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The Banner Art

I hope you like my new banner. It was commissioned from a real artist,.... .....Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage. He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here. Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers. I tried to upload the uncropped, unreduced, unmodified version of the banner art so you can play the…

Don't Give Your Friends Fees this Holiday Season!

This may be obvious to the smart readers of Scienceblogs, but let me state this just for the purpose of explaining the waste that is gift cards. You might think giving cash as a gift is tacky, but the nice thing about cash is that it doesn't expire, incur fees, or become impossible to combine with other forms of payment. All those disadvantages are present in gift cards, and according to Consumers Union, those hassles resulted in $8 billion in unused gifts. Best Buy is even counting unused gift cards as a source of revenue: "...in its fiscal 2006 annual report, the retailer Best Buy…

Programmers suck; Programs suck; Programming languages suck.

Some interesting news from the world of computer programming. A company that provides products to improve code studied a bunch of programs and evaluated how badly they were written. Cobol programs had the lowest rate of bad code, while Java the highest. Part of this is because Cobol programs are all old and have been revised and fixed up quite a bit, but it was also suggested that Java programs relatively suck because modern programmers relatively suck. For this reason, maybe Microsoft's latest Evile Corporate Decision makes sense: The new Microsoft 8 App Store deal allows Microsoft to…

Couldn't be prouder

Yowza! Within four days of my announcement about the Donors Choose campaign, you guys donated enough to more than double Signout's fundraising goal. You've raised nearly 600 bucks, kids, and I couldn't be prouder! Of course, don't let that keep you from telling your friends or checking out some of the other great projects you can help fund at DonorsChoose.com. I've added a few new ones, which you can check out here, or you can search their project database yourself by all sorts of variables. Let me also take this opportunity to note how absurd it is that so many of our public schools are so…

Countdown to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks & Press Roundup

After ten long years, the serious countdown has begun for the publication of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which will be on sale nationwide exactly SEVEN DAYS from today.  I've been posting about my impending book tour, and all the great coverage the book has been getting, on Twitter and Facebook, but thought I'd also post a bit of a press round up here, and an update, for those who (gasp) don't spend all of their time in those places.  If you don't know what my book is about: it tells the story of a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells -- taken without her knowledge…

An anti-vaccine protest in New York today

Blame Comcast, I say. Blame Comcast for the fact that I don't have a typical pearl of Orac-ian logorrheic majesty for your edification this morning. And there's so much that requires such a pearl to be thrown at it, too, in particular a study claiming that cell phone radiation alters brain metabolism in the areas where the cell phones are typically held. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow; that is, if something else doesn't catch my attention--and if my Internet service has decided to work long enough to let me do it. Yes, the reason there's no Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, laid down this…

I Want This Job!

It has 'Coturnix' written all over it, don't you think? I am even wearing my PLoS t-shirt right now as I am typing this! But, why is it necessary to move to San Francisco? My wife is terrified of earthquakes and CA is one state she always said she would never move to. Looking at the job description, everything can be easily done sitting in my pajamas here in Chapel Hill, or on a submarine, or on the Moon. It's all online: PLoS ONE Online Community Manager The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit advocacy and publishing organization located in the China Basin area of San…

Day Traders and Why We Need a Transaction Tax

Contrary to what some might think, I'm not opposed to investment bank and bankers, I'm just opposed to the current crop of banks and bankers. But even more than usurious middle men, the guys who really make my head explode are the flat-out speculators--they serve, even on their best days, no useful purpose whatsoever. And thanks to the recent stock market computer glitch that caused the Dow to temporarily dive ten percent, speculators known as high-frequency traders are finally getting noticed (italics mine): Depending on whose estimates you believe, high-frequency traders account for 40 to…

The Gospel of Consumption

Won't you read this story over at Orion? Choice, consumption, citizenship. Then reread Charles Kettering's 1929 article, "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied." Says Kettering: If everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new thing because no one would want it. The ore wouldn't be mined; timber wouldn't be cut. Almost immediately hard times would be upon us. You must accept this reasonable dissatisfaction with what you have and buy the new thing, or accept hard times. You can have your choice. Says Jeffrey Kaplan, in "The Gospel of Consumption," to give a sample of the link: As far back as…

