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Encephalon 27

The 27th edition of Encephalon is online now at The Neurocontrarian. The next edition will be hosted by the Bohemian Scientist on 30th July. If you'd like to contribute, send your links to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com.

Interactive Climate Change Map

This interactive climate change outcomes map is an ongoing project by the Center for American Progress. More on the rationale here and instructions for adding your own data points here. It's a nice example of an interactive online project that clearly cites scientific sources.

Prepare a tribute to Sagan

Via Byzantium's Shores, I have learned that there will be a Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon on 20 December, the anniversary of his death. I notice there's also a Skeptics' Circle scheduled for the 21st at Humbug! Online…there are opportunities for some synergy here!

CO2: Good or Bad

Guardian Online is running a couple of responses to Wallace Broecker's call for carbon storage experiments in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Worth reading all to understand the pros and cons for yourself. CO2 disposal in the ocean is a dangerous distraction Deep divisions

Dawkins ↑, Fodor/Piattelli-Palmarini ↓

The long-awaited review of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini's anti-evolution book by Jerry Coyne is now online in The Nation. It's a double-review of both the bad philosophy book and the good science book by Dawkins. Settle in for a nice read.

Zyprexa, Infinite Mind, and mainstream vs. pajama press

I stirred some ire last week when I asserted that the Times (for -- disclosure dept -- whom I sometimes write) and similar mainstream papers offer a public good through their unique combination of a) access to information and 2) clout with the public and government. Several readers took me to task (see the comments section of the post linked above), arguing that these papers have failed their public mission by dropping the ball several times lately, most notably during the run-up to the Iraq War. "Let the dinosaur die," is the argument. In a similar vein, some science bloggers (see this post…

Seeds in Svalbard: Your Pork Belly Future?

Senator McCain thinks the effort to preserve our horticultural record and a potential treasure trove for medicinal science is a waste of money. This morning, I went to Senator McCain’s town hall meeting at the Jewish Community Center in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News made it sound as if I was part of some sneaky infiltration: "The mainstream media has basically given McCain a free ride so far by not asking him tough questions," wrote Michael Huttner, president of ProgressNow. "So it’s important for citizens to ask those questions ourselves." The group became concerned, however, when the…

Facebook Friends

In the latest Seed, there's an interesting dialogue between political scientist James Fowler and physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. I was particularly intrigued by their ruminations on the network dynamics of Facebook: JF: When we move from five friends in real life to 500 on Facebook, it's not the case that we are having a close, deep relationship with each of those 500 friends. In fact, one of the intriguing things I've noticed about these online networks is that they have a property that's different from realworld social networks. As you know, in the real world, popular people tend to be…

First Day at PloS

This post has been written in advance and scheduled for automatic posting. At the time this post shows up, I'll be sleeping my first night in San Francisco. A few hours later, I'll be at PLoS offices and will hopefully have online access soon after so I can post my first impressions. As most of you probably know, I got a job as an Online Community Coordinator at PLoS ONE. Today is my first day at the job! I got the job in an unusual way as well - by posting about it on my blog (and the managing editor posting a comment "Is this a formal application?"). The rest is, as they say, history…

#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web".

Session description: Our panel of journalist-blogger hybrids - Carl Zimmer, John Timmer, Ed Yimmer Yong, and David Dobbs- will discuss and debate the future of science journalism in the online world. Are blogs and mainstream media the bitter rivals that stereotypes would have us believe, or do the two sides have common threads and complementary strengths? How will the tools of the Internet change the art of reporting? How will the ongoing changes strengthen writing about science? How might these changes compromise or threaten writing about science? In a world where it's possible for anyone to…

The Cool Aunt of the scienceblogging community: Interview with Janet Stemwedel

Janet Stemwedel a.k.a. Dr.Free-Ride is the blogmistress of Adventures in Ethics and Science and the Science Blogging Conference last month was her second appearance here - last year she was the Keynote Blogger-Speaker and this year she led a session on Science Blogging Ethics. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real Life job? Hi Bora, thanks for having me! I'm a middle-aged, almost mid-career academic who came from the East Coast to the San Francisco Bay Area…

