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Let the YouTube Election Begin

As I've previously written, expect 2008 to be defined as the YouTube election, as campaigns generate online and conversational buzz by placing innovative ads on the video sharing site, amplifying attention to the ads by way of free media publicity at the Drudge Report, online newspapers, and blogs (sites that can channel millions of readers directly to the ad.) The latest in this trend is the high-concept anti-Clinton/pro-Obama "1984" spot. Released this weekend, the ad is linked to by the Drudge Report and major newspapers, and has been viewed at YouTube more than 500,000 times. The ad…

Egyptian blogger identifies his torturer

Abdel Monim Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and blogger, has identified (in Arabic and English) a prison officer who allegedly tortured him for 13 days at a state security headquarters back in 2003.  27-year-old Mahmoud is a member of Ikhwan Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB). The MB is the world's first Islamist movement - it was founded in 1928 - and its early ideology is what inspires most of today's Islamists, including al-Qa'eda. The MB has always been, and remains, Egypt's biggest and most popular opposition party. It is officially illegal, but is tolerated by Egyptian president…

Wednesday Whatzits: Icelandic sagas, Chaiten, Erta'Ale's lava lake and a volcano simulator

Did I mention its a busy week? The lava lake at Erta'Ale in 2008. Image courtesy of Stromboli Online. Our Icelandic saga continues, with more earthquakes and more speculation/information on the parts of Eruptions readers. Keep up the discussion - I'll be fascinated to see who turns out to get closest to what actually happens, prediction-wise. The seismicity has quieted somewhat again in the last 12 hours, so we wait eagerly to see what comes next. Remember, Iceland is the land where volcanoes helped change history, so it is always fun to talk Icelandic volcanism. The NASA Earth Observatory…

SEED

Brummell continues to review the last issue of Seed Magazine. Part III is here and Part IV is here. You can read most of the articles online now - just go to the very bottom of my blog and click on the links on the bottom bar.

Feedback

If you were at the conference on Saturday, please take a couple of seconds to let us know what you think about it by filling this short feedback questionnaire. And if you post stuff online (blogs, podcasts, photos, videos), do not forget to use the Tag: sciencebloggingconference

Food Storage and Preservation Class Starting Tomorrow!

I still have two remaining spots in my online food storage and preservation class, starting tomorrow! If you'd like to join us you can read about the class and the syllabus here, and email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com to reserve a spot or ask more questions! Cheers, Sharon

BluSci interview now online

Mico Tatalovic of Blue Sci, the Cambridge's popular science magazine, interviewed me back in April 2007 and wrote an article on science blogging based on that interview. It came out in the Issue #9 as a PDF in October, and is finally found online on Blue Sci.

New in OA

Charles Leadbetter: People power transforms the web in next online revolution Anna Kushnir: Science Participation and Going Incognito Wobbler: Digital Scholarly Communication & Bottlenecks Jonathan A. Eisen: Open Evolution Peter Suber: Aiming for obscurity (the links within are important) Stian Haklev: A "Fair Trade" logo for academic research?

99% Evil

I have finally accomplished something of value; using the the infallible methods of Gematria developed by Mr. Ivan Panin to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is, I discovered that the gematriculator has declared Scientific Life to be 99% evil. . tags: online quiz, silliness

MarshaMarshaMarsha

You Are Marcia Brady Confident yet kind. Popular yet down to earth. You're a total dream girl. You've got the total package - no wonder everyone's a little jealous of you. What Brady Are You? Hahaha. Inaccurate, as usual, but I like what it said, anyway. tags: online quiz

Are You Stupid??

tags: educated, online quiz This quiz is actually is a lot more fun than than its name implies. You Are Not Stupid You got 10/10 questions right! While acing this quiz doesn't prove you're a genius, you're at least pretty darn smart. Are You Stupid?

Living Bird Magazine Now Available Online

tags: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Living Bird magazine The quarterly magazine, Living Bird, that is published by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, is now available online for free. It includes stories (some are "web only"), streaming video and lots of wonderful images for you to enjoy.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival lives on without a hitch thanks to Afarensis, its new editor! The one hundred and first instalment is on-line at Sapien Games. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Let me remind you, though, that "sapiens" is not a plural.

