Administrative
evolvingthoughts | October 29, 2007
The above are icons to be used when blogging on actual peer-reviewed research (as opposed to popular reports or kookery). I had a marginal involvement in this (I made some passing comments early on) so it is with great pride... no, actually, it's all down to Dave Munger, who was a champion. I had nothing useful to do with it.
Here's what Dave said:
We're pleased to announce that BPR3's Blogging on Peer Reviewed Research icons are now ready to go! Anyone can use these icons to show when they're making a serious post about peer-reviewed research, rather than just linking to a news article…
pharyngula | October 28, 2007Scienceblogs is currently suffering from a rogue ad that hijacks your browser and whisks you off to some wretched commercial site trying to sell you software to prevent your browser from being hijacked. It is evil, stupid, and obnoxious, and please do not purchase the software they are trying to extort from you. The sciencebloggers are all weeping and howling in frustration in our backchannel network, and we're firing up urgent flares begging our technical people to come purge the vileness…but it's a weekend, the tech people are all in New York, and unlike those of us living in Morris,…
pharyngula | October 22, 2007The winner of this month's Molly award dominated the voting this time around — I guess the combination of cephalopod and poetry was irresistible. Everyone congratulate Cuttlefish, OM.
evolvingthoughts | October 21, 2007
Today was the final lecture in my Introduction to Cognitive Science course. Thank the fates it is over.
I started this having no real idea of the topic, never having taught what Americans are pleased to call "freshmen" and we call "first-years", and with the first two lectures occurring in my absence as I was at a conference in the UK. So it has been a bit like surfing a wave of magma.
Anyway, I dropped my hindbrain (17" MacPowerBook G4) on Friday and shattered the LCD. This has made it hard to (i) prepare the lecture, (ii) give the lecture, and (iii) post blog entries. Now that I have…
evolvingthoughts | October 21, 2007
This is a meme started by PZ Mackers. I will exact retribution upon him later. In the meantime, I have been tagged
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best…
pharyngula | October 19, 2007With so many delightful and extensive conversation examples lately, this must be the perfect opportunity to mention that it is time to select the new Molly winner for October! Leave a comment here naming names of the people you like to read in the comments, and I'll tally them up at the end of the weekend.
Since there is a wee bit of acrimony going on right now, I'll remind everyone that this is to be a positive process — no howling against any nominee. If you think someone mentioned is just awful, please instead of trying to cast negative votes (I don't count them), get behind someone you do…
laelaps | October 17, 2007Me and the cats (Chase is the white one, Charlotte is the black one), taken one year ago.It's October 18th, which means that I've been blogging about science for one year now. It all started over at ProgressiveU.org, where I started writing as a way to win a scholarship (which I did), but by the time the contest was over I decided to take my writing in a somewhat new direction on Wordpress. I recently posted a somewhat longer version of the various transitional forms this blog has assumed during the past year for those interested, although I'm not quite sure that I would say today truly marks…
jrosenhouse | October 17, 2007It's been pointed out to me that the banner residing atop my blog is a bit dull. There's a very good reason for that. I haven't the faintest idea how to make a snazzier one.
Apparently other people have had contests to find a banner. That sounds good. Make other people do the work. I like that.
So how about it? Anyone have any ideas? Got a good image to use for a banner? Er, when people have had these contests in the past, have they also offered prizes?
laelaps | October 17, 2007Normally I try to write something substantial for this blog every day, even if it can't be a thoroughly-researched mega post like some of my more notorious writings. Yesterday was no exception, especially in light of the fact that a Rutgers philosophy professor, Jerry Fodor, has recently published a rather incoherent piece that's critical of the role of natural selection in evolution (you can read "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings" at the LRB website, although it may induce migraines). In fact, I actually wrote up a lengthy response to Fodor's piece, but when I was finished I didn't feel quite right…
evolvingthoughts | October 15, 2007
I gave a lecture yesterday on animal minds, and in the course of it tried to show some YouTube videos in Keynote by linking to the pages (tool using crows, by the way, and the excerpt from Life of Birds by Attenborough on Japanese crows using stop lights to get nuts they dropped under car tyres, very cool. The students loved it). Great technical problems.
