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Filter Feeding

As noted in passing in the previous post, I try to ride my bike to and from work when the weather is nice enough. In a good week, I might get three bike rides a week in, which is a little extra exercise, and that much more gas I don't have to buy. The major drawback of this plan, other than the fact that I look like a dork in a bike helmet, is that at this time of the year, riding my bike in to work has me basically seining pollen from the air like a baleen whale. I'm taking Allegra anyway, which controls the symptoms, but my allergies have definitely kicked up more since the flowering tree…

ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday 10:15am

Moving on with the morning, once again, I had to make a tough choice. OK, in this case, it wasn't that tough, really, as this was the session I was looking forward to all along: Science online - middle/high school perspective (or: 'how the Facebook generation does it'?) , led by Stacy Baker and her students. But this session has a long history.... We had a session on using blogs in science education at the 1st science blogging conference and it was quite an eye-opener. It was led by Adnaan Wasey and Lea Winerman (from the The Online PBS NewsHour at the time). Takehome message #1: a lot of…

Finnish Archaeology Journal Goes On-Line

The respected Finnish archaeology annual Fennoscandia Archaeologica has gone on-line! Every single paper from 1984 to 2007 is now available for free on the web site of the Archaeological Society of Finland. It's a great resource for scholars. For instance, the volume for 2007 includes seven largely critical debate pieces on the Susiluola cave that has been interpreted as Scandinavia's first Middle Palaeolithic site. Are there in fact any modified lithics from that cave? Or is it all eoliths and wishful thinking? Apparently, this does not however mean that Fennoscandia is an Open Access…

Science Online Advice: Overthinking Online Privacy

This is the third post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff, and the one I'm least settled about. Previous posts covered the in how-to-do-outreach session (posted Monday and the blogging long term session (posted yesterday). This one covers the what-to-do-when-people-start-taking-you-seriously session. I say that this is the one I'm least settled about because what I said in that panel had literally not occurred to me before listening to that discussion. I've been thinking about it off and on since, and am still…

048/366: Reading Race

Every Sunday, I take the kids down to the Schenectady Greenmarket, which from May-October is held outdoors, on the streets around City Hall. This puts it right next to our local independent bookstore, The Open Door, which is kind of popular with the kids: SteelyKid and The Pip running into our local independent bookstore. We have a standing agreement that they can each get one book every week, and SteelyKid can use her allowance to buy a toy if she chooses. We're amassing quite the collection of picture books, and The Pip will buy absolutely anything with superhero branding-- this week, he…

The most brilliant business plan ever

Take a look at the kind of profit you can make from various businesses. This is pretty good money. We all know Apple's business model is to build cool gadgets with high end stuff inside that it then sells at a high markup for premium design and ease of use -- they're at least creating something novel. But what makes Wiley and Elsevier so profitable? That's the genius of it all. Their customers create everything, they charge the customers for the privilege of selling it to the publisher, and then they sell it back to their customers. Imagine if Apple did that: all of you homebrew computer…

Sustainable Seafood: Here Are Your Options

I recently came across the 2005 Greenpeace report A Recipe for Disaster, which aims to improve seafood buying behavior by supermarkets in the UK. The report makes a few points worth noting here. First off, in regards to shifting baselines: nearly 90% of seafood sold in the UK is done so through supermarkets (such as Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury's). Compare this to 50 or 100 years ago when most people bought their Friday supper from a fishmonger (which means supermarkets now have extraordinary seafood buying power and influence). I also like the three options the report gives for…

Don't get mugged by voting irregularities

So, today I was on my way to the pharmacy to buy important medicine for my son. The medicine cost about 50 bucks, and I had a fifty dollar bill in my back pocket. In my front pocket, I had a twenty. Just before I walk into the pharmacy, this dude with a mask comes along and says, "I've got a gun, give me your money." So, I hand him the $20. He grabs it out of my hand and runs away. I went into the pharmacy, and as the pharmacist was preparing the medicine for my son, I called the police. A cop arrived within seconds. The cop opens up his clipboard thingie to take notes, and I told him…

The Eggs are Yummy and Definitely Worth It!

In the NYTimes today, Nicholas Kristoff asks just the wrong question "Is an egg for breakfast worth this?" Of course, it isn't, but that's not the right way to frame this. Nothing about an egg for breakfast could be worth this in terms of animal cruelty, human health or any number of other considerations: "It's physically hard to breathe because of the ammonia" rising from manure pits below older barns, said the investigator, who would not allow his name to be used because that would prevent him from taking another undercover job in agriculture. He said that when workers needed to enter…

Say it ain't so, Joe.