Tonight's Framing Science Talk at Cal Tech

Here are the details on the talk I am giving with Chris Mooney tonight at Cal Tech. Also online are the syllabus and readings for the science communication workshop we are running on Tuesday. For readers in the Los Angeles area, we hope to see you tonight!

WashPost Chat

Once again, folks, I'll be doing an online chat at WashingtonPost.com today--in about two hours, or at 11 am ET--and I would love to hear your questions. I'll answer as many as possible. Blogging will resume here after I'm done posting over there....

Free Audiobooks

A site called LibriVox now has a catalog of over 1,000 free audiobooks.  They are all in the public domain; all have been read and recorded by volunteers.  It's a nice supplement to the 20,000+ free books in the href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. HT: href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/11/librivox-releases-its-1000th-free.html">Open-Access News

Vintage psychiatric drug advertising

This gallery is sweet! The Online gallery of modern and vintage psychiatric drug advertising has a large selection of some pretty scary old drug advertisements and packaging. Like these: I wonder what the people of the future are going to say about our current psychiatric system? HT: Dave

North Carolina

I'm off today for North Carolina, where I'll be doing some library research, some talks at UNC and at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, and then a couple of sessions at Science Online. Expect blogging to be spotty, and I hope to see you at #scio11.

Science Blogging - what it can be

From quite early on in my blogging endeavor, I was interested in exploring science blogging, what it is, what it can do, and what it can become. So, check out some of my earliest thoughts on this here and here. Then, over about a month (from April 17, 2006 to May 17, 2006) I wrote a gazillion posts on this topic, and many science bloggers chimed in in the comments or on their own blogs. The repost of all of them together is under the fold. Check the originals (and comments) here: April 17, 2006: Publishing hypotheses and data on a blog - is it going to happen on science blogs? April 20,…

What the NY Times Presidential Endorsements Say About the Traditional Media

If you're like most sentient humans, you don't care whom the NY Times editorial board decided to endorse for president. But the 'logic' behind the endorsement of Clinton is revealing. The Mandarin Class still doesn't get it. About Clinton's foreign policy experience, the Times editors write: It is unfair, especially after seven years of Mr. Bush's inept leadership, but any Democrat will face tougher questioning about his or her fitness to be commander in chief. Mrs. Clinton has more than cleared that bar, using her years in the Senate well to immerse herself in national security issues,…

The Mad Biologist's Gas Tax Plan

We should make gas taxes part of a car's purchase price. It would certainly beat Transportation Secretary LaHood's proposal of a vehicle mileage tax (and is there any stupid idea that Republicans won't embrace?): Some surprising news out of the Department of Transportation today as Ray LaHood suggests that the Obama administration is considering taxing people based on how many miles they drive. A vehicle miles traveled tax, as the proposal is often called, has been under consideration in states like Rhode Island and Idaho and has, not surprisingly, proven pretty unpopular. First, it's a tax…

The Gaza War: Answering the Wrong Question

Gideon Lichfield has an excellent op-ed which gets at the core of why Israel doesn't seem to be winning the PR war--Israel hasbara* is answering the wrong question (italics mine): But the deeper reason is this: Israeli hasbara is perpetually trying to answer the wrong question: "Why is this justified?" Of course, it's natural for either side in a conflict to try to explain why it, and not the other side, has the moral high ground. But, especially in a conflict where both sides have been claiming the moral high ground for decades, nobody in the outside world is all that interested. From a…

Why Economic Natural History Matters: Mathematical Theory Can't Encapsulate This

I've argued previously that economics needs to learn from biology and incorporate more of a data-driven, natural history approach. While mathematical models have their uses, it often comes down to those stupid natural history facts. The first example is given to us by Christian Wyser-Pratte by way of Floyd Norris: ....you work at an investment bank for 30 years, have a reasonable draw and cash bonus, build up stock in the firm as most of your bonus, and when you decide to retire you request of the partners their permission to go limited. If they assent, you get to withdraw your money over…

How the 'Rocket Boys of the NIH' Sparked a Commitment to Science and Medical Research

