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Djurhamn 2008 Fieldwork Report On-Line

The Stockholm County Museum has just put my report on last summer's fieldwork at Djurhamn on-line (in Swedish). As you may remember, I blogged about it at the time (here, here and here). The results were actually a bit of a let-down after the sword I found in '07.

Ben Stein's Trojan Horse: Tracking Expelled's Impact

My latest "Science and the Media" column at Skeptical Inquirer Online is now up. In the column I review the likely audience impact of Expelled and focus on the use of the film as part of a communication strategy to push through "academic freedom" bills in states across the country.

Mixwit.com - a neat mixed tape web tool.

This is kind of neat. A web tool called www.mixwit.com that allows you to post high quality mixed tapes online. Here's a sample of a three song mix that took me 15 minutes to make. Thanks by the way for suggestions (on the blog and off) for the previous post.

And the other 50% of me is ?

You’re 50% Irish You’re probably less Irish than you think you are...But you’re still more Irish than most. How Irish Are You? This despite being born, and spending 25 years, in Ireland. Just goes to prove how dumb these online quizzes are! (Via Mike).

Blog Spotlight on the California Stem Cell Report

Want to keep up with the details of stem cell funding and politics in California? The California Stem Cell Report is the place for you. And while you are there, check out this reaction to my recent Skeptical Inquirer Online column on political communication strategy in the Congressional debate.

Etceterata

Just some reminders: In case the Underground has not yet sufficiently infiltrated your online life, I'm on twitter, facebook, and friendfeed. It's all great fun, but I'm still not sure what to make of all these media. Still, I'm trying them out, and we'll see what shakes out.

That dang online ads problem again

A discussion at reddit. Is it ethical to block online ads using your brower? My personal opinion: Hell, yes. I don't block Google Ads and I don't block flash ads at many sites where ads are relevant and show some taste. Site owners and advertisers who invoke guilt ethics could do better.

Cutting-edge Communication at Duke: Interview with Karl Leif Bates

Karl Bates is the Manager of Research Communications at Duke University where he is involved in a number of very cool new online projects. He is also a "repeat offender" - his experience at the first Science Blogging Conference did not stop him from attending the second one last month. 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? My name is Karl Leif Bates (Leif has a long A like "safe"). I'm the science editor in Duke's news office, where I edit press…

Weekend Diversion: Thinking about Food

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. -Luciano Pavarotti I'm not going to lie to you; I think Pavarotti's totally got it right. It's not only a necessity for living, it's one of the greatest pleasures that we get to indulge in, and we get to do it every single day. But I'm not 18 anymore, and I not only care about the taste of the food I eat, but also its nutritional value and where it comes from. I'm not an expert on this by any means (although Sharon is), but I've started to become more…

Porn, Stimuli, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

By way of Pandagon, we learn that the stimulus check isn't, well, stimulating 'values': An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will "boost our economy and encourage job creation," has surfaced this week. An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country. According to Kirk Mishkin, Head…

Cleaning out the mythological clutter

Here's a fine idea to benefit the public: an exchange progrram called Fiction for Fiction in which people can trade in their tired old religious texts for novels. It seems a little unfair, though: they're offering great novels in exchange. Wouldn't it be better to trade them some tatty old cheap pulp for the Bible? I think exchanging Gor novels for the Bible would be thematically appropriate. (Trading porn for bibles is also a good idea). The one big problem with these schemes, though, is that the organizers are going to end up with a big stack of even more crappy books than they started with…

Rental Sculpture

I'm a big fan of sculptress Maria Lundberg, particularly her work in hardwood. Now, I can't afford to buy her stuff. But being a good friend of the family, she's agreed to a somewhat unusual arrangement. I've rented one of her pieces for a year. Most artists have a large backlog of unsold work sitting around their homes and studios. This way, Lundberg has one less bulky piece to house, it earns her a modest amount of money, and she retains the option of selling it at any time with a simple partial refund for me. I'm not a hoarder. This is actually an ideal arrangement for me: I get to keep a…

Gadget Query: Presentation Remotes

I'm going to be giving a bunch of presentations in the coming year, mostly using PowerPoint on my Tablet PC. One of the awkward things about using it in class is that I have to keep walking back across the room to change slides (I prefer physically pointing at the screen to waving a laser pointer around). Thus, I am considering buying a presentation remote-- one of those wireless clicker things that lets you move back and forth without being at the computer. This being the Internet, I'm sure people have Opinions about this. So, what sort of presentation remote should I buy? Terms, conditions…

An open letter to teachers and school administrators of America

I was shocked to learn only a few minutes ago that the administration of the largest independent school district in the state of Minnesota had no idea until today about the President's intention to speak to the school children of this country next week. As one teacher said to me, "It is very hard to just add in an activity with no prior warning or knowledge that this is happening. I don't expect a lot of teachers to just buy into this regardless of the politics." That is interesting, disappointing, and shocking. It is also remarkable that the event is scheduled for 12:00 EDT. That's lunch…

The BMHB Reviewed in The Columbus Dispatch

The Big Monty Hall Book just got a favorable review in The Columbus Dispatch. The reviewer is Rob Hardy. He writes: Indeed, some of the chapters here are full-power mathematics, with unknowns x, y and z, summation or conditional probability symbols, and complicated equations choked with parentheses within brackets, and more. Math phobics won't get far with such stuff, but there is enough other material here, along with different explanations of the basic puzzle, that will be of interest to anyone who likes recreational mathematics in even the slightest degree. I was really happy to read…

Pimp Me Digital Cameras

The vast majority of the SteelyKid pictures posted here have been taken with our Canon PowerShot A95 camera, which is around five years old at this point. It's served us well, but is getting old, and has a few sub-optimal features, in particular the lag time between pushing the button and actually taking the picture-- I can't tell you how many incredibly cute baby pictures have been missed because she moved or changed expression during the shutter lag. I've got a little disposable cash at the moment, and I'm toying with the idea of getting a new camera. I'd probably look at something a little…

I apologize

Arizona has unfortunately been a hot-bed for Young Earth Creationism (YEC). Some of the smaller church-affiliated schools here teach YEC, and there are a number of groups that run creationist tours to the Grand Canyon. Up north, the Creation Research Society maintains the Van Andel Creation Research Center north of Chino Valley. And in Phoenix, we have Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creationism. For these alone, I'd have to apologize to the world on behalf on Arizona. I recently stumbled across the Lost World Musuem which is apparently opening in Phoenix NY this Fall. The Musuem's…

This girl needs a list!

In a few days, I'm leaving Mystery City for a whole month. Wow, that's a long time. It's a trip combining visits to family with a workshop and some field work, and Minnow will be along for the whole incredible journey. Fish will be with us for a week and then he'll return home to care for the Princess Pup. Needless to say, I've got a lot to get done before we go. In lieu of real content today, below the fold, I've got a partial to-do list for today. Maybe I'll update this as I proceed through the week, maybe not. Set up bill pay to cover the household bills while I'm gone. Fix the Endnote…

Now that's what I call a monster truck

Aquasaurus paint, resin, steel Jitish Kallat, 2008 At first I thought this piece by Indian artist Jitish Kallat was an oil tanker truck, and that it represented some sort of play on "fossil fuels" (and perhaps the morbidity of the behemoth domestic auto companies). But apparently that was my American bias at work. It's actually a water tanker, entitled Aquasaurus, and it represents the rapid transformation of urban India: Aquasaurus is a monumental seven-metre long skeletal sculpture of a water-tanker morphing to become prehistoric creature that personifies the radical transformation of…

Friday Grey Matters: Your Grey Will Outlive You

We've been talking a lot about life span here on ScienceBlogs, and on Retrospectacle. So, thought for this week's Grey Matters I'd talk a bit about the life span of African Grey parrots. In a nutshell, they live a long time--about 60-80 years. Although, there have been a few accounts of captive Greys living past 100 years of age! This fact is often a huge surprise to people looking into buying a Grey parrot, and should be weighed very heavily before making the jump to buy. Seriously, your getting a life partner more than a pet. Will you still want your bird when you are 70? (I know I will!)…

What is John Lott trying to hide?

David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Education: In a motion filed last week in federal court, Mr. Lott's lawyers asked the judge to place a gag order on any information that might turn up in depositions or private documents as the lawyers on both sides prepare for the trial. The motion asserts that "publication or dissemination of information that is obtained during discovery, particularly if provided without context or explanation, could be extremely damaging to sales" of Mr. Lott's new book, Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. The book, which was…

Biologically Inspired Jewelry

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven't been blogging very much lately. Probably not, which is why I don't ever do these "sorry for not posting" posts, but I'm making an exception this time because it is a very special occasion. So, apologies for my recent lack of posts, but I got married last weekend! Of course, my wedding was not without biologically inspired design appropriate for mention on this blog. On my special day I wore Nervous System's algae inspired Filament Necklace. Nervous System is a small and awesome company that combines background in biology, architecture, math, and…

David Kirby smacked down--and not by me!

As you may have guessed, I'm tired of David Kirby. I've slapped down his nonsense so many times before, but, like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps going and going and going, spewing his pseudoscientific antivaccine nonsense, all the while asking that we really, truly believe that he isn't "antivaccine." He just repackages standard antivaccine tropes in clever and dense verbiage to make them somewhat less obvious--but not to those of us familiar with them. Most recently, he attacked Dr. Rahul K. Parikh, a pediatrician who wrote an excellent and largely favorable review of Dr. Paul Offit's latest…

Introduction

We started our Statistical Modeling blog in 2004 as a way that I could share information with students, postdocs, and others in my research group. The idea was that we would post ideas and use the blog to comment on them. The blog was open to the world so that outsiders could hear about what we were doing and comment also. (We also set up a wiki but we found it awkward to use, and then it got hacked, so we abandoned that idea.) But I soon realized that the blog was really more of a place for me to throw out ideas--a convenient notebook where I could write things down and no longer have to…

Being Poor All The Way To The Bank

On poverty, personal, national and global, and why it makes sense not to have a bank account when you are poor (October 04, 2005). Espcially in light of recent news about the way big banks rip off people by depositing big checks first - placing accounts into the red - then depositing multiple small checks which otherwise would have cleared but now incur fees which, added over many customers, add up to billions in profit for the banks. This practice kills me every month. I pay the biggest things (rent) by MoneyOrder so I am not afraid of that bouncing, but I'd like to minimize the number of…

Links for 2011-06-11

The National Oral History - Grantland "The National Sports Daily, on the one hand, is a long-dead and short-lived newspaper that, for 18 months, between January of 1990 and June of 1991, attempted to cover sports in a way that no other American publication would, could, or had ever even imagined. On the other hand, the paper is emblematic of the parts of culture and media that were not yet ready to converge. Typewriters and satellites. Mexican titans of industry and American daily news. Content in too many forms. Born from an impetuous whim only a billionaire would call a business plan, the…

Passing thoughts on nature documentaries.

We've been watching some episodes of Blue Planet here, marveling at the beautiful cinematography, as well as at how emotionally gripping they can be. Especially in the Frozen Seas episode, I found myself feeling almost wrung out by the dramatic roller-coaster. This is definitely nature red in tooth and claw (and blood-soaked maw), although as my better half points out, there's actually rather less on-camera carnage than you might expect from the narration.* I think part of the dramatic tension comes from the fact that most of the animals featured in this episode are fairly charismatic mid-…

Another Reason to Buy Ice Cream by the Barrel

"Common food wrappers contain hidden rubber proteins that could trigger allergic reactions in up to 3.5million Britons some of them fatal, a study has shown." I was just returning to consciousness after spending a peculiar night floating through Dreamland on a mission to eat as many chocolates, candy bars and ice cream treats as possible when the morning news came on, sending volleys of horrifying language through the air like sabers headed for my pillow. As the clipped, rather patronizing voice garbled on the reality of what he was saying pulled the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes. I…

Christopher Hitchens' War on Iraq, Funny Women, and Reason

Maybe it sounded good at the editorial meeting: Have Christopher Hitchens, supposedly funny, clearly chauvinistic, write about Why Women Aren't Funny. And so we gots, in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, Hitchens -- who seems ever more a boorish drunk rather than a quick-witted friend of the vine; an intellectual bully who refuses to admit (regarding his support of the Iraq War) that he Got It Wrong; a one-time thoughtful leftist who finds himself stuck in the same dunce corner with the determinedly unthoughtful George W. Bush -- trying to legitimize a mix of half-baked 'conventional wisdom'…

Guest Post: Shooting the Stars on a Budget

"Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth." -Ptolemy As regular readers here will know, earlier this month I went to Glacier National Park, meeting up with an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a few years. What you may not have known is that Rich is not just into photography, but he's recently taken an interest in astrophotography, which I started noticing when he started sending me photos like this. Image credit: Richard Helmich, from April of 2012…

Missed my lecture? Here it is!

My talk at the Secular Student Alliance (given the day after the Creation "Museum" trip) is now available online. I think this video was put together by Ashley Paramore, whose smiling face appears near the end of the video — she was also one of several mischievous people who disobeyed a certain sign.

Infographic: Epidemics of North America

I dont know about you all, but I love those infographic things people create. They make statistics a lot more understandable and relatable than a chart of black-and-white numbers. Here is a cool one that turns devastating diseases into really pretty graphics ;) An infographic by the team at Online Masters In Public Health

The Tyndall Correspondence Project

The Tyndall Correspondence Project (of which I am a participant) has now gone online. Our aim is to follow in the footsteps of the Darwin Correspondence Project and transcribe the letters of the Irish physicist, John Tyndall. The site is a little bare at the moment, but more information and resources will be forthcoming.

How much cussing happens on this blog?

I'm actually surprised it's that high: Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating Must be some of the commenters. I have been known on occasion to use the word "bullshit" with reference to, for example, David Kirby, but I really do try to keep this blog fairly clean as far as cussing goes.

Finding My Place: How We Got Here, Part I

Today is the first day of Aaron's and my new "Finding Your Place" Course (for anyone who would still like to join, we've got two remaining spots and since the class is asynchronously online, you won't miss anything by starting today or tomorrow - email me at Jewishfarmer@gmail.com). I've been teaching Adapting-in-Place, for people who intend to stay where they are and want to lower their resource consumption and build greater resilience for several years now, but this is the first time Aaron and I have taught a similar class for people who are either considering relocation or definitely…

From the Archives: The future of reputation: Gossip, rumor, and privacy on the internet by Daniel J. Solove

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, is from July 10, 2008. ======= Another cautionary book about the effect of the Internet on our lives, this one concentrating on the effect that…

Around the Web: An altmetrics reading list

I'm doing a presentation at this week's Ontario Library Association Super Conference on a case study of my Canadian War on Science work from an altmetrics perspective. In other words, looking at non-traditional ways of evaluating the scholarly and "real world" impact of a piece of research. Of course, in this case, the research output under examination is itself kind of non-traditional, but that just makes it more fun. The Canadian War on Science post I'm using as the case study is here. Here's the session description: 802F Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government…

Swine flu: fast track publishing and marketing

It is clear that if you want to get a so-so paper published in a top tier journal, the best way to do it is to write about a breaking medical news event and get there first. We saw this with avian influenza and SARS and now it's being repeated with swine flu. The Scientist had a story yesterday about how The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and Science, two of the highest profile science journals in the world, pushed through some swine flu papers at record speed last week: An international research team led by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London published a report online today (May…

ScienceOnline2010 - evening events (and wild nights afterward)

The conference is only a week away!!!!! I have introduced the participants, and the Program over the past couple of months (there's a little bit more to come). Today, we'll go into the night....the dark side! There are three evenings during the meeting, thus three evening events for participants. Importantly, all three are also open to locals (or whoever is in town that day) who are not registered to attend the main program of the conference. On Thursday night, for those early birds whose flights from far-away places bring them in on Thursday, as well as for the locals who are already here,…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Circadian Rhythm: How Cells Tell Time: The fuzzy pale mold that lines the glass tubes in Dr. Yi Liu's lab doesn't look much like a clock. But this fungus has an internal, cell-based timekeeper nearly as sophisticated as a human's, allowing UT Southwestern Medical Center physiologists to study easily the biochemistry and genetics of body clocks, or circadian rhythms. In a new study appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Liu and his co-workers have found that this mold, which uses a protein called FRQ as the main gear of its clock, marks time by a…

My picks from ScienceDaily

What Is A Virus? Research Suggests A Broader Definition May Be Needed: The strange interaction of a parasitic wasp, the caterpillar in which it lays its eggs and a virus that helps it overcome the caterpillar's immune defenses has some scientists rethinking the definition of a virus. In an essay in the journal Science, Donald Stoltz, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and James Whitfield, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, report that a new study also appearing in Science shows how the diverse ways in which…

Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility

I have never been a huge proponent of the Open Access and Open Data movements in science publishing, because they've always struck me as wasted effort. I've never really seen what value is supposed to be added by either project. When I think about the experiments that I've been involved with (see, for example, the Metastable Xenon Project blogging), and what the data for those experiments looked like, I doubt that anybody not directly associated with the experiments could do anything useful with the data. It's not just that many of the analysis steps required tacit knowledge of the set-up,…

BusinessWeek sends us Airborne

Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog. Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers: For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…

Corporate blogging

Many of us who are principal investigators of academic research laboratories operate essentially as CEOs of our little empires. Therefore, I throw out to the Terra Sig readership a very interesting Sunday morning story entitled, "Bloggin' Bosses", by Frank Nelson of the Raleigh News & Observer. Of course, true CEO bloggers have to contend with somewhat bigger issues and must always use their real names: Angry customers swarmed Burt's Bees in November as soon as the all-natural cosmetics maker announced plans to sell itself. Critics consider the buyer, bleach maker Clorox, to be far from…

A Modest Proposal: Remember The Men

Absinthe has an announcement on her blog about a new online support group for junior female particle physicists. There is a new online discussion group aimed at junior female particle physicists (up to and including the postdoctoral level). The group allows junior females to talk openly and anonymously with other junior female particle physicists from around the world about career issues that are important to them. Most particle physicists at the junior level are based at large laboratories in Europe and the US. The unique work environment at these labs can lead to workplace issues and…

ScienceOnline2010 - evening events (and wild nights afterward)

The conference is only a couple of days away!!!!! I have introduced the participants, and the Program over the past couple of months on my blog. Today, we'll go into the night....the dark side! There are three evenings during the meeting, thus three evening events for participants. Importantly, all three are also open to locals (or whoever is in town that day) who are not registered to attend the main program of the conference: On Thursday night, for those early birds whose flights from far-away places bring them in on Thursday, as well as for the locals who are already here, we will have a…

Who has power?

Who has power? Elected officials: they write, vote for and sign laws, they decide how much money will be collected from whom and how it will be spent, they decide on starting and stopping wars, i.e., lives and deaths of people. Who else has power? Anyone who can affect the decision of an elected official, e.g., to change a vote from Yes to No or vice versa. How does one do that? By having money and using it wisely. How does one use money to affect policy? One: by directly lobbying the elected officials. Two: by buying off the media. I understand how One works, but Two? Elected officials…

Serbian Citation Index

SCIndex is a new online project that provides a searchable database of scientific publications in Serbia. Some papers are in Serbian language, others in English (and they all tend to have at least the Abstract in English) and all papers are available as PDFs for free download. KoBSON has more information about the project.

The Underwear Oracle Reveals All

Finally, an online quiz that tells you everything that you need to know about yourself, and it's all so simple, too! What Your Underwear Says About You Admit it, you've dreamed of being a underwear model. You're comfortable in your own skin - and don't care to impress anyone. The Underwear Oracle

Anthro Blog Carnival

The twenty-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Hominin Dental Anthropology. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to send you spinning into space like a SPACE APE. The next open hosting slot is on 24 October. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me.