Search Content | ScienceBlogs

Displaying results 1751 - 1800 of 87947

Copenhagen, Claus & Christ

The climate summit in Copenhagen came to a tenuous conclusion on Friday, as five nations pulled a non-binding "agreement" from thin air. This agreement recognizes the threat of rising temperatures and pledges financial aid for developing countries, but sets no emission guidelines and is not legally enforcible anyway. On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk fears what global warming will do to Santa's Workshop, writing that the major players at Copenhagen were "afraid to do hard things," and content to "pretend to do something" instead. Meanwhile, Greg Laden on his blog points out that Copenhagen…

Recalculating Round Numbers

The price of human genome sequencing has fallen spectacularly since the turn of the century; what then cost $100,000,000 is now promised for only $1000. This race toward zero makes even Moore's Law look like a snail's pace, but the $1000 price tag does come with a couple asterisks. For one, providers will need high demand to pay off the multi-million dollar sequencing array that makes it possible, and low demand should result in higher prices. For two, $1000 will only buy you a rough draft of your genome. On Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Todd Smith writes "While some sequencing…

About last night

The Drinking Liberally event was packed. I don't know how many people were there, but I think it was somewhere within a few orders of magnitude of a gazillion. Kos speechified briefly, exhorted us to buy his book because every copy sold makes a conservative cry, and then answered questions from the crowd. Dr B and The Connoisseur did show up fashionably late, and didn't even make it in the door before she was intercepted by her fans. We all had many pleasant conversations, and I think there may be a few new converts to the Drinking Liberally phenomenon. I also learned something very…

Mexican Corn Farmers Reap Big Profits

Rogelio Zacaula plucks an ear of corn from his field with the pride of a prospector unearthing the gold that legend says is buried in the slopes surrounding the nearby Orizaba volcano. International corn prices driven by the burgeoning U.S. ethanol industry have soared to their highest in a decade, making farmers like Zacaula feel like they just won the jackpot. ''I have never seen prices like this,'' said Zacaula, 66, who has been growing corn since he was 10. "We suffered for so many years, years in which no one even wanted to buy our crop -- until now.'' Corn had languished around $2 a…

OCO launch failure

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory had a launch failure. Taurus launch out of Vandenberg last night, tried to stay up to see if I could see the launch - often possible from the area - but I crashed before scheduled launch time. Apparently payload failed to separate after stage burnout and the whole lot crashed near one of the poles (south pole - thought that was what they said but wasn't sure till I saw the formal press release). Total loss. I guess we know what NASA's SMD will use their $400M stimulus for now - that should just about buy a replacement. It is a bad loss, the OCO, or…

Sailing Camp

I've spent three days with my son's class at Ãngsholmen summer camp where the 12-y-os got a chance to reaquaint themselves after the summer and do some fun stuff together. My job, like that of the other three parents who came along, was basically crowd control and security. The camp is on a small U-shaped island, a former base of the coastal artillery, which once defended the GÃ¤llnÃ¶ port narrows on an important shipping lane. There's a sizeable decommissioned underground fort at one end, probably dating from the inter-war years. The kids swam, canoed, sailed Monark Avanti skiffs, did…

Home Owner

For the past ten years, I've lived with my family in rented apartments in a 1970s housing estate that covers the erstwhile infields of the poor tenant farm of FisksÃ¤tra. Yesterday, my wife and I signed a contract to buy a 114 sqm house on one of the surrounding hills, BÃ¥thÃ¶jden, "Boat Hill"! We need another bedroom for our 10-y-o, and we calculate that it won't be all that much more expensive to pay a mortgage on the house than it would be to rent a four-roomer instead of our current three-roomer. The main proponents of buying a house have been my dad and my wife. My conditions were that…

Weekend Diversion: The Math of Powerball (Synopsis)