Fallout From Anti-Gambling Legislation

Things have been crazy the last couple days in the online gaming world. The response from various companies ranges from "maybe we can survive this" to "man the lifeboats". Party Poker has announced that if the president signs the bill (which is inevitable, and will likely happen in the next day or two), they will suspend all accounts of American players. Since over 80% of their business comes from Americans, this is a huge hit to them. Others look likely to follow suit. Poker Stars has made no decision yet that I am aware of. Full Tilt Poker, on the other hand, has made public noises that…

Textbooks

There have been a couple of recent posts about textbooks lately. Jim Fiore started it all with a look at the textbook business from the perspective of the authors and students, looking primarily at the problem of money. One sentence really hit me, though: The problem with a large, institutionalized used book market is that it completely cuts out the publisher and the author. In a larger economy, it is called 'stock market'. When you buy stocks, most often you will be buying them from a broker, not directly from the company. In other words, you are entering the used-stocks market. You…

Should Food Stamps Only Pay for Healthy Food?

As you probably know the 2012 Farm Bill has food stamps on the block.  I write a lot about food stamps because they are incredibly important - one in seven Americans uses them.  One in four children is on food stamps.  When you subsidize food for this many people, you functionally transform the larger food system.  America, it turns out, subsidizes food just as many other nations do, because without it, people would be hungry.  Although food represents one of the smaller budget items for many Americans, an increasing number can't afford it.  The transformation of our society into one…

Draft Bill Threatens Future Quality Of Swedish Contract Archaeology

In Sweden, as increasingly in the entire industrialised world, the cost of archaeological rescue excavations rests upon the land developer. This is known as "contract archaeology" or, euphemistically, "mitigation". Here it's largely an affair within the public sector: most of the fieldwork takes place because of state road and railroad projects, and most of the contracts are picked up by state or county organisations. Though private foundations and limited companies do operate here, Swedish contract archaeology is mainly a question of routing money from taxpayers to public-sector…

Dichotomy clarified and simplified

I've got to stop being so longwinded. Here's a very clear summary of the entire "New Atheist"/accommodationist debate. I'll put it below the fold because it does have a few naughty words in it, and unfortunately the children will use that as an excuse to ignore the message. There are two main views concerning the reason why Americans are so pathetically fucking delusional at the population level concerning the nature of objective reality, especially in relation to the history of the planet Earth. One view is that the problem is that scientists and science teachers are no good at explaining…

Code in the Cloud: My Book Beta is Available!

As I've mentioned before, I've been spending a lot of time working on a book. Initially, I was working on a book made up of a collection of material from blog posts; along the way, I got diverted, and ended up writing a book about cloud computing using Google's AppEngine tools. The book isn't finished, but my publisher, the Pragmatic Programmers, have a program that they call beta books. Once a book is roughly 60% done, you can buy it at a discount, and download drafts electronically immediately. As more sections get done, you can download each new version. And when the book is finally…

OLPC - G1 G1

Give one. Get One. Update: Buy it from around the world.

What your Facebook page says about who you "really" are

Recently a woman had her sick leave benefits based on a diagnosis of clinical depression terminated because of a few pictures she posted on her Facebook page showing her smiling at a birthday party and enjoying a trip to the beach. Was this a fair assessment of her medical condition? Probably not--people with clinical depression can have moments of genuine joy or elation, and even sad people can fake a smile for a photo. But regardless of whether a few photos posted online are sufficient evidence for a medical diagnosis, there is a larger question: Does a person's online persona match up to…

Seventeen Books Answers

Here are the answers to last week's list of quotes from seventeen books: 1) "The way to a man's heart is through his chest." Use of Weapons, Iain Banks. This one was a little sneaky, as it's in the poem on the opening page. 2) "...Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Necessary to Know..." One for the Morning Glory, John Barnes. A surprisingly delightful little book from an author whose other works inspired the rule "John Barnes books containing forcible sodomy are bad." (Nothing was said about dinosaurs.) 3) "All is waves, with nothing waving, across no distance at all." Songs of Earth…

