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Defining the Journalism vs. Blogging Debate, with a Science Reporting angle

You know I have been following the "death of newspapers" debate, as well as "bloggers vs. journalists" debate, and "do we need science reporters" debate for a long time now. What I have found - and it is frustrating to watch - is that different people use different definitions for the same set of words and phrases. "News", "reporting", "media", "press", "journalism", "Web", "Internet", "blog", "citizen journalist", "newspapers", "communication", etc. are defined differently by different people. Usually they do not explicitly define the terms, but it is possible to grasp their definition from…

Dichloroacetate to enter clinical trials in cancer patients

I've written a lot about dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA (my last post here, along with links to my previous posts), the small molecule drug that burst onto the scene after Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta published a paper in Cancer Cell in January describing strong anti-tumor activity in preclinical models (in this case, a rat model) of several different cancers. Scientifically, DCA is interesting because, unlike many previous chemotherapeutic agents, it targets the energetics of the cell, specifically an alteration in cancer cells known as the Warburg effect. This is an idea…

1,210 Billionaires!

Forbes magazine announced yesterday their list of the world's billionaires - a record number at 1,210 individuals. The top ten are.... A billion, or 1,000,000,000 is such a large number that it is difficult to comprehend its scale relative to amounts that we mortals deal with on a daily basis. Achieving billionaire status offers the individual opportunities to do great good. Here are a couple of suggestions: Establish your own Foundation to support microlending, the inspiration of Muhammad Yunus, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for developing a banking system for seed funding to the…

RBOC: Heading in to spring break edition

Last week was a bear with 2.5 days at my university's Multicultural Forum, a day of meetings, and meeting with the geothermal people on Friday, finally making it back home (the other home) about 5:00 pm Friday afternoon. However, now I'm on spring break! So while my blogging has been light over the last week, and ScienceWoman has been more prolific because of her break, things are likely to change this week. The nice thing is that my husband and I have different spring breaks, with his the week after this one. So we can be in the same place for two whole weeks! And boy, do I have a list of…

Happy Duck Stamp Day

On this day in 1934 the US adopted the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act, commonly known as the Duck Stamp Act. Hunters are required to buy a stamp before bagging migratory birds like ducks and geese, with the proceeds earmarked for habitat preservation. The stamps themselves are so beautifully done that many non-hunters buy and display them as art. We won't be hunting them, but here are a few quotes on Birds. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I…

Fresher and Cheaper: Make Your Own Vitamin C!

Vitamin C is great for you (as pirates who got scurvy due to the lack of it could tell you), but it loses much of its potency sitting on your grocer's shelf. Fresh Vitamin C is not only much more healthy for you, but its 1/5-1/10 of the price if you make it rather than buy it. Here's some simple tips on how to make your own Vitamin C tablets. (Below the fold....) I came across this recipe from Chemsoft, and I think its a great idea. On the website is a calucator which tells you how much of which ingredient you need to end up with a certain amount of Vitamin C. Very smart! This recipe makes…

WSJ on OLPC

A summary in WSJ about the state of affairs for OLPC.[via reddit] The discussion is not very much about what really makes an OLPC. It is more about how Intel, Microsoft and other companies are actively subverting it and how governments in many countries are weighing their options - not all in favor of OLPC. The decision to buy Intel's Classmate over OLPC, someone is quoted as saying, is a no-brainer. And, it's precisely that. If kids and those in government have no brains, they should buy a proprietary system with a proprietary hardware/software and sign-up for multi-year maintenance…

Buy Critters for Elementary School Classrooms!

Zooillogix is participating in DonorsChoose, a very cool annual fundraising effort to directly provide needy schools with the materials they need. There are literally thousands of projects to choose from and we selected some pretty modest ones that we hope our readers will choose to support. #1 An enterprising elementary school teacher in the Bronx wants to buy supplies to keep all sorts of live critters in the classroom, including: hermit crabs, butterflies, worms, ladybugs, pill bugs, and praying mantises. #2 Another Bronx elementary school teachers wants to get an incubator, fertilized…

Dreams and Narrative Suspense

I had a very bizarre dream last night. I was driving to the gas station to buy milk. It was the middle of the night. (In case you were wondering, I don't normally make nocturnal milk runs, or buy my dairy products at the local Exxon-Mobil station.) As I pull into the gas station, I notice several police cars parked outside. That's odd, I think. Then, as I get out of my car, I notice a police officer frantically waving at someone near me, trying to tell them something. But I'm determined to get milk, so I head inside. That's when I notice that the store clerk is being held hostage. I've walked…

