Announcements
illconsidered | September 10, 2008Just wanted to be one of the voices acknowledging day one of CERN's Large Hadron Collider. I know very little about it, but being a blogger I don't let that get in the way of talking about it!
You can read about it on Wikipedia, The Source of All That is Knowable.
Two interesting factoids I learned from a Science Friday podcast:
1. it shoots 100's of billions of protons at a time, thousands of times per second and accelerates them to 99.999999% o the speed of light! Sounds pretty fast.
2. it will not create something that swallows the earth or destroys the whole universe because the kind of…
thusspakezuska | September 8, 2008UPDATE: Party date changed to Sept. 28th. Other details remain the same. Let me know if you are interested in joining us!
UPDATE: Here are details of my party, which is scheduled for Sept 14th:
Brunch at Farmicia, 15 S. 3rd St, Philadelphia, PA at 11 a.m.
Visit Penn Museum of Archeology & Anthropology to see Surviving: The Body of Evidence exhibit (Museum is open 1 to 5 pm) which is part of Philadelphia's Year of Evolution celebration.
Afterwards, gelato at Capogiro. Mmmmmmm.
Possibly drinks & something else to eat after that, we don't know for sure.
ORIGINAL POST:
As…
oracknows | September 7, 2008It's almost here yet again. (Man, how time flies!)
This Thursday (September 11), longtime skeptic extraordinaire Robert Carroll, the man behind the indispensable Skeptic's Dictionary, will be hosting the 95th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle at Skeptimedia. That's a mere four days from now! I can't wait to see what Bob cooks up for this special Meeting of the Circle, especially given that it happens to coincide with a certain horrific event from seven years ago that in even that short a time period that has brought out some of the very worst conspiracy-mongering and paranoia requiring a…
illconsidered | September 7, 2008Eli Rabett reports that Brian Schmidt reports that Inel reports a fake climate conference phishing scam.
Just thought I should report that!
How much money could a scammer get from that!? Hardly the same universal appeal as your typical "Nigerian banker wants to share $35 million with you" scam.
Oh well, just don't sign up.
oracknows | September 2, 2008ResearchBlogging.org, that aggregator for blogging about peer-reviewed scientific research, has been given a makeover and a major overhaul. New features include:
There will be much, much more on our official launch date of September 2, but here is a partial list of new features:
Multiple language support (and 30 new German-language bloggers!)
Topic-specific RSS feeds
Post-by-post tagging with topics and subtopics
"Recover password" feature
Email alerts when there is a problem with posts
Users can flag posts that don't meet our guidelines
Customized user home pages with bios and blog…
oracknows | September 1, 2008This totally slipped my mind, and I've been meaning to mention it for a few days now, which makes the holiday weekend a perfect time to mention it. Seed Magazine and ScienceBlogs are supporting an effort to raise $10,000 for various science projects supported by DonorsChoose. To help the cause, all you have to do is to go to the Think Science Now website and vote for video profiles of scientists. Best of all, by doing so, you get to suck the money straight from an {enter "alternative medicine" and "antivaccinationist" mode} an evil, greedy, allopathic drug company {exit "alternative medicine…
oracknows | August 29, 2008I hesitated about whether to post this, knowing how many antivaccine activists read this blog, which is why I didn't post it yesterday. Still, I think this might be of sufficient interest to my readers that I thought I'd announce it, just with relatively short notice.
It turns out that today's Science Friday with Ira Flatow features a discussion of childhood vaccines, complete with an appearance by a man whom antivaccinationists consider the Dark Lord of Vaccination himself, Dr. Paul Offit. It's on at 2 PM, and I'm told that Dr. Offit will be in the 2:20 to 2:40 PM segment, but I generally…
oracknows | August 28, 2008I lamented how much I needed it, given the persistence of a couple of particularly annoying and obtuse antivaccinationist trolls over the last couple of weeks. Finally, it's here! We're talking the 94th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle over at Reduce to Common Sense. It's just what I (and hopefully you) need: A dose of science, rationalism, and skepticism to combat the rampant credulity of the blogosphere. It's even based on an OIympic theme, complete with gold medals!