Introducing the Open Laboratory 2010 editor

Editing the 2006 anthology of the best writing on science blogs was a fast, whirlwind affair - with a little help from my friends, I put it together (yes, from idea to having the book up for sale) in less than a month. As it was quite a success and I expected the number of entries to double (I was right about that), I decided to invite each year a different person - a blogger and a friend - to act as guest editor. Thus, the 2007 book was edited by Reed Cartwright, the 2008 one by Jennifer Rohn and the 2009 book by SciCurious. I am sure you are all waiting with baited breath for me to…

Doyle and Macdonald, Land of Mist and Snow [Library of Babel]

That's Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, authors of the Mageworlds series of space opera novels, and a host of other books-- they're shorted on their first names, because I don't really want to test the character limit for titles in Movable Type. Land of Mist and Snow has been in progress for some time-- I've heard them read from it at least twice at conventions-- but has finally hit the stores, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. Run out and buy copies for those hard-to-buy-for relatives... The book is a secret history of naval actions in the American Civil War, taking off…

Watching the Euro

There is a fascinating article from Bronte Captial about the Euro Fix. The story so far, if you've forgotten: the ECB can't be a lender-of-last-resort to governments, because it isn't allowed to (from memory, the Krauts say No). But in a transparent fix, it is allowed to lend to banks, if those banks put up suitable collateral. And it has said, lo, government debt, that is good collateral. And so 500 bn has been loaned. Why, as a bank, would you want to buy shonky govt debt? Because dodgy Italian debt yields 6% or so at the moment, and lord knows what the Greek stuff provides. But the ECB…

Help an impoverished student

That impoverished student would be me, and I feel like I'm begging, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm studying part-time for my M.Sc., and working three days a week to support my family and pay the mortgage, bills and my tuition fees. (Actually, my meagre income has been further reduced these past few weeks, as I've been on paternity leave.) If you enjoy reading my blog, please consider showing me some love by donating a few dollars. You can do so by clicking on the orange "PayPal - Donate" button that I've placed near the bottom of the sidebar on the left (and which is…

Monday grab bag (with important question to readers)

Yeah, I'm grading. (Maybe you would be too if you weren't reading the blogs, hmm?) But I wanted to check in. I pulled my back loading the car for the last soccer game of the season. What's the proper inference to draw from that (besides the obvious: that I'm getting old and all this grading is doing nothing for my muscle tone)? How is it that if I make assignments at school they often are left undone, whereas if I make assignments on my blog, people do the work and turn it in? (Are we now awarding ScienceBlogs course credit?) As much as I hate feeding capitalism (seriously, ask these…

Science Communication and the Business Model

There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer's twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a new magazine devoted to issues of interest to women, Double X. It hit me that science journalism is not dying, it is having to adapt to a new business model. Traditional media made its money from advertising and sales. It used a broadcast model of publishing - a single source (the printing presses or the transmitters) to many…

Study: Every $1 invested in childhood vaccines saves $10 (and thousands of lives)

It’s not the first study to examine the enormous health and economic benefits of vaccines. But it’s certainly another impressive reminder about the power — and value — of prevention. In a study published online earlier this month in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that childhood immunizations among babies born in 2009 will prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, saving the nation $13.5 billion in directs costs (medical costs and disease outbreak control) and more than $68 billion in total societal costs (premature death and lost productivity). That means that…

Ed's Misadventures in Computing

So here's what I've been through for the last few days. Two trips to Lansing (an hour away), one in a driving rainstorm and the second in a driving snowstorm. Yes, it's Michigan and we're getting snow in October. On the first trip, I bought a brand new case, motherboard and processor. I brought it home, built it, and the dang thing was dead as a doornail, would not power up. I change out three different power supplies, one of which came out of a working computer, so I know it's not that. So today, I took the whole thing back, the tech plays around with it for a bit and announces what I…

Traditional Beverages

A counterpoint to Monday's question about tea: The Super Bowl is Sunday, and a look in the fridge shows that I'm low on beer. What sort of beer should I buy to drink with the game? Leave your suggestions in the comments. Additional information: I generally prefer ale to lager, and don't much care for pilsner. I'm willing to try just about anything that doesn't have fruit in it, though-- when I buy beer, I expect beer. If I wanted fruit juice, I'd buy wine. The title is a reference to party advertising at Williams, back in the day.