Even as a child Terence Boylan was a dreamer with big ideas. Collaborating in 1957 with his friend, nine-year old Terence made plans to build a rocket that could carry a mouse into the sky and bring it back safely. But Terence did not have the money to buy the aluminum they needed so he asked his father (a physician and medical researcher at the University of Buffalo), where he got his research money. Dr. Boylan told him the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to whom the boy then wrote to ask for $10 to build the rocket. The request reached the chief of NIH Grants and although the NIH…

Dr. Donald Thomas--Astronaut now investing into the next generation of great minds

I think at some point most kids think: I want to be an Astronaut!! How cool would it be to be launched amount the stars and see the Earth from space? Many kids go through this phase, they might buy a telescope and dream up moon landings, but very few at the age of 6 decide: I'm going to be an Astronaut and actually go on to be one. But Dr. Don Thomas did just that. He was a mere six years old on May 5, 1961, when the first Americans went into space and he thought: I want to do that. He served as an astronaut between 1994 and 1997 flew as a mission specialist on four different Space Shuttle…

Climate Change Deniers Being Led by...Climate Change Believer?

Mother Jones notes that in private interviews, Glenn Beck, fiery loon of the right, privately seems to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Last week he mocked climate scientists for being "alarmists" who believe that "we're all going to die in a fiery flood." Not long ago he touted the global warming chapter of his An Inconvenient Book as "kryptonite against your Gore-worshipping psycho friends." And in May 2007 he hosted an hour-long television special, Exposed: The Climate of Fear, featuring an all-star lineup of climate change denialists and promising the "other side of the climate…

Why Don't All Smart People Make Smart Choices?

tags: reasoning, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, behavior Have you ever known someone who is intelligent but still makes astonishingly stupid decisions again and again? According to a recently published study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reasoning is a distinct skill, and not everyone possesses it in equal measure, even those people who are thought of as being intelligent. A "decision scientist" at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh claims that while reasoning abilities are influenced by intelligence and socioeconomic status, reasoning ability may also be a skill that…

More Poker Arrests

This is becoming a far too familiar story. The police all around the nation are committing enormous resources to stop consenting adults from wagering on a game of skill and it's getting entirely out of hand. On a busy night at the New York Players Club in upper Manhattan, vice squad officers wearing bulletproof vests and raid jackets dealt the underground poker scene a losing hand. The team entered unannounced at 11 p.m., detaining dealers, snatching up piles of cash and sending dozens of card players home with empty pockets. Downtown, another popular card club, Playstation, also was…

Beer and Evolution

Here's an unusual couple of stories, coincidentally brought to my attention within days of each other but apparently unrelated. The first is that a brewing company in Utah, irritated by Sen. Buttars' attempts to weaken science education in that state by attacking evolution, has renamed one of its brews "Evolution Amber Ale": Wasatch Beers is changing the label on its 2002 Unofficial Amber Ale -- a title that once raised a ruckus with Olympic officials -- to "Evolution Amber Ale." The company says the change is inspired by Utah legislators and the debate here and nationally over whether public…

Nooz

Last night, a Minneapolis woman gave birth to twins. Two of them. But labor was tough. The first one was born just before 7PM on December 31st, 2011. The second one was born just after midnight, Januray 1st, 2012. This will get interesting in about 12 years.* The following tragic news story appeared on this morning's WCCO Web Site. I've highlighted certain parts of it: Are you tired of Tebow Tebowing? Well, one answers a gesture with a gesture, a symbol with a symbol. Next time you score at Touchdown during an NFL game, or whatever the normal human equivalent of that might be (…

Point and laugh

Sometimes, people wonder if criticizing creationists brings more attention to them than they deserve — it's a weird dynamic on the web, where we measure popularity by traffic (unfortunately), so referencing the bad guys sends them traffic, which seems to increase their apparent popularity. There's no way around it, because that's the way it works. So we've always got people urging stasis — don't raise a ruckus, keep mum, hush, don't draw more attention to the crappy, crazy creationists — and they mean well, but they're wrong. I say we need to be loud and tell everyone about them. We need to…