'Generation' is the mindset, not age

Words of wisdom (via): The internet isn't a decoration on contemporary society, it's a challenge to it. A society that has an internet is a different kind of society than a society that doesn't. I agree. And people, regardless of chronological age, appear to separate along "generational" lines, with the word "generation" really meaning how much they grok the immenseness of the societal change. It changes everything: politics, economics, media, science, environment, public health, business.... The "old" generation thinks of the Internet as yet another place to put their traditional…

This Compromise Doesn't Seem Like Victory: Politics Has Real-World Effects

There's been a lot of back-and-forth in the Democratic bloggysphere about whether the budget deal is a good or a bad deal. While the political maneuvering, framing of issues, and so on matters--matters greatly--the discussion seems to have ignored the actual consequences of many of the stated budget cuts. And macroeconomic effects are important too, but many programs actually do important, critical stuff. Think Progress gives us some examples: Here are just some of the cuts included in the deal, which should be voted on by the end of the week: - Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for…

UC Davis, #1 ecology & evolution program?

I see that UC Davis is touting that its ecology & evolutionary biology program was ranked #1 by US News and World Report. Check out the "Best Graduate Schools" online sampler at US News and World Report. I had a friend who narrowly chose Harvard over Davis for evolutionary ecology, so it doesn't surprise me that much. In ecology & evolutionary biology Berkeley & Harvard were #2 & #3 respectively. Does this mean anything? I don't know, I don't really think so on the most basic of levels: do US News & World Report's graduate school rankings give you information you wouldn…

Not an "accident": Jesus Mendizabal, 43, suffers fatal work-related injury on Staten Island, NY

Jesus Velazquez Mendizabal, 43, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, November 28, while working for Formica Construction in Travis, NY located on Staten Island. SILive.com provides some of the details on the worker’s death: “Mendizabal and three workers were dismantling the old [Dana Ford Lincoln] dealership…when the mezzanine gave out and collapsed to the ground." Mendizabal was “trapped under the rubble. ...The other three workers escaped the cave-in unharmed.” Mendizabal had been employed by Formica Construction for 10 years. NY1.com reports: "Officials say they received a…

XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome: A Tale of Two Three Laboratories

Laboratory #3-- Huh. This letter was written by the lead author of the Netherlands study on XMRV in CFS on April 22. Here it is (looks at calendar), May 5th, and I have yet to see this 'response' published online anywhere but here. Its so weird that the Whittemore Peterson Institute didnt post it online yet, considering how 'Web 2.0' they are. Huh. I mean, I dont even know how I got it, and I got it and published it online. What is holding up the WPI? I dont understand... Dear dr. Whittemore, Apparently you wrote a letter to dr. McClure in which you make serious allegations about us (…

Free Market Frenzy

From the archives: (13 March 2006) If sellers are allowed to compete freely without any regulations, market forces will inevitably drive down prices and improve the quality of services so that everyone wins, even the consumer--or so the dogma goes. Life is rarely so simple, and markets don't always behave so predictably. In the case of energy, in fact, deregulation has had the opposite effect, catalyzing massive price increases. Although this is not a new phenomenon, Sunday's Washington Post details some of the more recent problems consumers have faced after buying into deregulation…

Lazy Sunday Reading: From Linotype to Hyperlinks

Linotype operators work in the composing room at the P-I building at 6th and Wall Street in December, 1948. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer photo) To follow up on my post about science journalism and blogs, a few reading links dealing with science in society, journalism, and the transformation of media. First, Peter Dizikes revisits C.P. Snow's ubiquitous "two cultures", fifty years later: "The Two Cultures" actually embodies one of the deepest tensions in our ideas about progress. Snow, too, wants to believe the sheer force of science cannot be restrained, that it will change the world -- for…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Andrew Farke

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 Andy Farke from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, CA 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…