Is that a cute little eyeball in your petri dish?

Fellow lab rats, banish the lingering odor of LB broth from your nostrils and imagine how awesome research would be if these little cuties were your model organisms! Buy them from Specimen7 on MakersMarket.

Food Inc: "Who knows a farmer anymore?"

1. If you do know a farmer, and you grew up in a town where feed lots and Tyson plants are normal, there is nothing particularly interesting in 'Food Inc'. I had to fight off falling asleep. 2. If you dont know a farmer, but you are not an idiot, you probably will learn a couple of things. Like, we need to treat farmers and people who work in meat processing plants better, and need to do better regarding the treatment of livestock. Like the financial industry, the food industry needs more oversight via FDA/USDA. 3. If you are a complete moron who thinks chickens magically appear on…

Do I need a new bike?

I'm wondering if this is fatal or not. Bike shops in Cambridge don't seem to do welding. [Thanks to all who commented. The answer turns out to be the Genesis, £600, plus some mini-mudguards. To make things more exciting I'm buying it via the govt's bizarre buy-your-bike-from-work scheme, which (if it all works out) saves me 40% tax plus maybe some other bits. For those happy enough not to live here, there is some weird tax-dodge scheme encouraged by the gummint whereby the company buys the bike (in theory), or maybe some other leaseholding company, you rent it for a year whilst making…

A certain loss

Via Steinn, who got it from CR, this delightful story of how people are now so scared of losing unknown amounts of money they are prepared to sign up to a certain but small absolute loss (and thats neglecting inflation). They should buy our shares, like I did earlier this week, and they actually went up! Mind you I don't think we could absorb $57B input. More lower down... At least three Treasury money-market funds run by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Evergreen Investments and Allegiant Asset Management recently stopped taking outside cash, according to Web site notices and regulatory filings.…

links for 2008-02-13

Jacks of Science â Bring Love to the Lab with a Science Valentine Love notes for the deeply dorky (tags: silly pictures science) telophase: AWESOMETASTIC MANGA OF AWESOMENESS A comic book about people who REALLY love trains and the boxed lunches you can buy in Japanese train stations. Don't even try to understand it. (tags: comics Japan silly) Creek Running North » Am Spayed "They call me Thistle. I find things. Sometimes the things I find are worth something. On a good day I get a percentage. " (tags: animals blogs silly mystery) The Popdose Guide to Tom Waits | Popdose An album-by-…

Free Online Science Seminars from AAAS

I got this email from AAAS, and I thought I'd pass it along: Dear Colleague, We're now taking you behind the scenes of Science , presenting the authors of life science research papers in Science Online Seminars -- our compelling new online audio/slideshow feature. Now Showing on a Computer Near You Every other week, the editors of Science select an author of a breakthrough paper to discuss the application of his or her research and/or the methods and protocol. You'll meet leading scientists whose cutting-edge papers have made Science the premier scientific journal. You'll hear thought-…

Is the "$100 laptop" headed for a flop?