“I’ve done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.” -Fran Lebowitz It's a thought that's occurred to almost everyone at some point or another: what each of us would do if we happened to hit the lottery Jackpot. Have a listen to Camper Van Beethoven sing about it in the band's interesting song, When I Win The Lottery, while you consider the following. Image credit: me. The (very small) differences in these odds and the Powerball official odds are due to rounding. This past week, the Powerball Jackpot crested past $500 million, one of…

Michael Pollan Interview: On Bookshelves Near You

The Michael Pollan interview I did for The Believer is at long last on booksehelves at fine retailers near you. For those not familiar with that publication, it was recently nominated for two National Magazine Awards, was last year nominated for a few, and will next year be nominatd for some. It's run out of San Fransisco, a monthly cultural and literary periodical edited by the writers Heidi Julavits, Ed Park, and Vendela Vida. Although called "The Believer," it has no religious bent. They've been gracious enough to publish two prior interviews of mine as well (on Darwin, on Sex and…

âJesus was half-chimpanzeeâ

Via Red State Rabble: "These evolutionists are saying that Jesus was half-chimpanzee, so was Mohammed and Buddha," said Alan Detrich, a 58-year-old Lawrence Republican who takes classes at Kansas University. "I dont think thats right." In this story, Detrich gives us the minimalist version of Paley’s watchmaker argument: The question is the story of the rock and the clock. If you find a rock in a field, no big deal. If you find a clock in a field, you look around for who created it. Did we just appear like the rock? Or did it take intelligent design to make us? I think it took intelligent…

Caleb Crain sums up the MSMer's Media 2.0 anxiety

In the intro to his self-published (on Lulu.com) collection of blog posts, The Wreck of the Henry Clay, New Yorker contributor Caleb Crain sums up nicely the anxieties shared by at least one other writer-with-blogging-addon about blogging, and, by extension, about self-publishing books. Which I may just do myself soon -- a collection -- because I CAN. Ellipses are mine. I came to blogging ... as a veteran of print.... [and so] came to blogging nervous about losing what footing I had there... The quandary: If I wanted to communicate an important discovery, shouldn't I write it up formally,…

Would you bronze your daughter's first poop? Tom Cruise would

I don't even want to know how he got it: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have yet to show their baby daughter off in public, but eager fans were given an unusual preview with the chance to see a bronze cast depicting her first solid stool. The scatological sculpture -- more doodoo than Dada -- is purportedly cast from 19-week old Suri's first bowel movement and will be shown at the Capla Kesting gallery in Brooklyn, New York, before being auctioned off for charity. The artist behind the work, Daniel Edwards, previously courted controversy with a life-size nude sculpture of pop star Britney Spears…

Contagious Altruism and Starbucks

It's the latest Starbucks advertising campaign: they are handing out free subway passes and movie tickets in the hope that all the niceness and holiday cheer will be contagious: Starting today Starbucks is surprising its customers with free gifts. The catch is Starbucks wants consumers to pass on their benevolence by performing a good deed for another person, say, to hold open a door or buy someone a cup of coffee. With each deed, the recipient is handed a "cheer pass," a numbered card that serves as a tracking device for the effort's viral component. It's actually a brilliant idea. Why?…

Hippy-Crites

British papers are fun. The Daily Mail recently ran a deliciously nasty article on hippy-crites, those pious celebrities (like John Travolta, Chris Martin and Brangelina) who talk endlessly about global warming and yet still fly in lots of private jets. Travolta, for instance, recently few by himself from Europe to the United States in a Boeing 707, which can normally hold more than 100 people. But this isn't just a problem for celebrities. A new paper in Conservation Biology looked at how the "environmental attitudes" of individuals affected the location of their home in the Teton Valley of…

OSHA news releases rarely name company's work comp carrier

When OSHA proposed penalties in January 2011 totaling nearly $1.4 million against two Illinois grain handling companies, I noticed the agency's news release mentioned the employers' workers compensation insurance carrier. It was the first time that I'd see this in an OSHA news release, and I wondered if it was the start of something new. Apparently, not. I reviewed the 280+ news releases on enforcement cases issued by OSHA between February 2011 and August 24, and only identified two in which the agency mentioned the employers' work comp insurance carrier. One appeared in an April 2011…

Samsung Galaxy S4 Review

Samsung Galaxy S4 Looking at just the specs, the Samsung Galaxy S4 looks like a good phone. That's why we got one! But there are a few things you need to know that may impact your decision. These problems lead me to not recommend this phone. First, the Android Lollipop version that Samsung produces is a much modified version of the basic Android operating system. Nothing useful or interesting is provided, but the "miscellaneous" storage, which for most normal Android Lollipop phone takes up about 300 - 400 megabytes of space, takes up several gigabytes of space, in order to have these…

Charles Stross, Glasshouse [Library of Babel]

My intention of reading all of the nominees for the Hugo Awards in the fiction categories hit a bit of a snag yesterday. I finished all the short fiction (novella, novelette, short story), and most of the novels, leaving only Peter Watts's Blindisght and Charlie Stross's Glasshouse. James Nicoll described Peter Watts as the sort of thing he reads when he feels his will to live becoming too strong, and the description of Glasshouse did not fill me with joy. Plus, my copy of Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson just arrived (a birthday present), and I'd really rather read that. (I'll pause here for…

Have e-books killed tree-books?

Have e-books killed tree-books? I hope not - I love hefting a brand-new book in my hand and letting the pages fan open. It's sensual and anticipation-laden, like opening a bottle of good wine. But perhaps science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer is hedging his bets on the future of paper books: he's released his latest collection, Brain Cuttings, exclusively for Kindle, iPad, and other mobile devices. I clicked over to read an excerpt, and this was the first passage I saw: Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer--not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your…

The Friday Fermentable: Little-Known or Under-Publicized Grapes

Another Wine Experience: Little Known or Under Publicized Grape Varieties by Erleichda It was my turn again to name a theme for the almost monthly get together of our wine dinner group, "Jim's Disciples". I thought to push the envelope a bit by asking everyone to bring a wine that used a grape variety they hadn't heard of before, and which represented at least 70% of the wine in the bottle. There were no other restrictions or guidelines. Unfortunately, only about half my tasting notes survived the evening, and so I can only relate a portion of what occurred. I also chose a BYO Italian…

Heureka!

Heureka is an online popular science magazine in Austria which you should check out, especially if you can read German. But some things are in English, including this interview with yours truly... There also blurbs about it (in German) in derStandard online and hardcopy, as well as on their science blog Sciblog.

Victory in Germany

Back in October, I sent you off to vote in an online poll that pitted real social workers, SozialHelden, against homeopaths, in a contest that actually had consequences: the winner would get a "Dedication Award" for their work. We just got word from SozialHelden on the outcome of the poll: haben gerade den Deutschen Engagementpreis 2009 gewonnen. Danke für Eure Stimmen! They've won the German Engagement Prize for 2009. Thank you for your votes!

We've lost another good one

One of the early blogs that I very much enjoyed was The Rittenhouse Review, a Philly blog which I discovered shortly after leaving Philadelphia. It had gone quiet a while ago, rather mysteriously — it's another of those odd things about this medium that there can be so few signs of what's going on in real life from what we see online — but sadly, we now learn that the author, Jim Capozzola has died after a long illness.

Can we please get rid of the R******s name?

From WaPo: When sports fans tuned into the NBA finals Tuesday night to see the San Antonio Spurs take on the Miami Heat, they got a look into another fierce standoff. A California tribe paid for the anti-Redskins advertisement “Proud to Be” to run in seven major cities during halftime. The airing marked the first time the ad, which initially appeared online in time for the Super Bowl, had run before such a wide television audience.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The sixty-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at the The Swedish Osteological Society's Blog. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology from a bony point of view! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 22 April. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.

The word for today is "literally"

I know I'm far from the first to go off on this commercial, but... No, vehix.com commercial lady, you cannot go online and "literally take a test drive". It doesn't work that way. The tubes that connect your computer to the interwebs aren't big enough. The wheels get stuck every damn time. So stop saying that. Or at least learn to stop overacting first. And lose the hat. It makes you look like a moron.

Students: Give your CV a digital makeover

In a reputation economy, social media can provide a powerful set of tools for establishing and enhancing your reputation. An enhanced reputation can lead to enhanced opportunities, in the form of job offers or other professional opportunity. Academia is a reputation economy, of course, but really any knowledge economy/creative class job is going to be easier to get if you have a good reputation. Which brings us back to social media. It seems to me that in a competitive job market, students can really make their own applications stand out if they can refer potential employers to a really…

Librarians and social media engagement

Or, Twitter & blogs as ways of knowing, Part 2. A month or so ago, I poked a little gentle fun at social media extremists, basically exploring the idea that engaging online is the be-all and end-all of the library profession versus the idea that much of what we do online is peripheral to the main thrust of what librarianship is all about. To a certain degree, I guess I was setting up a couple of straw people just for the purpose of knocking them down but at the time it seemed like contrasting those extremes was a useful way of looking at the issue. Of course, I don't believe either…

The Great Debate

Since my laptop was stolen, it's time for me to think about getting a replacement. My last laptop was a tablet PC, a Toshiba M400 Portege, which was "Vista capable," which I'm pretty sure means that it was "just barely Vista capable." I loved having a tablet PC, but the Toshiba wasn't exactly behaving great under Vista (slow, slow, slow.) So now the question is what should my next laptop be. In particular I am almost tempted to (close you ears Seattlites)....buy a Mac. Tablet PC benefits: All my notes are on my tablet for the last few years. This is very convenient. Unfortunately the…

Scienceblogs: Clearly More Popular than Steven Colbert

If you are one of the many people who was trying to contribute to the Scienceblogs.com DonorsChoose challenge today, you should know that there's one person you can blame for the trouble you had accessing the site: right-wing spinmeister and wannabe Presidential candidate Steven Colbert. That's right, folks. Like a typical heartless Conservative, Colbert's not content merely trying to shrink government to a convenient, easy to drown size. No, he's not going to rest until he makes it harder for un-American liberal weenies like you to waste your hard-earned dollars by using them to buy things…

Poverty and the Public School Classroom

When you hear the word "poverty," what do you think of? Starving children in Africa? Subsistence farmers in Asia? Is poverty some distant concept? Something terrible, but far off? Yes, and no. Because, while poverty is terrible, it can also be close to home. Maybe as close as the public school down the street. Poverty is the vexation of the junior high school science teacher with no budget to buy paper to print worksheets, tests, and notes. She teaches in a "low-income, rural district in southwest Mississippi" and $243 would give her a year's supply of paper for 120 students. Poverty is the…

Antarctica: Others Think I'd do a Helluva Job, Too

Image: courtesy of Bob O'Hara, author of Deep Thoughts and Silliness. Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter (remember Morris, Minnesota in January? Or how about Helsinki, Finland in November, then again in February?), I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, all…

From the Archives: Ebook Business Models

During my summer blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from November 7, 2007. It generated quite a few interesting comments, so you might want to check back at the original post. My feeling on a lot of these points has shifted a bit with time, so I'll probably revisit the topic in the fall. ===== This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot recently, as we (at York and as a profession) start to move in a coordinated way to making ebooks an important part of our collections. What's the…

From the Archives: If you don't have a blog you don't have a resume (Part I)

I'm away for a couple of days, so I thought I'd fill in a bit with an oldy-buy-goody from February 4, 2009. It ended up being the first of three parts, with the other two being here and here. As usual, the first part got the most readers and comments, with the two after that being decidedly less popular. Go figure. ============================== I was just going to call this post "On Blogging" but I decided I like Robert Scoble's rather provocative statement better. This is not to say that I agree with his rather extreme stance, because I definitely don't, but I think it's an…

Dan Ariely and rational versus irrational decision-making

Yesterday Dan Ariely came to Davidson to give a few lectures and meet with faculty in the Economics, Philosophy, and Psychology departments. Greta attended two of the lectures and had dinner with him (along with the rest of the Davidson Psychology faculty). I went to his public lecture last night. If you're not familiar with Ariely's work, you should consider reading his book Predictably Irrational, or at the minimum check out his blog, which is full of fascinating research and anecdotes about how we make (un)informed decisions. At his talk last night, Ariely offered a several fascinating…

Holiday thoughts.

If you're grabbing some quick blog-reading amongst your other goings on, I have a few posts to recommend. At Wampum -- you know, the fine blog that runs the Koufax awards-- Mary Beth faces down a holiday with tight resources: A few hours ago, my eldest asked me when we were going to go pick up our Christmas tree. I couldn't do anything but mumble some rather incoherent, "I'm not sure we're going to be able to have a tree this year." Trees, lights, trimmings, all cost money, and while Eric's now gainfully employed, we don't expect to see a check this week. I've picked out a few books to wrap…

Adapting to the new ecosystem of science journalism

Next week, I'll be chairing a session at the Science Online 2010 conference called Rebooting science journalism in the age of the web. I'll be shooting the breeze with Carl Zimmer, John Timmer and David Dobbs about the transition of journalism from sheets of plant pulp to wires and wi-fi. The title of the talk had been set before the panel was assembled but, being biologists at heart, we're going to shift the metaphor from a technological one to an evolutionary one. As a species, science journalists (in all their varied forms and behaviours) have found themselves thrust into a new digital…

Morning Dip: Facebook (not) friends, paid learning, lip-reading babies, more on EHRs

"Primates on Facebook" -- "Even online, the neocortex is the limit" to how many people we can really have as friends. People who use more textual shortcuts (lk whn they txt in skl) when texting have higher reading skills. The coverage seems to assume this is causal, but it's almost surely just an association -- people with good reading skills more quickly come up with or absorb textual shortcuts. Does "pay for performance" work in learning? For a bit, then not. "A number of the kids who received tokens didn't even return to reading at all," Dr. Marinak said. From the Times. Babies can…

Eagle Eyes

tags: birding, online games, eagle eyes, Audubon Society Eagle Eyes is a fun online game that focuses on teaching you to see minor differences between two seemingly identical images, such as those shown above. I earned my "Eagle Eyes" ranking (25/25) and am going to try more demanding versions of the game now. How did you do?

Counting your attitudes

Spend a few minutes at the link below to fill in an online survey about your attitude to climate change and a variety of other issues. http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HKMKNG_ee191483 Your answers are desired as the reader of a "pro-science" blog, they are confidential and will be used for a research project.

PLoS - on Twitter and FriendFeed

Despite online debates - which one is better: Twitter or FriendFeed, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek - the fact is that these are two different animals altogether. Asking one to make a choice between the two is like asking one to make a choice between e-mail and YouTube - those are two different services that do different things. Thus, they are to be used differently. Twitter is a communications tool (or a 'human application'). You can broadcast (one-to-many), you can eavesdrop (many-to-one) or you can converse (one-to-one, either in public or through Direct Messages). But most…

HOUSE DEMS PROMOTE FIRST 100 HOURS ON SECOND LIFE: New 3D Virtual Community May Revolutionize Strategic Communication As It Moves From Independence to 'Massification'

Haven't heard of Second Life? It's a 3-D virtual world built by users or "residents" worldwide. Imagine the video game World of Warcraft, but no game, just a cyber-community evolving in ways both similar and different from the real world. The best way for me to describe Second Life is if you watch the news clip from Australian Broadcasting News above. Just press play. The creations of this world, including island mansions, stores, fantasy theme parks, virtual lectures, films, and cocktail parties, are designed by the registered users or "residents." Users navigate these creations by way…

Reacting to PRISM and publishers' concerns about 'scientific integrity' (the short version).