What a difference a day makes. Last night, the picture of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) we all had was the one John McCain painted for us: a hardworking plumber with serious plans to buy the plumbing business he's worked for for "all these years", who won't be able to do so if Obama wins because Obama will raise Joe's taxes. Today, after reality has had a chance to be heard, the picture is very, very different. Let's start with the basics: Joe isn't going to see a tax increase under Obama's plan. He's going to see a tax cut. If he buys the business, he might see an…

Maybe Noebel Was Right

Okay, I know I took David Noebel to task yesterday for saying that after decriminalizing sodomy, the gays got all uppity and started demanding other things. But after seeing this article from Agape Press, I'm beginning to come around. Would you believe that those damn gays think they actually have a right to buy products from Walmart? And Walmart thinks they have a right to sell products to gays? I know it sounds crazy, but it's true, I assure you. But Randy Sharp, the director of special projects for the American Family Association, did some crack research on the Walmart website and found…

Is less always more?

My computer has over 5,000 songs on it -- 16.2 days' worth, according to my music-playing software. So how do I pick what song to listen to? More often than not, I just shuffle the whole list and play whatever album shows up on top. But if I'm in the car listening to the radio, I switch between the 10 or so local stations I've programmed in until I hear a song I like. I seem to be more likely to rely on my own judgment when I have fewer choices. Some researchers have found similar effects with buying decisions: shoppers with just a few flavors of jam to choose from are more likely to buy than…

Funny philosophers

It is widely understood that philosophers aren't as a rule, intentionally funny. Partly this is because we are often old fogies whose sense of humour was formed in the early Jurassic. Mostly it's because when you deal with the absurd professionally, you tend not to find the funny side of things. But an article in the Guardian lists a prime example of philosophical humour. Get ready... And this marriage of humour and instruction is what makes the joke I am now going to tell you so wonderful. The logician in question, the late George Boolos, used to give a lecture in which he went through a…

Who Won The Democratic Debate of 17 January 2016?

I have studiously avoided picking a Democratic candidate to support. I will not have to decide until Super Tuesday, when Minnesotans caucus to support one or another candidate. I like Hillary Clinton for a number of reasons, including the simple fact that she has considerable experience in the Executive branch, and is a person who can get things done. If I got to pick the president (skipping the election process entirely), I'd probably pick Sanders because I'm all in on the revolution in American policy. Both candidates are actually in close agreement on most of the key issues. Neither…

ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday blogging

Too tired (and it's too late) to write anything myself....but others have done it: Sciencewomen: Overwhelmed at ScienceOnline 2009 Sciencewomen: Open Access publishing at ScienceOnline 2009 Sciencewomen: Alice's gender and science session: How can we be allies? Sciencewomen: ScienceOnline09: The day wends on Highly Allochthonous: Liveblogging from ScienceOnline... Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): What Happened to Tangled Bank? Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline'09: Managing your online persona through transitions. Culture Dish: Documents for my ScienceOnline…

Down, Out, and Hated

Robert S. McElvaine's _Down and Out in the Great Depression_ is a fascinating look at America during the Depression. Compiled from letters written to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, it presents Americans in their own words, saying what they thought was most important in the Depression. Besides the pleas for help and the accounts of the situation on the ground, there was a profound anger at those who needed help. "Paddle your own canoe or sink" one letter wrote. A "Poor Southern Arkansas Woman" wrote that she felt she was a slave required to carry thousands of idle men on…

Centenarian Open Access Archaeology Journal

I'm proud to announce that Fornvännen, Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research, is now up to speed on the Open Access side. Our excellent librarian and information jockey Gun Larsson has just put the third and fourth issues for last year on-line. Fornvännen appears on-line for free with a six-month delay (due to concerns that the on-line version might otherwise undermine the print version). In the two most recent issues on-line, you can read new research on: An Early Mesolithic settlement site in wooded Värmland. A carved stone in a Bohuslän crofter's cellar that may be a Neolithic stele…

Pulitzers for online reporting

Pulitzer Prizes Broadened to Include Online-Only Publications Primarily Devoted to Original News Reporting: New York, Dec. 8, 2008 - The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, which honor the work of American newspapers appearing in print, have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced today. [Who defines "newspaper" and "news organization"? Can I claim "A Blog Around The Clock" as one of those if I call it that way? If not, why not? Who decides?] The Board also has decided to allow entries made up…