Links for 2011-12-11

Tom Stites: Taking stock of the state of web journalism » Nieman Journalism Lab The buzz about how bloggers and citizen journalists will save the day, once almost deafening, has died down to a murmur, although the buzz about Twitter, Facebook, and cellphone video cameras saving the day has picked up thanks to their powerful contributions to coverage of major breaking stories, from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street. But the triumphant march to the digital future, at least when measured in terms of original reporting, has yet to lead anywhere near triumph. Yet the picture is not entirely…

Shocking News from Academia: Special Alcohol Edition

Two news releases came across my EurekAlert feeds containing findings that I'm shocked-- shocked!-- to learn about. The first delivers the startling news that "A high percentage of young males appear willing to purchase alcohol for underage youth." They conducted a "shoulder tapping" study, in which young-looking students approached strangers outside liquor stores, and asked them to buy booze. Eight percent of the general population agreed, compared to nineteen percent of "casually dressed [males] entering the store alone who appeared to be 21 to 30 years old." You might question whether 19%…

Health Care Reform and Photography

Every year my part-time photography business does a little better than the year before.  A few new clients, a few new venues, a few more visitors to my web sites.  It's not a meteoric rise by any measure, but considering the current economic situation I am counting my blessings. Naturally, of course, when business is good I muse about expanding it.  What would it take to become a full-time professional photographer? If I replaced all the time I spent running PCRs with time spent calling up potential clients and marketing my wares, and replaced the time I spent writing papers with time…

Tagged by the five things meme

As if I don't already have enough to do, Comrade PhysioProf tagged me with this meme last night. I was also fortunate to be tagged by Isis the Scientist in her new digs at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. So, since these folks seem interested, here goes: 5 Things I was Doing 10 years Ago: (1) Gleefully watching my first PhD student complete and defend her dissertation. (2) Liberating myself from a demonic, parasitic spouse. (3) Starting a long-distance relationship with PharmGirl. (4) Releasing my first co-authored book. (5) Preparing my tenure dossier. 5 Things On My To-Do…

Teleportation Between Separately Trapped Matter Qubits

Lots of news about the Chris Monroe's group teleporting between ions in different traps. The original paper in the January 23rd issue of Science: Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits, S. Olmschenk, D. N. Matsukevich, P. Maunz, D. Hayes, L.-M. Duan, and C. Monroe. Official press release here. New York Times article. My favorite quote: The method is not particularly practical at the moment, because it fails almost all of the time. Only 1 of every 100 million teleportation attempts succeed, requiring 10 minutes to transfer one bit of quantum information. "We need to work on that…

It Can't Be The Lad's Problem, Can It?

Bora pointed me to a post at The Phineas Gage Fan Club about an undergraduate student in Sweden who has been rather severely punished by her university for appearing naked in the pages of a "lad mag". The department demanded that the student attend psychotherapy with a member of faculty, and that she apologise in front of her entire year. They then barred the student from going on work placement (which all the other students in her year were doing), leaving her to work in the department (presumably photocopying and boiling coffee). I have to agree with Johan that this is an expression of…

Fixing Nemo

Scibling Rebecca Skloot's new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is coming out next month. To celebrate I thought I'd dredge one of my favorite pieces of hers out of the archive: "Fixing Nemo." Dr. Helen Roberts was about to make the first incision in what should have been a standard surgery -- a quick in-and-out procedure -- when she froze. ''Bonnie,'' she said, turning to her anesthesiologist, ''is she breathing? I don't see her breathing.'' Roberts's eyes darted around the room. ''Grab the Doppler,'' she told her other assistant. ''I want to hear her heart. Bonnie, how's she doing…

Better than Talk Like a Pirate Day

I have a confession to make. I've never really understood the whole pirate schtick that PZ and some other bloggers find so amusing and that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has included as an integral part of the great religion of Pastafarianism. I suppose that makes me an apostate or something like that, but I guess I just never really "got it." And I really never got Talk Like A Pirate Day, which, it just so happens, was yesterday. I realize that I probably risk being excommunicated from the ScienceBlogs collective by admitting that, but there it is. Oh, long ago, I tried to curry favor and fit…

Alar (That doesn't taste like apples!)

