Expert Credibility: Theory and an Application to Climate Change?

On the Limits of Expert Credibility:Theory and an Application to Climate Change (h/t FE) is an interesting paper. I'm not sure I believe it, but it is interesting (particularly so after reading Krugman on why people don't understand [[Comparative advantage]]; h/t Timmy). The "Conclusions" section is a bit odd. Having spent the paper trying to demonstrate that interested parties will try to buy off the messenger, i.e. the media, they then try to explain the media's non-accuracy by Morris's (2001) model of political correctness instead of their own results. I don't understand that. The abstract…

Why my mom didn't buy me a slot car track for Christmas in 1978, even though I told her that's what I wanted

[This article was originally posted in December, 2006] I'm not bitter about this, honest I'm not, but it does often seem that people who know you very well end up buying really lousy gifts. What I really want to find out is this: why do they do that? It turns out, market researchers want to know, too. How can they have a prayer of selling people things they don't want when people can't even convince their loved ones to buy them things they do want? Davy Lerouge and Luk Warlop have designed a clever study to examine this very issue. They wanted to know whether couples who've been together for…

Why my mom didn't buy me a slot car track for Christmas in 1978, even though I told her that's what I wanted

I'm not bitter about this, honest I'm not, but it does often seem that people who know you very well end up buying really lousy gifts. What I really want to find out is this: why do they do that? It turns out, market researchers want to know, too. How can they have a prayer of selling people things they don't want when people can't even convince their loved ones to buy them things they do want? Davy Lerouge and Luk Warlop have designed a clever study to examine this very issue. They wanted to know whether couples who've been together for at least six months were any better at predicting each…

Loss Aversion and Real Estate

The latest report on home sales is bleak: Sales of new homes fell in June for the seventh time in the past eight months, more proof that the worst housing slump in decades is getting deeper. The Commerce Department reported Friday that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 0.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 530,000 units following an even bigger 1.7 percent fall in May. The decline was slightly smaller than had been expected and sales were revised up a bit for May. Even with those changes, new home sales are down by a sharp 33.2 percent from a year ago. At…

Orkney Photographs On-line

After some culling and editing, I've put 74 snaps from my visit to Orkney on-line. Comments and questions are most welcome! [More blog entries about orkney, photography, Scotland; Orkney, Skottland, foto, fotografi.]

ScienceOnline'09 on Minnesota Atheist Radio

Science is moving onto the internet. Collection of data, collaboration between researchers, communication and critique of results, teaching and learning--all are increasingly being done online. ScienceOnline, held January 16 - 18 in 2009, is a conference dedicated to discussing the intersection of science and online technologies. Bora Zivkovic, one of the founders and organizers of ScienceOnline will join Atheists Talk Sunday, February 1, to talk about the purpose of the conference, the results of this year's sessions, and why it's important to meet your online colleagues in person. Produced…

Imagination fails me

You can buy communion wafers on Amazon, which is no surprise. Amazon will also tell you what other customers bought when they ordered their communion wafers. I…I…don't understand! I get a brainlock when I try to put these things together, I'm afraid.

Just like XO laptop, but made of canvas and leather

Have you ever heard of TOMS Shoes? Apparently, this has been going on for two years now. Blake Mycoskie is making these shoes and, whenever you buy a pair for yourself, he sends another pair to a poor child in the developing world.

Darwin Quotes

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.

Warm Up The Virgins

Has anyone seen the cover of today's New York Post? Apparently, the NYPost was giving away today's issue on the streets because no one would buy it (and no, I am not posting the cover picture here; it's disgusting. Funny, but disgusting).

UC gets new VP for research

He could buy his own 1% share in Gemini! This, btw, confirms my belief that a secret cabal of astronomers will take over the University of California in its entirety in the near future. I, personally, will welcome their new starry overlords.

Now Available...

The electronic version of Among the Creationists is now available! Yay! Click here for the Kindle version. Click here for the Nook version. The print version will be available soon. Buy it, read it, and let me know what you think!

They Might Be Giants = Science is Real = Awesome!

This is up (I'm sure) everywhere, but I can't resist also showing it off, especially since I've played around with the science song genre myself. And you can buy the CD/DVD set for yourself (or your kids) at Amazon.

Pablo Neruda at Kings Place tomorrow

There's a reading at Kings place tomorrow. See here for details. You'll have to buy tickets. If you read Neruda, I don't have to tell you it will be worth the money. I hear there will be a screening of a reading by Neruda himself.