Teaching in the digital world, part I: technology is not always your friend

On-line courses were a still a new phenomenon when I was teaching full-time. Our school was pretty gung-ho about on-line education but many instructors were skeptical, some were still lamenting having to learn how to use a computer and losing the services that used to be provided by departmental secretaries. Other instructors simply distrusted the entire idea, seeing distance learning as the equivalent of an educational scam, a kind of "get rich quick scheme" that would allow the school to collect more tuition dollars without paying instructors. I never did teach an on-line course during…

Banks Refusing to Own Big Sh-tpile

Yet another sorry chapter in the banking crisis. Remember: we need banks and bankers, but why we kept these banks and these bankers in business still perplexes me. Now, in an attempt to retain faux integrity of their balance sheets, banks are refusing their contractual obligations to buy back certain loans they sold to Fannie and Freddie Mac (and with Fannie and Freddie essentially owned by you and me, guess who will get stuck with the bill?): Among the more glaring bookkeeping fictions on big banks' balance sheets today are the values they assign to all of the bounteous second mortgage…

Who's your daddy? DNA tests go retail

GenomeWeb reports that Rite Aid drug stores on the West coast are now selling kits for doing paternity tests. The kits are made by Sorenson Genomics in Utah. Sorenson Genomics calls it the "peace-mind-test." Really! Each kit contains a swab for collecting cheek cells from the inside of your mouth and a container for mailing the sample to the lab. As far as I can tell, you buy the kit for $29.99, take a sample, fill out the consent forms, and mail the sample to Sorenson along with the $119 lab fee. Maybe I'm too imaginative, but I'm a little puzzled by some of the information that wasn'…

Jonathan's Mortuary House

My friend and colleague Jonathan Lindström is a talented man. He started out as a teen amateur astronomer and local historian of his dad's coastal Estonian heritage, became a field archaeologist, then an ad copy-writer, then a museum staff writer and artist, and now he's a freelance science writer and artist contracted by Sweden's largest publishing house. Jonathan called me the other day and told me a new kids' book he's been telling me about had come from the printers. It's named Dödshuset. Mysteriet från stenåldern, "The House of Death: a Stone Age mystery", and it's all about a contract…

York University Faculty Association (YUFA) Library Chapter letters to Minister James Moore in protest of the cuts to Library and Archives Canada

My union, the Library chapter of The York University Faculty Association (YUFA) has released a couple of open letters to The Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages in the current Canadian government. The letters protest the current cuts to staff and programs at Library and Archives Canada. The letters do sketch out the context but you can read more here, here and here. I completely support these letters. You can consider them to be related to my series on the Canadian War on Science, perhaps under the title of The Canadian War on Library and Archives. In…

Personal Technology Costs Rising Rapidly

Increasingly, the cost of staying wired is eating up a huge part of people's budgets accordinging to The Times: It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on…

attibú

Kaupþing, largest and last of the Icelandic commercial banks goes under Landsbanki went under earlier this week - classic depositor run on its UK subsidiary, Icesave. The problem came because the UK has a cap on depositor insurance, and Icesave depositors with over 50,000 pounds stood to lose their funds. The Icelandic government offered a guarantee for domestic depositors but could not offer an extended guarantee for foreign depositors - nor to should it, they took the risk when they went for the higher rate of return offered by Icesave. The people screwed are the wholesale depositors -…

Here we go again: More entertainers sucked into the "autism biomed" fundraising maw

Here we go again. Apparently, trying to bounce back from the humiliation of having had its plan to do a music and comedy fundraiser with Jill Sobule as one of the headliners shot down when Sobule found out that Generation Rescue is an "autism organization" that supports anti-vaccine pseudoscience like that of Andrew Wakefield and Mark and David Geier and quite correctly decided to withdraw, Generation Rescue is at it again with an event it's calling Comedy for Kids with Autism. According to the mass e-mail I received: Join us Saturday, September 11th at the Third Annual "Comedy for Kids with…

Emotional Advertising

I'm always startled by the sheer variety of toothpastes being sold at my local drug store. It's a classic example of excessive choice: all those different products, most of which seem interchangeable, actually make me less likely to buy anything. I dread the oral health aisle. So how do corporations distinguish their brand of toothpaste, if they all contain the same active ingredients? The answer is predictable: they spend hundreds of million dollars on advertising: Procter is backing Pro-Health with a $100 million advertising campaign, its largest spending ever for a new dental product. The…