A bad week for buying drugs over the Internet

Lack of health insurance, or selective lack of drug coverage by some insurance companies, has created a large, Internet-based market for cheaper prescription drugs. There have been many warnings about the risks of buying one's drugs on-line from such sources from the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry but those warnings, especially from drug makers, are often viewed as self-serving. This week, however, saw two examples of Internet drug-buying gone wrong that highlight the risks of purchasing medicines on-line. On Friday, the US FDA released a warning to consumers that some who purchased…

Energy-Efficient Appliance Question

So, we'd like to get a new refirgerator (our current refrigerator is pretty old and beat. When the compressor kicks on, the lights in the living room flicker, and the shelf on the inside of the door is broken, which greatly reduces the useful storage space.), and being good liberal types, we'd like something energy-efficient. The problem is, our house is small, and the kitchen is very small, so the space available for the fridge (without ripping all the cabinets out and re-doing the whole kitchen) is only about 28" wide, and the selection in that small size is really limited. In particular,…

Toys to Teach Little Girls their Place

Back in July I went to a big toy store to buy presents for my daughter's fourth birthday. I got her some street crayons, a magnetic drawing board and a head dress with silver antennae. While browsing I found the product in the above picture. I didn't buy it for her. Let us cleaning!

Seattle Has the World's First Quantum Computer

The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI: And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?

New resource for philosophy of mind and cognition

David Chalmers and David Bourget of the Australian National University have a great new resource up of online papers on mind: We (David Chalmers and David Bourget) are pleased to announce the launch of MindPapers, a new website with a bibliography covering around 18,000 published papers and online papers in the philosophy of mind and the science of consciousness. This site grew out of a combination of David Chalmers' old bibliography in philosophy of mind and his page of online papers on consciousness, but it is much larger and has many new capacities, programmed by David Bourget. The site…

Reason #1493 to Love Phil Hellmuth

From CardPlayer magazine's live updates from the $5000 buy-in No Limit Hold Em tournament: Phil Hellmuth raises to $75,000 preflop. Eugene Todd reraises to $220,000 total. Hellmuth asks Todd, "Are you trying to donk off your stack with ace jack?". Hellmuth proceeds to fold and shows A-Q. Todd just grins as he flips over A-J. Hellmuth, of course, jumps up from the table in disbelief. That's gonna be fun to watch on TV.

Obama Care Was Not Trashed By SCOTUS

UPDATE: Here's the full text of the decision. Amy Howe of the SCOTUS Blog writes: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters.…

The Perfect Gift for my UK Readers ...

Here is a prehistoric album ("prehistoric" because it's vinyl) to separate UK bird lovers from their hard-earned funds. It is currently on sale on eBay in the UK (click image to be magically transported there). After you buy it, be sure to burn a CD for me. Thanks, Ian!

The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE)

Yup, I know this comes from our 'competition', the Science magazine, but it is a worthy cause: The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) has been established to encourage innovation and excellence in education, as well as to encourage the use of high-quality on-line resources by students, teachers, and the public. In 2009, the prize will recognize outstanding projects from all regions of the world that bring freely available online resources to bear on science education. Winning projects should reinforce one or more of the four strands of science learning recommended by the…

Say what? Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research

Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin. "I was surprised by the findings because the widely held assumption is that people are using their profiles to promote an enhanced impression of themselves," says Gosling of the more than 700 million people worldwide who have online profiles. "In fact, our findings suggest…

One day course in reef ecology

Deep coral biologists like myself are continually looking to shallow reefs for applicable paradigms. A new online seminar on coral reef futures sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies provides about 100 examples in a set of FREE online lectures given by a parade of stars like Terry Hughes, John Pandolfi, and Bob Steneck. It's like a dream course in reef ecology from the comfort of your own home. The only thing lacking is a printable diploma! Topics covered by the online seminars include: * The latest science on coral bleaching * The rising plague of coral…

Rand Paul and the Transmogrification of the Southern Strategy

Amanda Marcotte has a must-read post about Rand Paul, and why we shouldn't just sweep his libertarianism under the rug. I'll get to Amanda in a bit, but, to explain the title, I want to first provide some context by way of deceased Republican political operative Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-gger, n-gger, n-gger." By 1968 you can't say "n-gger" -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally…

NJ legislators call on bookstores to "ban" the sale of Ann Coulter's Godless

I can't stand Ann Coulter, but this response to her vileness is just plain stupid and plays right into her hands as "evidence" supporting the attacks Democrats that she makes in her book: QUIGLEY/STENDER CALL ON NJ MERCHANTS TO BAN SALE OF 'VICIOUS' COULTER BOOK Hate-filled Attacks on NJ 9-11 Widows Has No Place on NJ Bookshelves (TRENTON) - Assemblywomen Joan M. Quigley and Linda Stender today castigated political commentator Ann Coulter for vicious remarks made against four New Jersey September 11th widows in her new book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."... In response to these…

But it's the only good song on the whole CD!