Beam Me Up

Recently, Rhizome.org invited me to contribute a long-form article to their Rhizome Writer's Initiative, a new program designed to give emerging and established writers the opportunity to pontificate on the world of new media arts. I was glad to do it, especially when I realized that the exhibition I was to review is called "Beam Me Up" and that the themes it dissects coincide neatly with my recent re-appreciation of Star Trek. I include my finished article here on Universe because I think some of the ideas discussed in it dovetail well with the recent topics here--systems, complexity,…

Blogging to learn

The post yesterday where I reflect David Dobb's departure from ScienceBlogs made me reconsider why I blog. There are many sorts of blogs out there. Some, like The Daily Kos, are involved in affecting social and political change. Others are basically notepads for personal hobbies. Many blogs are run by writers who have a "beat" and try out ideas and supplement their print content on the web. And so on. So why do I blog? To learn. I've made this pretty implicitly clear before, but I thought I would make it totally clear. This doesn't mean that other people can't learn from me, but,…

Best Science Books 2013: Booklist Online

Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets. From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it. The previous posts for all the 2013 lists are here. This time it's Booklist Online Editors’ Choice: Adult Books, 2013. Catching Cancer: The Quest for Its Viral & Bacterial Causes by Claudia Cornwall In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America by Laurie Edwards Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by…

Limits on information, continued

Good timing. Just Friday we were discussing limits on biological knowledge, particularly in regard to bioterrorism and the potential for information to fall into the wrong hands (or be used for the "wrong" purposes). Today, msnbc.com has an article discussing this exact issue: Eckard Wimmer knows of a shortcut terrorists could someday use to get their hands on the lethal viruses that cause Ebola and smallpox. He knows it exceptionally well, because he discovered it himself. In 2002, the German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live, fully…

The 21st Century Workplace is wherever you and your laptop happen to be

12 New Rules of Working You Should Embrace Today. As you know, point #4 is one of my pet peeves: 4. People don't have to be in an office. This is the one I wish most businesses would get, right now, right away. It's so obvious once you get away from the traditional mindset. Traditionally, people worked in offices (and of course most still do). They go into the office, do their work, go to meeting, process paperwork, chat around the watercooler, clock out and go home. These days, more and more, that's not necessary. With mobile computing, the cloud, online apps and collaborative processes,…

Links for 2011-07-22

If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault - Anil Dash "As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we've developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online. But, by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to…

links for 2009-06-10

Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online - NYTimes.com "Westport school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes. The percentage of the districtâs 10th graders receiving top scores on state exams rose to 86 percent last year from 78 percent in 2006. Advanced Placement calculus and statistics classes enrolled 231 students this year, from 170 in 2006, and a record 44 students will be able to take multivariable calculus this fall, up from…

Strange Travels, Part 6: Sciblings Party

My adventures in NY, continued: Friday Night We attend a private party at Seed Editor, Adam Bly’s house. The catering is rich and delightful, with an exotic assortment of cheeses and antipasto. We all nosh, drink a bit of wine, and listen to well-spoken words from Adam and Katherine. I get the opportunity to talk a little with Bora and his wife, Katharine, who are wonderful people. (Bora’s enthusiasm for getting bloggers to network is an invaluable asset, online or off.) After we’re all stuffed with fine food and conversation, we find our way into a tiny dive in the East Village,…

Introductions

Hello Science Blogs! I am Alex Wild, and insofar as Photo Synthesis is concerned, Mr. April. No centerfolds, fortunately for you. I normally blog elsewhere, but I am here at Photo Synthesis for the month and honored that the Science Blogs crew chose me as their inaugural photoblogger. I became a photographer by accident. As an entomologist, several years ago I started posting photographs of my six-legged study subjects to my web site, naively unaware of the market for science photography. After a time I began hearing from textbook publishers and photo editors interested in licensing…

BP's Black Beach Burden

Teaser for "Black Beach" from Fourth World Media, LLC on Vimeo. Video. I recently wrote about "oil-eating microbes" and the lack of evidence that they will offer a solution to cleaning up the environmental nightmare that began last April after the BP oil spill. What will BP's "black beach" burden become? I believe that new technologies will guide us towards a solution and hope that it will provide enduring lessons that will prevent such an environmental disaster from ever happening again. As is now commonplace in regions in crisis, online social networking can serve as a powerful tool in…