A Case for Uniforms? Adolescent Ridicule Shapes Brand Awareness

In a new study appearing in the September issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, David Wooten, a professor at Univ of Michigan, explores the impact of adolescent ridicule on consumer behavior and brand consciousness. Ridicule, he says, helps teach teenagers what brands and styles of clothes and shoes to wear and which ones to avoid--if they want acceptance from their peers. These pressures also play a major role in thefts and violence by teens who covet expensive symbols of belonging, but who cannot afford to buy them. "Although teaching is seldom the motive of teasers, learning is often…

Slavery and the Bible, Take 2

Eric Seymour has written a response to my post on slavery and the Bible and takes the often-stated position that Biblical slavery wasn't like modern slavery. He writes: But we also must bear in mind that the slavery which existed in the times and cultures in which the Scriptures were written was not the same as the enslavement of Africans in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was not as brutal, not based on race, nor was it always lifelong. Some have compared Biblical slavery to military service. Likewise, a commenter named John Rabe after his post takes an even stronger,…

Around the Web: Yet more about the University of Virginia controversy

This is the third and hopefully final summary post on the controversy at the University of Virginia surrounding the forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan. The previous two are here and here. Trouble With Transparency A Much Higher Education: UVA has its president back. But the fight to save our universities has only just begun. Being the innovation shield After Leadership Crisis Fueled by Distance-Ed Debate, UVa Will Put Free Classes Online Going Public the UVa Way U-Va. parent: Online learning is an oxymoron University of Virginia’s peaceful revolution grew strength online Most…

The Neuroscience of Shopping

John Tierney inaugurates his new Science Times column with a charming mediation on a recent neuroeconomics paper published in Neuron: The economists teamed with psychologists at Stanford to turn an M.R.I. machine into a shopping mall. They gave each experimental subject $40 in cash and offered the chance to buy dozens of gadgets, appliances, books, DVDs and assorted tchotchkes. Lying inside the scanner, first you'd see a picture of a product. Next you'd see its price, which was about 75 percent below retail. Then you'd choose whether or not you'd like a chance to buy it. Afterward, the…

Teens talk school online

Key findings of a new study by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates LLC exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and 'tweens show: * 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. * Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college…

McCain Gone Wild

In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond, the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, at a Senate hearing. McCain's prosecutorlike questioning of Alfond - available on YouTube - left her in tears. Four years later, at her group's Washington conference, about 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by. ... McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall. As…

Money and Happiness

Drake Bennett has an interesting and nuanced article in the Boston Globe Ideas section on money and happiness. To make a long story short, money can buy us some happiness, but only if we spend our money properly. Instead of buying things, we should buy memories: A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that quite possibly it can - it's just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on…

Confessions of an organic gardener, part I.

The Ask a Science Blogger question of the week asks if organic foods are really worth the hype. I'm afraid my answer can't fit into one blog post. Let me start by telling you about my garden. This year my garden has been a home to local wildlife, but during the years that I do garden, I have a semi-organic garden. I don't use any pesticides but I do occasionally break down and use Miracle Grow and, sometimes Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). Overall, though I don't see any justification for using chemicals that might be harmful to fish or other animals in my garden, so I don't. Even in the…

Friday Cephalopod: What the heck?

OK, cephalopods, what's going on here? This is that weird dweeb from junior high school who was always getting picked on by the other kids, who is probably now running a software company and buying Ferraris like I buy red pens. Fabien Michenet

Proust in Paperback

The paperback version of my first book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, is now shipping from Amazon. Needless to say, everyone should buy the book in triplicate. I'd apologize for the self-promotion, but isn't blogging just one big orgy of self-promotion?

Just because you're paranoid ...

As I expected, Ed comments on the Washington online poker law that I posted on yesterday, and raises an interesting point: [H]ow are they going to know who's gambling without tracking all of their activity online? Money transfers to the gambling sites are all handled by offshore operations like Firepay and Neteller and those transactions are not traceable by the government (they can track your money going to the pay service, but not where it goes from there, and those services can also be used for lots of perfectly legal money transfers). The only way they can know is to violate our privacy…

College is Uranium: Online Learning

Do you like my title? I will make a connection in just a bit. This post is mostly about online colleges. I saw on TV that Kaplan now has online courses. So, what do I think about that? Here are some points. Some people can learn online I think this is an important starting point. Yes, there are people that can do just fine in an online course. Say there is an online course in physics (and there are). I think that students (not sure how many - could be a lot) that could perform just as well on a physics test as a student that took a traditional format course. I don't think this is a…

More on Internet Gambling Bill

I've been gathering information on the new internet gambling bill. No one can know for sure just how draconian it will be until the Treasury department writes the regulations to implement it, but here's what I am tentatively concluding at this point: the bill will fail to achieve its purpose. It will make it harder for people to send money to and from the gambling sites, but there will inevitably be workarounds to avoid the law and they will be perfectly legal. The bill requires banks and other money exchange services (Western Union, credit card companies, etc) to stop the transfer of funds…

Calvin Says...