It's almost Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: the deluge of Christmas carols is about to commence. This is the time of year when I dread turning the radio on, because I know I'll hear the same sets of songs over and over again, and the kind of uniform anti-eclecticism characteristic of Top 40 AM radio gets amplified and expanded and starts to spread everywhere. I'm always pleased to see something new, especially since it doesn't happen very often…Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over), Minchin's White Wine in the Sun? Some people get cranky about anything that isn't sufficiently…

Bill Richardson and 4 other western govs form climate pact

Western States Agree to Cut Greenhouse Gases: Five Western governors agreed yesterday on a plan to cut their states' emissions of gases linked to global warming and to establish a regional carbon-trading system, though they stopped short of saying how drastically they will seek to reduce greenhouse gases. The governors -- [from] California,… Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington -- said that within six months they will set a regional target for lower emissions. A year after that, they pledged, they will devise a regional cap-and-trade system allowing polluters to buy and sell greenhouse…

links for 2008-06-23

Postcards from Nowhere "It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money." (tags: art culture society stupid humanities)

Defining blogs and blogging

Here are some ways to define the format/genre/communication channel... etc. I usually go back to Mortensen, Torill and Walker, Jill. (2002). Blogging thoughts: Personal publication as an online research tool. In A. Morrison ed. (Ed.), Researching ICTs in context (1 ed.) (pp. 249). Oslo, Norway: InterMedia University of Oslo, Norway. pdf online. That's where I got the "reverse chronologically arranged collection of discrete posts" idea that I use (actually, I can't check to make sure that quote is exact because M's computer can't open pdfs!) Here are some others culled from articles i've…

Living Abroad? Vote in the 2008 Global Presidential Primary

The Democratic Party is doing the very cool thing this year of giving Americans living abroad their own delegation to the 2008 Democratic Convention. This means that anyone currently living outside of the US can vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary for their own 11 delegates. Voting will take place online from February 5-12 and in person on some of those dates at a variety of locations. To be able to vote online, you just need to register (for free!) with Democrats Abroad by January 31st. Even better, though, to vote in person you just need to show up with your passport. You don't…

Help Kay Weber continue to pursue her case against Fermilab.

You may already have seen this at Absinthe or Zuska's -- if so, consider this post a friendly nudge to move beyond your good intentions toward action. Kay Weber, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fermilab for (the details of which sound pretty horrific), has come to a point where the expense of moving the lawsuit forward is personally insurmountable. With a little help from others who support her fight for fair treatment, however, it can be done: As women we have a network of other women that we share our friendship with. We send emails about good news, good luck, greetings of friendship…

Health priorities

I made a mistake. First, I got a little worked up during last night's debate because, when discussing health problems, both candidates gave shout-outs to relatively rare conditions rather than to the big killers. My second mistake was more grievous. I read something in HuffPo written by Deirdre Imus. No one brings the stupid quite like Deirdre. When she talks about health, it's like a 12th century peasant talking about quantum mechanics----most of the time, she's not even wrong. Deirdre's upset. She's upset that the candidates haven't addressed children's healt issues. That's…

Southernmost Point and the Key West Butterfly Museum & Conservatory

In our last few hours bidding farewell to the Conch Republic, we stopped at the Southernmost Point marker. Regular commenter and blogger leigh (the path forward) reminded us to "get a picture of the family pharmboy at the southernmost point marker, that's classic cheesy fun." Well, dear leigh, we found that the marker does not currently look like the photo to the right - as of Saturday, the buoy is only repainted with the bands of color and devoid of any identifying lettering. In fact, this classic comment appeared in the Citizen's Voice section of the Key West Citizen on Sunday, 14 December…

Bad science? It's OK—just put him in charge of women's health

Clearly, Bush is not going to drift quietly into oblivion. Majikthise and Feministing report that his administration is appointing a certifiable kook to run the federal program that oversees family planning and reproductive health. His qualifications seem to be that he's fanatical about abstinence, to the point of making stuff up. At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, "If I Only Had a Brain") by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships…

Burp: Eyjafjallajökull stirs

Couple of new webcams checking on the volcano it is stirring again. click to embiggen Hi Res vodafone.is webcam New IR camera from mila.is The ash cloud is getting back up into the atmosphere, so the jet stream can sweep it east, Europe can expect more airspace disruption. In the meantime you can buy genuine fresh Icelandic volcano ash from nammi.is, who also do a line of cheerful commemorative t-shirts.