Even though I've been frightfully busy this week, I've been following the news about the launch of PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine). I first saw it discussed in this post by Peter Suber, after which numerous ScienceBloggers piled on. If you have some time (and a cup of coffee), read Bora's comprehensive run-down of the blogosphere's reaction. If you're in a hurry, here are three reasons I think PRISM's plans to "save" scientists and the public from Open Access are a bad idea. While the PRISM website claims that a consequence of more Open Access…

The Warlord in the Library: Interview with John Dupuis

John Dupuis has been writing Confessions of a Science Librarian since the time blogging software was really physically soft, being made of clay and shaped like a tablet. We finally got to meet face-to-face at the Science Blogging Conference last month - a meeting long overdue until then. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. This is going to be an interesting reversal - it is usually you who gets to ask the questions in blog interviews. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? Yes, it is a bit of a reversal. But I'm not crazy…

Reading Diary: The Best Science Writing Online 2012 edited by Jennifer Ouellette and Bora Zivkovic

The Best Science Writing Online 2012 edited by Jennifer Ouellette and Bora Zivkovic is decended from the old Open Laboratory series of anthologies which featured the fifty best science blog posts (and a poem and a cartoon) from the year in question. The series as a whole was organized by Bora Zivkovic and each year he would chose someone to actually edit that particular year's edition. As well, each year they would select a bunch of science-bloggy types to help out with the pre-reading of the literally hundreds of blog posts that would be submitted, including my turn as a pre-reader for the…

Monday Links

Merry Monday. Some links for you. Science: Scientists call for changes to personal genomics based on comparison of test results Geographic Variation in Public Health Spending: Correlates and Consequences Pandemic Tests a Patchwork Health System Why the epidemiology of swine flu matters Playing catch up on flu rumors Other: The Conservative Rewrite of the Bible What Not Being Able To Buy Oil In Dollars Means David Obey's Radical Idea Q&A: Our Threatiest Threat IOZ Interviews: Malcolm Gladwell Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

Sunday Links

No more football! (unless you consider the Pro Bowl to be football). But I got links! Science first: Scienists and Engineers for America: Senate-passed stimulus package by the numbers Cuttlefish tailor their defences to different predators Game on: sequencing companies draw battle-lines for 2009 at AGBT Whooping cough on the rise Other: You can't make this stuff up Are We Going to Buy the Bezzle? Hardball Time: Ditch the Stimulus Bipartisan bromides Dear Mr. President Fundamentally flawed stimulus coverage

$500,000 per minute

That's the cost of war in Iraq, according to a new analysis by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Public Policy lecturer Linda J. Bilmes. The money spent on one day of war in Iraq ($720 million) could provide healthcare for more than 420,000 American children or buy homes for 6,500 families. And let's not forget the cost of war for Iraq itself: up to 1.2 million civilians killed, and the destruction of the country's priceless heritage.

Sb's millionth comment party in Illinois

Alice Pawley of Sciencewomen fame is heading down to Champaign on September 27th to help me throw a millionth comment bash. We'll even buy you a round of booze and perhaps some yummy foods thanks to some wonderful financing by ScienceBlogs! We have tentatively planned on meeting at the Blind Pig or Jupiters Pizza (it's a bar too - don't worry!) We look forward to meeting all you ScienceBlogs fans here in Champaign-Urbana. Home of.... uhh... the University of Illinois and uhh... corn?

Exciting new online science journal

Have you ever read a paper in your field and wondered "how'd they done it?!" You read the "Materials and Methods" closely, again and again, and still have no idea how exactly was the procedure done. You want to replicate the experiment, or use the same technique for your own questions, but have no clue how to go about it. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and I guess that a video is worth a thousand pictures. So, learn the experimental techniques by watching videos of people actually doing them. You can do that on the brand new journal, just starting November 30th: Journal…

Advertisment

Donate

ScienceBlogs is where scientists communicate directly with the public. We are part of Science 2.0, a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.