Like many who follow the technology scene, I was excited about the prospect of a "$100 laptop" (now called the XO), one that could be used by kids in developing countries as a substitute for textbooks, school supplies, and perhaps even teachers. If the software was all open-source, then the only cost would be a one-time purchase of the computer itself. A whole classroom could be equipped with all the educational supplies it needs for less than the cost of furniture. Now the computer is ready, but promises from nations to actually buy the machines have fallen through. Was the entire project a…

Busy Weekend at Chateau Steelypips

No blogging this weekend, and not even a Links Dump for Monday morning, because I was busy with non-blog stuff all weekend. Such as fencing in Lake Steelypips: OK, maybe that's too grandiose a name for the little decorative pond in our back yard. It's not all that large, but it is big enough to put SteelyKid at risk should she fall in, so it needed to be fenced. The actual fencing operation was dead simple, but was delayed for a bit when I forgot that I really ought to enclose the electrical outlet (for the pond pump) in the fence, requiring a second trip to Lowe's. Between that and an…

The Silly Conventions of Funding a School Trip

Funding trips for classes of school children is a complicated business in Sweden. This is due to two commonly held conventional ideas. One is that it would be unfair to ask each family to simply pay for their kid, since not all families may be able to afford the trip. The other is that the kids should somehow prove themselves worthy of the trip through work. Typically, this will lead to a great number of schemes and events to collect funds for each trip. And these fund-raising activities have a few things in common: they pay poorly, most of the labour is put in by a few parents (not the kids…

Palm Oil Non Sequitur

Weird argument in the World Wildlife Fund's magazine for why Swedes shouldn't avoid buying palm oil. "Sweden has such a small population that it doesn't matter to the environment whether we buy environmentally destructive palm oil or not. The big markets are in other parts of the world. But if we buy environmentally certified palm oil, then we get to have a voice in the discussion about palm oil production." How would a small group of people buying certified oil have any impact on the market for uncertified oil? Makes no sense. I don't want those producers to cultivate any oil palms…

Birds in the News 169

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Barn Owls, Tyto alba, have been used as natural agricultural pest controllers around the world. Image: Amir Ezer. Birds in Technology Here's a link to the US Air Force Avian Hazard Advisory System, a system that processes NOAA weather data in real time and uses it to provide bird-aircraft strike risk advisories. The website also shows the processed image loop of bird density data (with most of the weather removed). There also is an image gallery for you to look at. In these images, the yellows indicate lower activity…

Do kids prefer cheap healthy food or expensive junk food?

When I was a kid, school lunches didn't offer choice. I paid $1.10, and I was given four plops of foodlike substance. The entrees had names like "salisbury steak," "lasagne," or "beef stroganoff," but they all tasted about the same. Our "vegetable" was usually overcooked peas or green beans. There was a "starch," like mashed potatoes or a roll, and a dessert -- Jell-O or a cupcake -- typically the only edible item on the tray. If our lunch money wasn't stolen on the way to school, we were at least in theory presented with a balanced meal. By the time my kids were in school, cafeteria…

More healthcare

Jason Rosenhouse replies to my post yesterday about health insurance. You'll recall that I took progressive opponents of the current Senate bill to task for complaining about a mandate that people buy health insurance as if we didn't have parallel examples to see how insurance mandates work. Jason objects: For one thing, the moral case for requiring car insurance is a lot stronger than it is for health insurance. Why should you have to buy car insurance? Because other drivers need to be protected from you. Simple as that. You can do a lot of harm with a car, and there has to be some system…

More on Doctors & Payola

Another interesting article in the Times discusses shining the light on pharmaceutical industry gifts to doctors. What's interesting about it is that shows another example of how industry self-regulatory principles often have holes (here, a lack of "detail") that leave the problem to be addressed unaddressed. In the privacy field, the most notable example of this was the IRSG Principles, which allowed databrokers to sell personal information to anyone they deemed "qualified," and surprise, surprise, even criminals were "qualified" to buy Social Security Numbers. But back to doctors: In…

Prizes for Science and Journalism

Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along: 1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations: # Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. # Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date that each article was published. # Consideration will be given to the articles on the following criteria: intellectual coherence; persuasiveness; wit and relevance; clarity and simplicity; wider impact (as indicated by additional information provided by entrants in the…