Best O' The Blogs: The Best Gift For Any Occasion

A Blog Around the Clock's Bora (aka Coturnix) has slaved away assembling and editing the best science blog writing of 2006, with an excellent compendium to show for it. I was not able to submit (due to traveling in China and being away from email etc) to the anthology, which I am sorely sorry for. I know that this will be an excellent read even if it is in an old outdated medium. :D Buy it from Lulu here.

Quick note: OSTP is requesting input on public access to publications resulting from federally funded research

SUMMARY: With this notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, requests input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies. This RFI will be active from December 10, 2009 to January 7, 2010. Respondents are invited to respond online via the Public Access Policy Forum at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open, or may submit responses via electronic mail. Responses will be re-posted on the online forum. Instructions and a timetable for…

Online AP science classes -- with lab?

Adventures in Ethics and Science field operative RMD alerted me to a recent article in the New York Times (free registration required) about an ongoing debate on the use of online instruction for Advanced Placement science classes. The crux of the debate is not the value of online science classes per se, but whether such courses can accomplish the objectives of an AP science course if they don't include a traditional, hands-on laboratory component. The debate is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gets to the question of what precisely an AP course is intended to do. Second, it…

Economic Disasters and Stupid Evil People

With the insanity that's been going on in the financial world lately, a bunch of people have asked me to post a followup to my earlier posts on the whole mortgage disaster, to try to explain what's going on lately. As I keep saying when people ask me things like this, I'm not an economist. I don't know much about economics, and what little I do know, I tend to find terribly boring. And in this case, the discussion inevitably gets political, so I'm expecting lots of nasty email. Anyway, with that said, I've been doing a lot of reading, to try to understand this mess. And I'll try to explain…

Facebook's "Click Through Activism": Illusory Participation?

If you are on Facebook, you have probably grown annoyed by the many causes and appeals that show up in your Notifications on a daily, if not, hourly basis. Like any new information technology, Facebook has generated a fair share of hype over its potential to "revolutionize" citizen participation and to ignite support for social causes. But like previous information technologies--ranging from the radio to the Internet--this initial hype is now starting to be replaced by a sense of realism about what Facebook "click through activism" can and cannot do. Obviously, there's little doubt that…

I want you to want me

"I Want You To Want Me" Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition Mining data from online dating profiles, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar have created a romantic, bittersweet peek into the human psyche. This video tour of the "I Want You to Want Me" installation ends on an up note - apparently "intelligence" is the top turn-on for online daters! Still, the sight of all those balloons bumping randomly past each other in the sky serves as a reminder that finding love anywhere, online or in meatspace, is a total…

Internet addiction: Anatomy of a problem

Take a look at these graphs: Most bloggers and web designers will find this sort of chart familiar—it's a record of Cognitive Daily's visitor statistics for the month of November. The first graph records the amount of traffic we received each day. Notice that the pink bars are shorter—these correspond to the weekends. You might think that weekend traffic is lower just because we don't post new articles on weekends. But we didn't post an article at all on November 14, a Monday, yet still saw an increase in traffic compared to the day before. The second graph charts a number of indicators of…

Bill Gibson is cooler than you

But he's not cooler than me. Which is one of the things I thought of several times while reading Spook Country, his new novel. If you don't want the long version, here's the gist: it's decent, he's still pretty good, buy it in hardcover, move to Vancouver, buy a Powerbook, learn Mandarin, get hooked on benzos, run a startup involving art, and find yourself some new cocktails to drink. Minor spoilers ahead, but no big ones. I really wanted to love this one. Gibson's of course been a big part of my life since I was a wee one; Neuromancer is one of the few books I've been…

