ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap

9.24.07 to 9.30.07

Announcements

Welcome New Sciblings
Welcome anonymous ScienceWoman, a first-year assistant professor in "-ology." Her blog's title, On Being a Scientist and a Woman, is sufficiently self-explanatory.

And second, welcome A Few Things Ill Considered, the climate blog of Coby Beck. Coby also writes at Grist.org's blog, The Gristmill, and is the author of the famed document "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic."

Homepage Buzzes

9/25: Ahmadinejad on Science
On Monday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a packed audience at Columbia University. The president, who speaks on Tuesday at the opening of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, spent two hours sharing his provocative views on topics including the Holocaust, Iran's nuclear program, and his opinions on science, experimentation and truth.

9/27: Guilty Pleasures
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently asked several academics to share their secret passions outside the classroom and laboratory. ScienceBloggers give some of their own, while simultaneously pondering whether true guilty pleasures--as things they'd be embarrassed to share with others--can actually be publicized on a blog.

9/28: James Hansen Accused
NASA climatologist James Hansen made headlines after claiming that the Bush administration tried to alter his public statements about the causes of climate change. ScienceBloggers refute an op-ed from Monday's Investor's Business Daily that claimed Hansen received $720,000 from the Open Society Institute.

9/30: Brain-Eating Amoeba
This year, the U.S. has seen a scary spike in the number of infections of Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba found in freshwater lakes and rivers. The organism, which typically enters humans through the nose and then destroys brain tissue, has killed six Americans so far this year, compared to 23 total between 1995 and 2004.

Daily Quotes

9/24:
"Believe it or not, this post is related, albeit somewhat tangentially, to my area of expertise, breast cancer." -Respectful Insolence

9/25:
"The Nobels are comming up. Here is last year's prediction. Who will win this year? You tell me." -The Daily Transcript

9/26:
"A tiny change in the initial values of a system leads to a huge change in position down the road." -Uncertain Principles

9/28:
Doing psychotherapy with Dick Cheney would be like doing massage therapy with a porcupine. -The Corpus Callosum

9/30:
All detritus arriving at the seafloor has probably gone through the digestive track of something. -Deep-Sea News

Top Three Posts

1. "Britney Spears is the High Priestess of Trailer Trash," Pure Pedantry; 32,568 pageviews

2. "We 'amoral' atheists," Pharyngula; 7,403 pageviews

3. "We 'naive' atheists" Pharyngula; 7,371 pageviews