"and protect us from Atkins and his disciples. Ramen." From the user Salad Is Slaughter. He has won a copy of the Book God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. Thanks for all the great entries! And Thanks to the marketing team at Prometheus Books for picking the winner! Go out and buy the book today!

Unsuccessfully Grokking Prostitution

Dear Reader DuWayne asked what I think about prostitution. By way of answer, here's a re-run of an entry on that issue from May 2006. Two years later, I am no wiser. News reports from the German brothel industry pending the World Soccer Championship have set me a-thinking about prostitution. It's one of those tricky issues where I find it hard to make up my mind. Is prostitution a problem? If so, who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators? What are the ethical aspects of prostitution? Quite apart from ideals, what is the best practical stance for society to take regarding prostitution?…

Caryn Shechtman: A Blogger Success Story (an interview with Yours Truly)

You may have noticed a couple of days ago that Caryn Shechtman posted an interview with me on the New York blog on Nature Network. Then, Caryn and Erin and I thought it might be a good idea to have the entire interview reposted here, for those who missed it. So, proceed under the fold: 1. What is your professional background? Even as a little kid I always loved animals and thought that whatever I do when I grow up would have something to do with animals: perhaps work at a zoo or in a circus!. When I was in 6th grade or so, I read the entire series of books by James Herriot and decided to…

Managing your online persona like a Superhero

Michelle asks: What Kind of Online Superhero Are You? The easiest way to think of this is through superheroes, of course. In many comics such as Superman, Spiderman, and Batman, the protagonist has double life. The characters seem to cherish both roles-the closeness of relationships with others in the standard life and the power and responsibility of the superhero life. In other comics such as X Men, the hero and the person are the same. Wolverine, although sometimes escaping into solitude as Logan, is always a Mutant. Jean Grey is always Jean Grey and Storm is always Storm. There is no…

Educational Benefits Of Social Networking

This should be interesting to all of us, be it people who study capabilities of online education or people who study teen online behavior. It also appears to be a part of gradual shift from media scares about "online predators" to a more serious look at what the Web is bringing to the new generations and how it changed the world: Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered: In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income…

Grauniad hangwringing

Subtitle: Rupert Neate is a tosser, since I don't seem to have done one of my "is a tosser" series recently. Having assailed the nutters yesterday, I feel inclined to have a go at the handwringing going on at the Grauniad; I really do despair sometimes. As Timmy puts it "Fund to buy grain buys grain from grain wholesaler" (and lest you think I'm being to nice to Timmy, it looks like he stuffed up over the Greek debt). There are any number of things wrong with that piece, but the headline "How £50m in UN food aid for starving went to buy wheat from Glencore" pretty well sums it up. Its a lie…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Jeff Ives

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Jeff Ives from the New England Aquarium to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is…

George Carlin's “I'm A Modern Man”

Like all sensible people, I'm a huge fan of George Carlin. I regard him as the very best stand-up comedian, ever. Not only are his routines funny and insightful, but they are delivered so skillfully that you can learn a lot about good public speaking simply by studying his technique. I often tell people that Carlin (and Robin Williams) had a far greater impact on my teaching style than any math ed. specialist ever did. After all, stand-up comedians have to command an audience's attention for up to an hour at a time using only their words and their mannerisms. That's pretty much what math…

The death of printed journals?

Early on when I was publishing for the first time, I published in an online open access journal entitled The Journal of Memetics. Being naif, I didn't think it mattered. I had an idea I wanted to get out, and that was the place where the discussion was going on. What I didn't realise was that this was new in the academic world of publishing. The Leiter Reports has an interesting discussion on the need for expensive for-profit journals, with most commenters to the thread agreeing that the time for these publications is ending. I am skeptical that they will, and here are some reasons: First of…

K-12 Online Learning

An increasingly large number of K through 12 students (in the tens of thousands or more) are getting some or all of their education on line. Typically, the on line resources are provided by private corporate vendors contracting to individuals or in some cases school districts, and the target audience tends to be middle school or high school. School districts and teachers (including unions) are typically reticent to support this shift. While such groups may be resisting online offerings because it constitutes direct competition, they also have valid complaints that online learning, like…