My salad days

I eat a lot of salad. Not because I think they are healthy but because I like salads. When I go to lunch at the hospital cafeteria I usually eat from the salad bar, and believe me, that's not a pro-health measure. You'd know what I mean if you saw the salad bar. But green leafies are supposed to be good for us, too, so that's a bonus. But a new study from CDC suggests that they are not quite as healthy as they once were: Over the past 35 years the proportion of foodborne outbreaks linked to the consumption of leafy green vegetables has substantially increased and that increase can not be…

The Future of Archaeology

I've been asked to write an opinion piece about the future of Swedish archaeology for a high-visibility venue. This, as you can imagine, I enjoy doing a lot. Here's an excerpt from the piece as it's looking at the moment. Swedish academic archaeology should continue its on-going voyage back towards health and sanity, away from the pretentious introverted nadir of a decade ago, and be a robustly empirical science. We should return to a stricter definition of what archaeology is and what we will allow archaeological research funding to be used for. I submit, without any pretence to originality…

Bombshell Revelation in Plame Case

Yesterday's release of court documents from the special prosecutor in the Scooter Libby case, which say that Libby has testified that he was expressly told that President Bush himself had signed off on the release of classified information, could be the bombshell that brings down Bush. My father, a lifelong Republican, called me yesterday and said, "That's the last straw. It's time to impeach this man." I've got a couple long quotes, which I'll put below the fold. The first is from the LA Times story on this revelation: According to the new court filing, Libby testified to a grand jury that…

Links for 2012-02-29

scott_lynch: Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain I was a hard-core Sesame Street viewer from about 1979 to 1984, and my memories of the show are the sort of deep nostalgic tangle you'd expect, with a great deal of idiosyncratic noise blended into the signal. So, for many years, I carried around a vague but emotionally vivid recollection of a Sesame Street episode in which Big Bird and Snuffleupagus had witnessed the the passage of a soul to the ancient Egyptian afterlife, complete with the weighing of the human heart against a feather. I shit you not. "What is unacceptable…

FT: The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable

A happy story for once. Isn't that nice? The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable (archive) from those commie pinkos at the FT: ...the disruptive impact of green energy on companies — and entire industries — around the world. After years of hype and false starts, the shift to clean power has begun to accelerate at a pace that has taken the most experienced experts by surprise... Wind and solar parks are being built at unprecedented rates, threatening the business models of established power companies. Electric cars that were hard to even buy eight years ago are selling at…

Moses Viney

This week was Founder's Day at Union, one of the three big academic-procession events of the year (the others being Convocation in the fall, and Commencement in June), and this year's event had a clear theme about race and equality, with the keynote speech being given by James McPherson on Union's connection to the abolitionist movement in the early 1800's. In addition to McPherson's talk, there was the official unveiling of a portrait of Moses Viney, an escaped slave who came to Schenectady and became a coachman and messenger for Eliphalet Nott, the towering figure of the College's early…

Technical Analysis as an Indicator

Personally I'm very skeptical of technical analysis, but that's just because I am skeptical of easy answers. But try to parse this article over at bloomberg titled "Stock Charts Fail Forecast Test in Complete S&P Miss." We begin with Ever since the Standard & Poor's 500 Index peaked in October 2007, six of eight strategies -- which are supposed to make money whether stocks rise or fall -- failed, according to back-testing data compiled by Bloomberg. As the bear market erased $11 trillion from the value of U.S. equities, buy and sell signals from those six technical indicators…

Why health insurance reform is doomed

I know we're just hours away from the nail-biting climax of the Copenhagen conference at which the fate of humanity hangs in the balance (or not), but a Daily Kos post explaining why efforts to reform health insurance in the U.S. have amounted to nothing has fallen into my "must read" category. One paragraph should be enough to whet your appetite for outrage/resignation: So here's what you have to understand. If the health insurance and financial industries really felt scared by any particular politician or political party, or their lobbying efforts were inadequate, they could throw them out…