A Child's World

Conversation with my two year old daughter this morning. Daughter: [looks at a picture book involving tigers] Where is the mummy tiger, daddy? Me: It has gone for hunting, Nidhi. Daughter: No, daddy. It has gone to a shop to buy baby-corn.

Ken Lay Aspen Memorial and Obituary - part 2

Turns out that I was not the only one offended by the content of Ken Lay's biography and obituary: From the Letters to the Editor of this morning's Aspen Daily News: Editor: I just finished reading your paper's obituary of Kenneth Lay and was somewhat puzzled by the dichotomy between Kenneth Lay, convicted felon in one of the two biggest corporate scandals in American history, and your article. I understand not dwelling on the negative but this man was not a good Christian in any sense of the word. He destroyed many, many more lives than he ever enriched outside of his family. Kenneth Lay…

Fungus Amongus

Fun little stop-motion fungus vid this morning... which I can't get to run on here properly. While I'm at it, I might as well add a video from a couple weeks back that appeared on Carl Zimmer's blog, The Loom. Entitled "Fungus Cannon," it demonstrates new research by Nicholas Money, a mycologist from Miami University, that fungus achieve the fastest known flight times in nature. These spores are launched at up to 55 miles an hour-which translates to an acceleration of 180,000 g. For more details check out Zimmer's post or the published research in PLoS One. The video is set to Anvil Chorus…

A big day for Obamacare

Today is an exciting day in US healthcare history: For the first time, uninsured US residents can go online to shop for individual health insurance policies and feel confident of a few things: they can easily see information to make meaningful comparisons between plan options; they won’t be rejected or charged an astronomical rate based on their health history; and once they have a policy, they won’t be unpleasantly surprised by an omission of an essential benefit like hospital or maternity care. In addition, insurance shoppers with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level…

Harvesting MMORPG Time

Source. I had a dream last night of harvesting MMORPG time to save the planet. Let me explain. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) are deeply engaging millions of players, spending some 21 hours per week in a virtual world according to The Daedalus Project. The World of Warcraft alone has more than 12 million subscribers, part of an industry that exceeded revenues of $1 billion in 2008. Consider the scale of the time investment - 12 million players averaging 21 hours per week! MMORPG's allure is understandable. They offer an alternative experience in which one is…

HandBell Hero

tags: holidays, handbell hero, online game Ahhh, this online game brings back memories! When I was an undergrad in college, I was a member of the Handbell Choir .. So when a long-time reader of mine sent this online game, HandBell Hero, to me, I had a lot of fun playing with it and so I (of course) had to share it with you, too. How did you do? I didn't do very well. I can promise you that I was a better handbell choir member than I am a handbell player in this game!

SBC - NC'07

Adnaan Wasey and Lea Winerman from the The Online PBS NewsHour are coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference and so is Claire Edwards of The American Physiological Society. Are you? Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference

When did bacon become part of the Cthulhu mythos?

People of a certain age will remember thos "create your own adventure" books — well, Ars Technica has an online version of one, featuring tentacled beings from another plane, bacon, and geeks. It might go over well here.

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants 7

Let's highlight some more of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference: Talia Page is a future astronaut, senior staff at Talking Science, writer for Space Lifestyle magazine, Chief Editor for the Imagine Science Film Festival, and a blogger on Space Cadet. She will be on the panel Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations. Neeru Paharia is a doctoral student who is starting to build AcaWiki, a wiki of open-access long abstracts of peer-reviewed research, which she will present as a demo. David Palange is a student and blogger in the Nicholas School of the…

Discussing science publishing at the pub

Last night was nice. I dragged some buddies to Tavern at Central to hang out with the folks at NatureNetworks Boston. There we chatted with a few bloggers and some of the individuals responsible for NatureNetworks Boston (like Corie Lok.) One interesting tid bit I'd like to share with you - I had a nice conversation with Kathrine (didn't catch her last name) who helps maintain the NatureNetworks site. We talked about recent successes and failures of scientific publishers and web2.0. Right now scientific publishing is in a state of flux, it is not clear how science communication will be…

ScienceOnline'09: Managing your online persona through transitions.