Today (of course, a day late!) I came across TubeTV which downloads the Flash videos for embedding in Keynote directly. Works, is free and is very useful for when you don't have enough material for the entire lecture.
Highly recommended…
laelaps | October 12, 2007Many of you have been asking about RSS feeds, tags, channels, and the absence of Laelaps from the main Sb page, and if you have I've got some good news for you. It's all been fixed, so you should be able to see this blog listed in the various channels and everyone should now be able to enjoy Laelaps to the full.
evolvingthoughts | October 12, 2007
My mate Ian Musgrave, Astroblogger and expert in several fields of science, and his lovely family, are up visiting rellies in Queensland from the arid wasteland that is Adelaide. We all went on a bushwalk and while we were eating apples at the top of the cliff, we saw a couple of dolphins (bottlenose, I think), a mother and calf. Way cool...
All you urban prisoners should be quite envious.
laelaps | October 10, 2007Many of you have been asking about the RSS feed over the past few days, and if you have I've got some good news for you; it looks like everything is up and running now. Why not get a little bit of Laelaps delivered straight to you, every day?
evolvingthoughts | October 6, 2007
Does anyone who reads this blog have access to JFP from the American Philosophical Association? None of the locals or my usual contacts do, and by the time I can get a subscription going, I'm likely to have missed the deadlines this year. Drop me a note if you do. Thanks
evolvingthoughts | October 2, 2007
I do these things to (a) impress you all (if I can), (b) get a crossbearing on whether I'm actually part of this culture I find myself inside of, and (c) see if there are any other books I ought to have read. Like my source, Live Granades, I bold those I've read and italicise those I've partially read.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities…
pharyngula | October 1, 2007Before everyone goes nuts with the queries, here's the official word on the now closed commenting contest.
It will take a day for us to determine the winners of the contest. We have to make sure our data is correct before making the draw happen. We will email the winners directly. If you don't hear, you didn't win. It will probably take a week or so to contact and hear back from the winners.
I have no say in anything, and will not know anything until the winners contact the big guys managing the contest.
You are encouraged to go on commenting to run the tally up to a million.
evolvingthoughts | September 28, 2007
Stay tuned after the break as we will be showing the following specials, rated R for Reason. Suitable for 15 years and over...
I worked for ten years at The Walter and Eliza Institute of Medical Research (WEHI for short). This was the institution at which Macfarlane Burnet was director. I will be writing a piece on Mac's Clonal Selection Theory of immunology, and if my former employers and employees come through, I aim to have images of Mac's actual lab book where he came up with the idea, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of it.
The youthful and handsome Jason Grossman has…
evolvingthoughts | September 27, 2007
I keep forgetting to check the "unpublished" list. If you put a link in, or use certain terms, the spam filters will hold it for approval. I am forgetful, and haven't checked for a while, so apologies to those whoe comments were held for over a day.
jrosenhouse | September 26, 2007Janet Stemwedel is not the only one around here applying for tenure. I am likewise in the process of making the best argument I can for having my school keep me around for a while. Sadly, this is a time consuming process. That, coupled with all the work that isn't getting done because I'm too busy moping about finishing my tenure file, suggests that this would be a good time to take a blogging break. See you in two weeks or so.
evolvingthoughts | September 25, 2007
Over the past three years or so I have been trying to get an academic career going, at the tender age of (then) 49 (now 51). I have applied for a number of positions while working as a postdoc at the University of Queensland, and tried now twice to get an ARC Discovery Grant up on biodiversity measures. I have failed to get a single interview, and today I found out that my grant was rejected again.
Despite publishing relatively well, it seems I am too old. I have also missed out on another university's postdoc positions twice now, and I suspect age had something to do with that too. In the…