Like auxins, (see also) alar is a small molecule that modulates plant growth: Chemists will recognize the N-N moiety as a hydrazine, some nasty stuff (and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine is a hydrolysis product of this stuff). Back in the late '80's, there was a huge cancer scare about this stuff - and farmers were spraying it all over our fruit. It's regarded as many corners as an overblown food scare, but some insist that this was the beginning of a slippery slope towards food libel laws (the basis for Texas ranchers suing Oprah Winfrey for saying she was done with beef during her mad cow episode…

Sequencing your genome just got cheaper

Jay Flatley, CEO of sequencing giant Illumina, announced at the Consumer Genetics Conference today that the company had reduced the price of its retail whole-genome sequencing service. At $19,500 this still isn't in the realm of an impulse buy for most of us, but it's a long way down from the $48,000 that Illumina offered at the launch of its service, and more than an order of magnitude below the $350,000 price paid for the first ever retail genome.  Illumina's press release notes that bulk orders of 5 or more genomes drop the price to $14,500 per genome, and "[i]ndividuals with serious…

A little pareidolia, anyone?

Ya gotta love it. Whether it be the Virgin Mary under a freeway overpass on W. Fullerton Avenue in Chicago or on a window in Perth Amboy, NJ, or the face of Jesus on a shell, on the wall of a shower, on a sand dune, a potato chip, or (my personal favorite) a pierogi, it would seem that human capacity to attribute miracles to the tendency of the human brain to see images in patterns is never-ending. This time, Jesus has appeared to a man in Connecticut, who, according to this story, is selling holy hardware on Ebay. (Where else?): MANCHESTER, Conn. Feb 26, 2006 (AP)-- Thomas Haley was…

Credit Cards and the Brain

David Brooks' column today is filled with some depressing financial facts: Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said. State governments aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Fifty-six percent of…

The incredible leaf-tailed geckos (gekkotans part V)

Before I start, allow me to announce that Tet Zoo merchandise is now available! So far, I've only used the Tet Zoo logo for these products, but I might produce additional designs in time. Anyway... welcome to another article in the Tet Zoo gekkotan series. I really want to get through to the end without too many distractions (like amphiumas, wayward grey whales, manatees, white rhinos, giraffe-necked tortoises), otherwise I might never finish. Look what happened with toads and temnospondyls - so much work left to do! Anyway... by now, the generalities of gekkotan diversity, biology and…

Bad Faith Criticism of Science

I've recently written about the Serengeti Strategy, a coin termed by climate scientist Michael Mann to describe the anti-science strategy of personal attacks against individual scientists in an attempt to discredit valid scientific research one might find inconvenient. Science Careers (from Science Magazine) has a new item called "Science under the microscope" looking at bad faith criticism of science and scientist. Some of this comes from within science itself, where the term "torpedo" is sometimes used. Rival scientists do take shots at each other in the peer review or grant review…

Declan Butler's interview with Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari

Nature's senior correspondent, Declan Butler, was one of the first to raise the profile of a pandemic threat in the scientific community and has had done some superb reporting since, including several stories on sharing gene sequences. The problematic actors in his earlier stories were respected scientists and the business-as-usual way they were approaching release of genetic sequences even as the world worried that the virus they were studying, influenza A, was inexorably searching for the right recipe to enhance its own raison d'etre, to make still more copies of itself, potentially with…

Coal mining industry insisted on new dust sampling technology, now they don't want MSHA to use it

It's too late for Ronald Martin of Dema, Kentucky. "I'm in last stage of black lung," he wrote in shaky script, "please help the miners so they won't suffer like I suffer. I can't breathe but a little." Mr. Martin sent his note to the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to comment on the agency's proposed rule to reduce workers' exposure to respirable coal mine dust---the dust that damaged his lungs so severely. Other coal miners also sent their comments to MSHA, urging the agency to put a more protective regulation in place as soon as possible to prevent…

Washington's Anti-Gambling Law and Free Speech

Once again, the ban on internet gambling in Washington state has a pernicious effect. After seeing the state issue cease and desist letters to publications that even mention online gambling, at least two magazines have been forced to pull all subscriptions to that state. Happy 4th of July, eh?

New Blog

There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth reading.

New Blog

There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth reading.