Some quick thoughts in response to the session led by PropterDoc and Sciencewoman. In some sense, this is really just an extension of the problem of managing your public persona as you go through transitions in life. Maybe it's something even deeper than that. Maybe it's a piece of the project of deciding who you are and what kind of person to be. How we present ourselves to other people leaves traces. Our interactions with others create components of the environments that other people live in and respond to. Our words have consequences, and so do the moments where we are silent. Now, we…

The Home Schooling Attitude: Part 1 of 1

This is Part 1 because there is more than one part. But I'm only going to do one of them, so it is Part 1 of 1. There is more than one "kind" of home schooler, home schooling parent, home schooling family, etc., and thus there are multiple attitudes. But a good chunk of the home schooling population, represented by these excerpts from their own rhetoric, are more than a little annoying, and are the reason why we should always be suspicious of home schooling and home schoolers until we see their credentials. Home Schooling Is a Good Choice for Christian Parenting If you want to impart a…

Turf... wars?

I have a very lengthy post in pickle that is taking me some time to work through. Forgive me; sometimes that's what blogging is for, though it's tough on the posting rate. In the meantime, a small thought about improving interaction patterns between scientists and librarians, something I still very much think is necessary for both groups. Cameron Neylon notes in his quick review of the new FriendFeed-based ScienceFeed that the name is not ideal: Finally there is the problem of the name. I was very careful at the top of this post to be inclusive in the scope of people who I think can benefit…

Lott's disingenuous explanation for Mary Rosh

Lott has a long message at his website where he discusses Mary Rosh and argues that when he claimed that he had "not participated in the firearms discussion group nor in the apparent online newsgroup discussions", he was not lying: Another misunderstanding in the media is that I was lying as to whether I had ever participated in internet chat rooms. I have never made any general statement that I do not participate in such groups. And, obviously, I did participate under my own name for a substantial period of time. There are however two separate statements, one in an email to Glenn…

Clean Energy Tipping Point

Investment in and development of clean energy seems to be undergoing a transition, and this is reflected in a number of items that came across my desk this morning. Without attempting any serious analysis, here's a brief summary. Clean Energy investments have fallen over the last couple of years, leading some to assert that the transition to non fossil sources of energy is in trouble. But there is an excellent argument that the exact opposite is true. What has really happened is that the cost of implementing new clean energy projects has dropped dramatically, so the cost of investment has…

October Drizzle

October drizzle can be quite photogenic in my part of the world. Here's a view from the bridge to Fisksätra holme. (I just discovered Pixlr, an excellent free on-line image editor that runs in your browser.)

Pimp Me Old Tunes

My lightly tossed-off shot at classical music snobs, and subsequent confession that classical music fails to make much of an impression has led to various people calling me an uncultured barbarian, but also to a surprisingly vibrant comment thread that has included some recommendations of music to try. I might as well roll with that while it's going, so here's the deal: I'm headed out to a conference tomorrow, and will have a couple of dull plane flights and a fair bit of time in a hotel room in which to listen to new stuff. By which I mean old stuff, so pimp me some classical music, subject…

Scientific Publishing

Let's say there's an interesting but somewhat obscure book I'm interested in. Say, Electromagnetic Pulse Propagation in Causal Dielectrics. It's a very technical work about a very specific subject, so the total print run was probably very small. Maybe a few hundred or a thousand or so? I have no idea, but it can't be very large. The library has it, but of the few thousand people in the world who are interested in this sort of thing, a few dozen are here at Texas A&M. The book is already both checked out and recalled; for all I know there's recall requests stacked several deep. Now…

Bayesians Say the Cutest Things

The Dutch book argument of Bruno de Finetti is an argument which is supposed to justify subjective probabilities. What one does in this argument is gives probabilities an operational definition in terms of the amount one is willing to bet on some event. Thus a probability p is mapped to your being willing to make a bet on the event at 1-p to p odds. In the Dutch book argument one shows that if one takes this operational meaning and in addition allows for the person you are betting to take both sides of the bet, then if you do not follow the axiomatic laws of probability, then the person…

Clock Quotes

Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging. - Nina Berberova

Now, this is passion....

...which I totally relate to. Can you guess which candidate they support? If you like one of their signs (e.g., 'Elizabeth For First Lady' one), they have set up a Cafepress store where you can buy them (as well as buttons, stickers and other stuff):

U.S. history

I need to pick, buy and send a book on U.S. history to an old friend in Belgrade. It should be an objective, academic book, 600+ pages, not more than $50 used at Amazon. Is there such a thing and if so, what shall I get?

I WANT

So, I kind of have an obsession with small and miniature versions of things. I saw this car in a parking lot yesterday, and I just couldn't help snapping a pic. I WANT THIS CAR. It's a baby car! Isn't it ADORABLE? Someone should buy me a car like this. Seriously.