The Libertarian University

Or, more precisely, a university designed by libertarians. Over the last number of months, I've featured a fair bit of apocalyptic MOOC Disruptionism in my regular Around the Web posts. Recently, the libertarian think tank, The Cato Institute (Wikipedia) via their Cato Unbound site, has put online a series of essays discussing just how the traditional academic system can be radically reworked and rethought via a highly commercialized online academy. It's interesting because they've also included some responses questioning their assumptions and the overall MOOC triumphalism that's floating…

Truth tickets and stupid offsets

Perhaps you've heard of carbon offsets: the idea that if you're going to do something that will release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, you also buy or support something that will sequester an equivalent amount of carbon. It's a rational way to compensate for necessary activities and keep your damage to the environment neutral. Well, how about stupid offsets? Let's say you're going to do something that will increase the net amount of stupidity in the universe, like, say, paying to watch some inane creationist propaganda film because you're curious about just how bad it can be. You can,…

Create a Wildlife Conservation Stamp for Habitat Acquisition and the Conservation of Wildlife.

The Bird Bloggers, led by Corey Finger at 10,000 birds, where I blog monthly, are asking you to sign this petition and pass it on to others: We propose a Wildlife Conservation Stamp, comparable to the well-known Duck Stamp, to support the acquisition of habitat and the conservation of all wildlife in the National Wildlife Refuge system with an emphasis on non-game species. A Wildlife Conservation Stamp would allow birders, photographers, hikers, and other people who enjoy wildlife in a non-consumptive way to financially show their support of the National Wildlife Refuge system. CLICK HERE TO…

Monaghan's Catholic Jonestown?

Juan Non-Volokh and Ann Althouse have both written of Tom Monaghan's plan to move his Ave Maria Law School to a town in Florida - a town where he owns everything. Monaghan, you may remember, is not only the founder of Domino's Pizza, he is also the founder of the Thomas More Law Center, which is attached at least informally to the Ave Maria Law School. He is from Ann Arbor and these operations are currently located there, but he plans to move them to a new town outside of Naples, Florida, which he will call Ave Maria Town. I'm with them, this sounds downright creepy and cult-like: "We'll own…

Tirman on Neil Munro's dishonesty

John Tirman documents Neil Munro's dishonesty. I think this is an excellent catch by Tirman -- Munro selling his National Journal story to Iraq war architect Michael Rubin: George Soros funded the survey. The U.S. authors played no role in data-collection, and did not apply standard anti-fraud measures. The chief Iraqi data-collector had earlier produced medical articles to help Saddam's anti-sanctions campaign in the 1990s, and said Allah guided the prior 2004 Lancet/Johns Hopkins death-survey. Some of the field surveyors were employed by Moqtada Sadr's Ministry of Health. The Iraqis'…

Life in Cold Blood Benched?

Do we have something against David Attenborough in this country? First his narration for Planet Earth was overdubbed by Sigourney Weaver, and now I've heard that Life in Cold Blood is not even going to be televised in the States. I got this email from Herpdigest this morning: Animal Planet just emailed me. "Life in Cold Blood" will not be airing May 7 or 14. They do not know of any new dates. Sounds like they are dumping it. Won't be seen in U.S. And the only way to see it is to buy the DVD if they do produce one. Lame. At least Herpdigest is offering the book though: Or you can buy the book…

Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship. Really?

Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship by James A. Evans, ironically behind the paywall, has got a lot of people scratching their heads - it sounds so counter-intuitive, as well as opposite from other pieces of similar research. There is a good discussion on FriendFeed and another one here. A commentary at the Chronicle of Higher Education is here, also ironically behind the paywall. Here is the press release and here is the abstract: Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled.…

Should the Bill be Killed?

I'm talking about the health care bill, of course. The people I tend to trust on these sorts of questions, such as Robert Reich and Paul Krugman (here and here respectively) say the bill does more good than harm, and sets us down a path towards further improvements later. They also point out, rightly in my view, that if this moment passes we will not have another shot at serious health care reform for quite some time. The trouble is that Howard Dean is also pretty convincing when he writes If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands…

How to Survive From Tsunami

"How to Survive from Tsunami" by Murata et al, is vol 32 of the Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering from World Scientific Books Chapter 2 has the introductory phenomenology and basic physics, and the how-to-survive bit. In view of recent events, WorldSci is putting it up on their website for free: Knowledge for Tsunami Survival (pdf) Obviously WorldSci would be grateful if you became interested enough to buy the whole book...(ToC pdf) - it actually looks quite interesting.

Darwin Quotes

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself.