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Buy Carl Zimmer's Book. Now.

Look, folks. It's this simple. Carl Zimmer is one of our very best science writers. If not the absolute best bar none. So if you like reading about science, go buy his newest, Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. And don't wait--the book is just out, and if you buy now you drive up the Amazon.com numbers, which every writer loves....

There is no need for a 'Creepy Treehouse' in using the Web in the classroom

I love the way Web works! So, I was on FriendFeed earlier today and I saw through this link there that Paul Jones posted a note on Pownce (on which I am registered but never check) about this article in Raleigh N&O: An iPod Touch for each student? A Chapel Hill middle school could become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys. It's still not clear how the iPod Touches would be used at Culbreth Middle School. And school…

The Psychology of Video Game Addiction

I love video games. Hell, I was raised by Mario, Luigi, Sonic, and Yoshi and eagerly anticipated every new upgrade of the Nintendo console. My parents understood, they were of the Atari generation and saw video games as harmless fun on a rainy Florida afternoon, and perhaps even "good" for improving hand-eye coordination. I played outside like any normal kid, had friends, did schoolwork, grew up, and went to college. However, video games followed me through all of it. And while I don't play much anymore, a new Final Fantasy game or a Wii demo at Best Buy is still capable of raising my blood…

Science Online 2012 feedback -- and ideas for #scio13!

Well, I survived. Science Online 2012 took place this past weekend and it was a blast. There's already been quite a bit of discussion in blogs and on Twitter about how it went. A very small selection of the them bits are: Scattered reflections about ScienceOnline 2012 (#scio12) Science Online North Carolina (a nice Storify) Scientists have .... (impressions from #scio12) Sex, Gender, and Controversy, a #scio12 WRAPUP Science writing, in context But there's way more that I've missed, I'm sure. One of the things the stellar organizing committee of Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn…

Garden 2010: The Calendar

Note: This is a repeat from ye olde blogge, because I think this is a really useful, and probably obvious tool that wasn't obvious to me. It has made everything so much easier. I also wanted to put in the plug for the Ozone House Calendar! Those of who know me in real life will probably already have noted that organization isn't my strong suit. So how to keep up with all the garden tasks is a chronic problem of mine. I get particularly muddled in late spring, when there are plants to be seeded outside, tender crops to be hardened off in cold frames, and long-growing fall garden plants like…

So you want to write a pop-sci book, Part 2: The value of blogs

Blogs, as Carl Zimmer astutely noted at this year's ScienceOnline conference, are software. Despite all the hand-wringing over whether science bloggers can or should replace science journalists the fact of the matter is that science blogs are the independent expressions of a variety of writers about subjects which they feel passionate about. There is no single science blog archetype that all blogs must fit, and this flexibility allows science writers the freedom to compose and promote their work in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Hindsight being what it is, of course, I can look…

Steve's body is worth...

Ok ok... I'll do it too..... $4725.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

ScienceOnline'09 - important information for international participants

Eva Amsen uncovered some important information for the international travelers into the USA: International travel info - Science Online '09: For those of you who are traveling to the Science Online '09 conference from Europe, Australia, NZ, South Korea, Singapore, or on a passport from one of those parts of the world, this is of importance: As of January 12 2009, travelers using the Visa Waiver Program to enter the US (that is when you don't need to apply for a visa but you get one of those green forms to fill out at the border) will need to register online before their trip. I had a look at…

Friday Sprog Blogging: I owe my soul to the classsroom store.

In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring's second grade. Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies. Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time? Younger offspring: It's not real money. Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for? Younger offspring: Once a week, there's a classroom store, and you can…

Some resources for reference assistant training in a scitech library

Trust me, I really tried to come up with a cool, funny title for this post. Anyways... We have a new reference assistant starting here next week. As somewhat typical for such a position, the new staff member has a science subject background rather than a library background. In this case, Maps/GIS. So I thought it might be a good idea to gather together some resources for helping our new hire get acclimatised to reference work in an academic science & engineering library. After all, we're not born with the ability to do good reference interviews! With the help of the fine folk in…

Alumni Magazines in Economic Bad Times

As an alumnus of the California Institute of Technology (thats "Caltech" not "CalTech" peoples!) and a member of the Caltech alumni association, I get a quarterly copy of Engineering and Science (E&S). In this month's issue there is a letter from the editor concerning the future of the print version of Engineering and Science. It seems that, like much print media today, this esteemed publication's print edition may go the way of the dodo. In particular editor Douglas Smith asks what the readers of his rag think of the decision to axe the print edition: Which brings me to the other hand…

Books

I haven't been pimping books lately, but it's time. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J. K. Rowling First, the last Harry Potter book is scheduled for 7/7/07, and if you buy it through this link a portion of the sale goes to the important project of keeping TfK afloat. Second, the new book by our dear friend Chris Mooney is available for pre-order. Again, buying it through this link lets you give money to two Sciencebloggers: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming by Chris Mooney Finally, I'm making my way through Robert Cato's series on Lyndon…

Saturday Shillery: Paulas Choice

If you know me, I have raved about these products for a long time, just to my friends. But I thought it was high time Paulas Choice got its own shillery post. Over the past couple of years, people in the skeptic community have mentioned wanting skepticism to branch out into 'lady topics', like encouraging skepticism with cosmetics/beauty products/etc. The thing is, that view is a day late and a dollar short. Because people into cosmetics/beauty products have already branched out into skepticism. Like, for a really long time now. Beauty bloggers are known for buying, testing, and reviewing…

AU Students Debate the Internet's Impact on Society, Part A

This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on "Communication and Society," we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter the nature of community, civic engagement, and social relationships. For college students who grew up online, it's easy to take for granted the virtual society we live in, seldom pausing to consider how it might be different from more traditional forms of community life. Therefore, one of the goals of the course was to encourage students to think systematically and rigorously about the many changes…

I get email

I think this one was more of a wrong number. Found you online and had a question… Hi, my name is Susan Dahl. I did a search online for Christians and I came across you. It would be great to have more info about what you are sharing online for the benefit and help of others. I am writing because I would like to find some new friends who have a walk with the Lord in the Puget Sound area. Even in the Northwest, there are still some of us out there! I look forward to hearing from you. God bless you, Susan Dahl It's OK. I've decided to name my penis "The Lord" just so these spammy…

Sid the Science Kid has his t-shirt, do you?

Sid the Science Kid has been seen sporting his new Festival t-shirt around town. Do you have your t-shirt yet? 3 GREAT Reason to buy a Festival T-shirt: 1. Show your enthusiasm for science and engineering! 2. Help spread the word about the Festival! 3. And MOST importantly buying a t-shirt helps bring a less fortunate student to the Expo. So what are you waiting for? Click here to buy your shirt.

Beer and Displaylink

Last night to the Beer festival to... drink beer. And to admire the beer mats, since Miriams company (as in, the one she works for, not the one she owns, sadly) is one of the sponsors. Don't forget to click through to their wonderful website and buy some of their wonderful products. Although you can't, really, unless you're a large corporation. But you can buy a Tosh or Samsung product with their stuff inside. :-)

RWS in Paperback

Chris Mooney's excellent book The Republican War on Science is now available in paperback. So if you didn't buy it in hardcover, shame on you! But now you have a chanc eto redeem yourself. Kidding aside, Mooney does a first-rate job of confirming what anyone who has been paying attention has long suspected: That the power brokers in the Republican Party are almost uniformly hostile to science and its findings. Buy it and read it immediately!

That's More Like It

Checking in to see whether the Amazon page for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has been updated (it had an older version of the cover copy yesterday morning, but that's been fixed), I see that the "Buy Together" box has been updated. It now says: Customers buy this book with The God Engines by John Scalzi That's much better than what we had yesterday. Thank you, Amazon, for some higher-quality recommendations.

All corporations are inherently evil.

First, check this out, then I've got a story of my own: "Last week, LAPTOP reported that Office Depot employees were routinely lying to customers about notebook inventory, telling them that systems were out of stock if they didn't want to buy extended warranties or tech services. Now LAPTOP has spoken to more Office Depot associates, one of whom goes by the name Alex and reports widespread altering of prices in his region. He says he even Photoshops higher price tags on clearance notebooks so that associates can tell customers that they're getting a free warranty or tech service, when the…

Should psychologists post their published articles?

Gualtiero Piccinini writes: I always put my papers online. I used to publish online a penultimate version, under the assumption that since it's not identical to the published version, it's ok. Lately, taking a cue from the copyright form of Australasian Journal of Philosophy, I've started posting the last version sent to the publisher (before proof corrections) While some authors cross off the relevant portions of agreements before signing, Piccinini signs the publishers' copyright forms as they are. Clearly the practice of posting your articles online violates many of these agreements.…

Old Tune Pimpage

For those who care, there's a list below the fold of what I bought from iTunes last night based on recommendations in the previous thread. For those who don't care so much about that, let me just note that trying to buy classical music on iTunes really is as annoying as everyone says-- as dozens of people have noted, it's hard to find specific pieces because they list everything by the name of the performer, not the composer. Even more annoying, though, from my perspective, is that many of the more important pieces are album tracks only. For example, they have approximately fifteen different…

What's your online reputation?

When I fly off to give talks, I've got three basic categories that I choose from: there's the "science is godless, and here's why" talk for atheist audiences, there's the "development and evolution go together like peanut butter and chocolate" talk for atheists or scientists, and finally, there's the "you better pay attention to the online world, and here's why" talk for scientists, who often don't have a clue about blogs and twitter and facebook. Now Nature gets in on the latter act, with a feature on managing your online reputation. It turns out that most scientists, especially younger…

The Good News Is That Blue Dog Dem Mike Ross Isn't a Cheap Whore...

...it takes a lot of money to buy his vote. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million, give or take: Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross -- a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate -- sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth. The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out. Ross sold Holly's Health Mart in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping price for real estate in a tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles…

My New Product: All Natural Pb®

Sciblings, I know you all are going to run out and buy my new nutritional supplement, Pb®. Pb® is all natural. Pb® is pure. Pb® is elemental. Pb® is balanced. Pb® affects one's optimal health. Pb® is readily absorbed by the blood stream and accumulates in the body, competing with unnatural toxins that cause illness. Pb® is highly bio-available. And Hoofnagle-brand Pb® is positively charged at our all-natural bioplant facilities, meaning that it repels negative ions. Pb® can be used by children as well as adults. There are no side effects of supplement products as they are made with all…

Only in America ..

tags: Only in America, cultural observation, humor A friend sent me some interesting cultural observations regarding the odd and ironic behavior of Americans .. of course, I had to share it with you. Only in America .. Only in America .. can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. Only in America .. are there handicapped parking places in front of a skating rink. Only in America .. do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front. Only in America .. do people order double…

July Pieces Of My Mind #2

Jrette wandering around watching TV on the iPad, overturning and breaking things in the kitchen. *sigh* Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold. Jrette stole my zombie novel -- Carey's 2014 Girl With All The Gifts -- and proclaimed it to be the best book she's read in ages. Now I am bookless. Mistakenly read two global catastrophe novels in a row. Now everything around looks temporary. Jrette is twelve today! I asked her if she doesn't find the Vampire Diaries scary. "I would, only with a dad who's a scientist, I'm not afraid of supernatural things." Pittentian in Perthshire is a fine…

Money Can Buy Happiness

You've all heard the old adage "Money can't buy happiness." But honestly, money can buy a Ferrari, and when was the last time you saw someone in a Ferrari who wasn't smiling? Now, I'm surely not saying that money is everything. Its not by a long shot. However, we live in a material world, and we are all material girls............or so says psychologist Dr. Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and economist Andrew Oswald. However, the effect of money on happiness seems to be small, and only effective up to a certain income level. While people who make $150,000 are consistently more happy…

Darwin and Cheese

From the great Harold McGee comes an investigation into raw milk, bacteria and cultural evolution: On our journey up to the Stichelton Dairy last September, Mr. Hodgson [a cheesemaker] explained how cheese quality progressed for centuries, then declined in the age of mass production and supermarkets. "I think of it as a Darwinian process," he said. "People make cheeses many times a year, in many ways, and all kinds of factors -- accidents, chance, laziness, intentional changes -- cause variations in the result. In the past, the changes that caused an improvement survived because consumers…

Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!

Chris Clarke explains Berube's new book (yup, I am hoping to buy it one day) for the masses. I am assuming that Chris spent quite a lot of time and effort into making this from scratch. I could have saved him some of that by mailing him some of the existing stuff I had and read as a kid. Ah, the glory of growing up in a socialist country! [Hat-tip: Amanda]

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 Celebrate Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself. ..and much, much more...

Who are you? ScienceBlogs wants to know

They could have used the data from my serial killer survey, but no, being scientists or science-related, the ScienceBlogs overseers want to find out for themselves. Plus the chance of winning and iPod is higher than the chance of winning the lottery and you don't even have to buy a ticket. Take the survey, maybe even win. I wonder if they have the pink Valentine iPods?

How Mortgages Turned into a Trillion Dollar Disaster

Ok, another batch of questions have come in, all variants on the same theme. The question is, if mortgages are at the root of the current economic disaster, how can it possibly result in close to a trillion dollars worth of losses? It definitely seems strange, on two different levels. On an absolute scale, it's hard to see how mortgage losses could add up to a trillion dollars. And on a relative scale, it's hard to see how the foreclosures could really overwhelm the lenders when even an extremely high foreclosure rate represents a fairly modest loss considered as a percentage. Let's…

What's Your Elf Name?

tags: elf name, online quiz This is an absolutely silly online quiz, but that doesn't stop me from playing with it anyway, nor should it stop you! Your Elf Name Is... Spicy Stocking Stuffer What's Your Elf Name?

Microbiologists: be your own media

Chris Condayan, ASM's public outreach and media guru (and the guy behind the scenes of MicrobeWorld), has an editorial in the latest issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology. Cleverly titled "Culture media," Condayan encourages microbiologists to get involved sharing their knowledge online (and gives examples of ways they can do so). He notes: As long as the internet remains free from regulation, every microbiologist has just as much access to online distribution as the BBC and CNN do. And in this day and age, if you don't start sharing knowledge and news online, you may run the risk of…

Homeowners Association Backs Down

I just got an email from the Thomas More Law Center. Apparently the family in Novi that was being told to take down their nativity scene contacted them and they threatened the HOA with a lawsuit. The HOA backed down and told them they don't have to take it down. Doesn't much matter to me either way, but that's what happened. Update: The Detroit News is reporting about it and some of the article is quite amusing. Like this guy: Anthony J. Dickow lives in the same Tollgate Woods subdivision as the Samona family and says the story has "stirred my blood and I am outraged!" "Let's say I wasn't a…

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights 7

Continuing with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Sunday, January 17 at 9:00-10:05am: A. Earth Science, Web 2.0+, and Geospatial Applications - Jacqueline Floyd and Chris Rowan Description: We will discuss online and mobile applications for earth science research, including solid earth, ocean, and atmosphere subtopics. Current topics planned for discussion are Google Earth for geospatial applications, iPhone and other mobile applications, collaboration tools such as Google Wave, and cloud computing platforms such as Amazon's EC2 for…

Buy Me That Toy!

tags: Hamburger Make Up Artistry, food porn, Buy Me That, streaming video This is another video in the Buy Me That series, which is designed to teach kids how to think critically about the television commercials they are constantly bombarded with. In this episode, we see some kids playing with a toy that turns out to be the opposite of what it is advertised to be. Perhaps this video should be required viewing for all kids in the weeks before Christmas?

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is a Real Book!

Look! How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is a real book: Emmy says, very seriously, "You will buy a copy, won't you?" Of course, like everything else in this house, SteelyKid had to grab a copy: She whipped through to the last page pretty fast: Emmy says "What'd you think, human puppy?" SteelyKid says "If I knew how to read, Daddy's book would be my favorite book ever. People who can read should definitely buy it." You heard the kid and the dog...

A few questions about final exams.

Someone forgot to tell our department photocopier that finals started today; rather than being a vengeful photocopier toying with the pitiful mortals in its thrall, it was a happy photocopier that photocopied my final exams beautifully. And since I wasn't clearing any cryptic paper jams, my mind wandered into the question of how others approach final exams: Multiple choice, essay, something in between, or a combination of question formats? Scantron forms? Blue books? (If so, do the students have to buy them or does the prof provide them?) In-class or take-home? Open book or closed book?…

Can I get a loan on that?

So Orac is worth $3590 and Janet tunes in at $4875 Me? I’m worth $4050.00. Dead though. $4050.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna

As graphic novels go, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth is every bit as good as Maus or Watchmen, if not quite as game-changing. The only other things out there that I can think of that are similar are Chester Brown's Louis Riel or Ho Che Anderson's King: A Comics Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. That's high praise and it's well deserved. So what's Logicomix all about? The core is the story of Bertrand Russell's and his work -- the search for the foundations of mathematics, the most basic kind of truth: logic. His search takes us through the history of mathematics and philosophy in…

Hybrids vs. Hummers

Via a mailing list, Reason magazine has an article claiming that SUV's are better for the environment than hybrid cars: Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date - dubbed "Dust to Dust" -- collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car (see here…

Early O'Brien Award Candidate

If you want to read something so stupid it will make you shake your head in amazement that anyone would publish it, try this ridiculous cautionary tale from the year 2030, as a man tells his grandson about the good old days when you could buy Christmas wrapping paper and say "Merry Christmas" without being arrested. And it's written by a freaking Rabbi, who laments that Americans didn't "take to the streets" to stop people from saying "Happy Holidays." The fact that it isn't a parody or meant ironically only shows how utterly moronic it is.

Buy The Dragon Never Sleeps! Buy it Now!

Amazon conveniently informed me today of a very positive development in SF: Night Shade Books is republishing Glen Cook's space opera novel The Dragon Never Sleeps, which I reviewed quite some time ago. I've re-read it since then, and if anything, my opinion of it improved. It's "New Space Opera" written years before there was such a thing. You can pre-order it from Amazon or get it direct from the publisher, but if you like Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod, Neal Asher, and that sort of crowd, you should buy this at once. It's terrific.

How much I'll be worth when I'm dead...

I'm not sure whether this is reassuring or depressing. $3590.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating Mingle2 - Free Online Dating So...how much is your cadaver worth? (Found via Attuworld.)

Science wants to reward good online science education resources

If you've been building a site for science education, you'll want to looking into this: The Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). 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…

Doctors and the potential pitfalls of an online presence

Everyone who uses the internet leaves some sort of footprint, even if it's just a string of visited addresses. This presence is magnified if you've ever been in the news, been listed on a website (e.g., as faculty), or if you write a blog. Social networking sites such as facebook and Twitter add a whole new dimension of online presence. Everyone should be concerned about what their online presence says about them (if your public Amazon wish list is full of sex toys, for example...) but physicians should have special concerns which fall into some broad categories. First, we'll briefly…

DNA sequencing as a school project: how do you get started?

A few days ago, I wrote about a cool project that some high school students did where they used DNA sequencing to identify seafood. One question that came up from one of my commenters was how a school would start a project like this. I'm totally biased, but I think DNA sequencing (well, actually the data analysis) is one of the most interesting things that a class can do as part of a research project. These days, getting started with this kind of project, wouldn't be so hard. Here's are some ways that I would get started: Find an existing project where my students could collaborate and…

Swedish Rules for Archaeological Finds

Linnea, one of the Salto sobrius regulars, asked two questions today on the Swedish archaeology mailing list that would be in my archaeology FAQ if I had one. Who owns an archaeological find made by a member of the public?Is it legal to sell archaeological finds? Here's how things work in Sweden, which to my knowledge has the world's strongest legal protection for sites and finds. The first thing to note is that all sites known to the National Heritage Board are protected. This protection isn't tiered like in England: to explain to you Brits, let's say that a Swedish site automatically…