Lighting underwater photos

We see this happen all the time here in Hawaii: Tourists go snorkeling -- sometimes for the first time in their lives -- and they are excited by what they see. They decide they want to take pictures of all the pretty fishies and corals to show their friends back home. They buy a single use waterproof camera, they snap away, and they are sorely disappointed when they see the result. Most of the photos are blurry, and though they thought they were shooting in color, all of the images are monochrome -- blue monochrome. For quite a few reasons, taking photos underwater is very different from…

An Important Message for Undergrad RAs

As graduate students, we all invariably, at one point or another, mentor or oversee an undergraduate research assistant who is doing research in our labs either on a volunteer basis or for credit. Occasionally in the summer, they get paid to do it, if the lab has an active grant with funding for that. In my graduate career, I've overseen a handful of undergrad RAs. Sometimes they were helping with general lab tasks, sometimes they were helping with my own research. When I was an undergrad, I, myself, was an undergrad RA. When I was an undergrad RA, I regularly brought snacks in to the lab to…

Do You Have to Grow Food?

Because of the enormous impact of agriculture on climate change, pick up any book about "green" solutions and you'll find the suggestions that you grow a vegetable garden. Bang into the "we can't go on as we are" end of the environmental movement (mine), and you'll see the general assumption that growing food is part of any process of adaptation to lower resource use. This often then morphs into the assumption that all of us should be able to grow all of our food, or a vast majority of it - that sustainability means the country life for everyone. You might think that because I do produce a…

Poll crashing makes the news

PBS has an article on poll crashing, which interviews yours truly and Greg Laden about our curious penchant for sending mobs out to vote on silly online polls. They also interview some of the recipients of the floods…and no one seems to mind.

I've been there!

Down House in Kent has been closed for renovations, but it's been opened to the public again. Take a tour of the place online — it sounds like there were some significant additions to the exhibits. Which means, of course, that I have to go back again soon.

Pollan Alert

In this Sunday's NY Times Magazine (not available online yet), Michael Pollan will have the cover story: "The Age of Nutritionism: How Scientists have Ruined the Way We Eat." Looking forward to reading (and perhaps blogging) it. Update: You can now read it here.

Open Access in Italian

The podcast of the radio interview with Derek Law and me about Open Access is now available online. Most of the show is in Italian, but if you cannot understand it, our interview is in English and it starts at the 22:07 minute point.

What is Your Inner Child Like?

Your Inner Child Is Surprised You see many things through the eyes of a child. Meaning, you're rarely cynical or jaded. You cherish all of the details in life. Easily fascinated, you enjoy experiencing new things. How Is Your Inner Child? tags: online quiz

Fish Quiz

In an effort to help us learn more about our common ancestor with the fishes, I found a quiz that tests your knowledge of modern fish. (Pictured above: Coelacanth. Image linked to source) My score - 100% That was rather easy, wasn't it? tags: fish, online quiz

I am a Parisian At Heart

tags: online quiz How about you? You Should Learn French C'est super! You appreciate the finer things in life... wine, art, cheese, love affairs. You are definitely a Parisian at heart. You just need your tongue to catch up... What Language Should You Learn?

Name That Robot

tags: Name that Robot, online quiz, fun and games I know you all have suspected this, but now you finally have confirmation that it's true; I am not a robot geek! I correctly named three robots (or maybe four, but that would have been an accident, I assure you). Wow!

Hank Fox rises again

One of our regulars here is Hank Fox, and some of you may have noticed his website has been rather static lately. Check again! He's back at it, and in case you're looking for a professional proofreader and editor, he's offering his services online.

Encephalon, and Tangled Bank on the way

The newest edition of Encephalon is online. And while you're thinking about science carnivals, I'll remind you that the next Tangled Bank will be at Archaeoporn on Wednesday, so it's time to send those links in to me or host@tangledbank.net.