Next up two weeks hence, on September 11, is Skeptimedia. Uh-oh, I don't like the date it coincides with, but on the other…
thusspakezuska | August 27, 2008So: Long promised substantive reply to comments on previous post is not materializing anytime soon. Migraines, mom in hospital again, coming down with headcold, sister arriving tomorrow for holiday weekend visit, possible trip to western PA next week to tend to mom when she is discharged from hospital (extra attention on top of what assisted living can provide)...I planned to get a post out today but unexpectedly the roofers we just contracted with on Monday phoned at 7:30 a.m. and said surprise! we're going to be hammering and pounding over your head all day long! and the cats were going…
oracknows | August 27, 2008...and contribute to the next edition of SurgeXperience, the blog carnival that's all about surgery. The next host, Dr. Cris Cuthbertson is interested in surgical research and, in addition to good posts about surgery, is looking especially for good posts about surgical research. Instructions for submitting can be found here. Please help her out if you can.
oracknows | August 27, 2008In its quest to rule the science blogosphere, the Borg--I mean ScienceBlogs--Collective has assimilated yet another blog, it would appear. It's a good one too, and adding its uniqueness to us will only strengthen us.
So please welcome blogger (not to mention frequent commenter on this very blog) Blake Stacy and Science After Sunclipse to the Collective. Go on over and say hi. Tell him Orac sent you.
illconsidered | August 26, 2008Yesterday was the 200th edition of "Another week of GW News", and close to the 50th edition posted here on A Few Things Ill Considered.
Please join me in thanking H.E.Taylor for this remarkable effort that provides such a wonderful service to all of us interested in the issue of anthropogenic global warming.
Thanks, HET! I don't know how you do it, but keep it coming! : )
oracknows | August 24, 2008This has been an annoying week on the old blog. In fact, I can't remember the last time we had an infestation of antivaccinationists this persistent and prolonged in a while. Heck, even one of the "big kahunas" of that blogospheric repository of all things antivaccine, Age of Autism (Dan Olmsted) showed up in the comments to spew non sequiturs about the Hewitson "vaccinated versus unvaccinated" monkey study (I'm devastated he apparently read my discussion of that very study) and misleading claims about measles. I guess that's what mentioning Dr. Offit with anything other than a sneer does; it…
oracknows | August 18, 2008As the guy who sort of fell into being the keeper of the original Skeptics' Circle after its creator decided to give up blogging three years ago, I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't mention that I've been made aware of an initiative to set up a local version of the Circle based around trying to foster better communication among South African Science Bloggers being spearheaded by a recent host of the Skeptics Circle, Michael Meadon at Ionian Enchantment. Of course, it's an effort of which I heartily approve, and I hope my readers will check it out.
I would also hope, however, that some of…
oracknows | August 17, 2008It's Sunday, which makes it a perfect time for a little blog housekeeping, especially about a feature that used to appear regularly on Fridays.
As you may recall, after the death of Echo I put Your Friday Dose of Woo on hiatus for a while because I just couldn't get myself into the appropriately light-hearted and silly frame of mind. Time has passed, and, although things will never be the same, a semblance of normalcy has (somewhat) returned. The loss still hurts--a lot--but my wife and I are slowly and reluctantly adapting. (We did finally share that third ear of corn, by the way; I don't…
oracknows | August 14, 2008It's that time again. Once again, the best that the skeptical blogosphere has had to offer over the last couple of weeks is on display, this time over at City of Skeptics, where you can now find The 93rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. The dude fooled me though. With the time difference between here and Australia, this Circle appeared yesterday here in the States, before I remembered to do my usual last minute submission of a post to the Circle. Damn. I'll have to be more careful next time.
Go forth, read, and enjoy, nonetheless. That I have become superfluous to most meetings of the…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2008Hey Readers!
Seed is running a reader survey. You could win an iPod AND a MacBook Air AND an Apple TV!!! just for participating! Apparently the chances of winning are pretty darn good. So maybe you want to sashay on over to this page and complete the survey. It only takes 10 minutes, I've been told, though the survey site says 20. Good luck!
illconsidered | August 13, 2008Scienceblogs is asking readers to fill out a survey. They are offering a chance to win an iPod AND a MacBook Air AND an Apple TV.
Got a few minutes?
sporte | August 13, 2008if you take this survey.
Wanna change the world? Make it possible for everyone to talk about science in a normal conversation? Do you have ideas for improving science literacy?
Seed is interested in your ideas. Answer the survey and share your thoughts. And I've seen the MacBook Air. It's beautiful.
UPDATE: if you had trouble accessing the survey, try it again. It will be open until Friday, August 15th, 11pm EST.
oracknows | August 12, 2008I am commanded by my Benevolent Overlords, and I answer.
Seed Media Group, (the aforementioned Benevolent Overlords) are taking a reader survey. To encourage (i.e. bribe) you to participate, they're holding a drawing among those who actually respond to the survey, with the prizes being a lot of great Apple stuff, including an iPhone 3G, a MacBook Air and a 40GB Apple TV. The good news is that at the moment not too many people have responded. That raises your odds for winning the Apple stuff.
Go forth and tell our Overlords what you think.