They write letters

A friend cc:ed me on a letter to his Congressman, and I think he's basically right about the Wall Street bailout. He writes Congress: Please say NO. The Bush Administration's proposed bailout plan is overly broad, vastly too expensive, and lacks oversight and control that is absolutely necessary. The plan should be rejected unless it is significantly modified. Under terms of the plan the Secretary of the Treasury can do anything he wishes with $700-Billion. Anything. No restrictions, no oversight by Congress, no review by the courts. As dangerous as our financial situation is, giving…

Limbaugh passes Cupp's test; Olbermann fails

S.E. Cupp has become a minor bete noir here, partly because I've been tracking reaction to her profoundly inaccurate book. But today, she actually says something I agree with. Or at least, she accidentally implies something I agree with. The essay is a bit of sports commentary, or rather sports journalism commentary. She can't fathom why Keith Olbermann is blogging for MLB.com, while Rush Limbaugh wasn't allowed to buy a football team. It all comes down to politics, she's sure. She recites various things Olbermann has said which she finds offensive (e.g., saying President Bush foisted "fake…

Playing Nice on the 'Net

ScienceOnline 2010 will take place January 15-17, and ScienceBloggers Janet Stemwedel and Dr. Isis will co-lead a session on "online civility." Janet sparks the discussion on Adventures in Ethics and Science, asking if civility online entails something different than it does in real life. On Bioephemera, Jessica Palmer responds that an "us/them mentality" already fosters misunderstanding in the real world, and unless we want the internet to be "a bunch of bickering echo chambers," we should listen to each other with respect. On A Blog Around The Clock, Coturnix notes that written language is…

Community and Hope as Placebo

Praying Online Helps Cancer Patients, Study Suggests Breast cancer patients who pray in online support groups can obtain mental health benefits, according to a new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research that was funded by the National Cancer Institute. "We know that many cancer patients pray in online support groups to help them cope with their illness. This is the first study we are aware of that examines the psychological effects of this behavior," says Bret Shaw, an associate scientist in UW-Madison's College of…

Weber v. Fermilab - An Update

I've mentioned Kay Weber and her lawsuit against Fermilab on this blog before. Sherry Towers forwarded an email to me that gives an update on Kay's situation: Those of you getting the first wave of this email probably know Kay Weber personally, but may not know the story that has been a main focus of her life for the past 4 years. Here is her story: Kay worked at Fermilab (a Department of Energy Laboratory) for more than 18 years. She has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, is a Licensed Professional Engineer, has Master's Degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. When Kay was hired she…

ScienceOnline09 - blog coverage so far

A Blog Around The Clock: Get your calendars... A Blog Around The Clock: Will there be a Third Science Blogging Conference? A Blog Around The Clock: ScienceOnline'09 A Blog Around The Clock: Submit your entries for the third Science Blogging Anthology A Blog Around The Clock: ScienceOnline'09 - Registration is Open! Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline '09 Laelaps: I'm going, are you? The Beagle Project Blog: Registration open for ScienceOnline'09 and OpenLaboratory'08 Living the Scientific Life: ScienceOnline'09 Conference in North Carolina Michael Nielsen: Biweekly links for 09…

The significance of 2/13

Most readers are probably aware that tomorrow, 2/14, is Valentine's Day, but do you know what's significant about 2/13? It's not a cue to buy chocolates -- it's a reminder that federal law only requires restaurants to pay their workers an hourly wage of $2.13. That minimum hasn't been raised since 1991; if it had been adjusted for inflation since then, it would now be $4.89. The Restaurant Opportunities Center has conducted several restaurant-worker surveys to document issues with wages and working conditions in the restaurant industry. They've found the following: The restaurant industry is…

Can One Live Anonymously?

I've spent the last few months working with an excellent journalist on the Anonymity Experiment, which will appear in this month's Popular Science magazine. In it, Catherine Price attempts to live a normal life without revealing personal data: ...when this magazine suggested I try my own privacy experiment, I eagerly agreed. We decided that I would spend a week trying to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. I would attempt what many believe is now impossible: to hide in plain sight. [...] Tall and friendly, Hoofnagle has an enthusiastic way of talking about privacy…