Announcements
illconsidered | December 1, 2009Well, I see no one takes my advice on anything!
The Associated Press
LONDON -- Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.
The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S.…
oracknows | November 30, 2009Well, now. With the long four day weekend that many of us here in the U.S. have enjoyed finally over, it's time to get back to serious business. Serious, but fun. I'm referring to the upcoming 125th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which will be held at Effort Sisyphus on Thursday, December 3. That means there are less than three days for you to get your submissions of skepticism, science, and critical thinking over to Techskeptic according to his instructions here.
For more specific guidelines of what we're looking for in the Skeptics' Circle, go here.
And don't let Techskeptic down!…
illconsidered | November 23, 2009Visitor's Time : Nov 24 2009 7:30:10 am
Visit Number : 500,000
Location
Continent : Europe
Country : Spain
State/Region : Madrid
City : Madrid
Hello Spain! and visit number 500K. Who would have imagined....?
oracknows | November 21, 2009It's time for another installment of that venerable (gasp!) blog carnival of skepticism, science, and critical thinking, The Skeptics' Circle. This time, it's the 124th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and it's finally landed, late but still brimming with skeptical goodness at Beyond the Short Coat.
Next up, two weeks hence, on December 3, will be TechSkeptic at Effort Sisyphus. His instructions for submitting your work are here. General instructions for what we look for in a Skeptics' Circle entry are here. So, by the way, is the schedule. If you're interested in hosting one of these puppies…
oracknows | November 5, 2009The 123 Congregation of the Skeptics' Circle will now come together over at Blue Genes, in which Simplicio is schooled in skepticism. Sort of.
Go. Read. Don't be like Simplicio.
Next up to host the Skeptics' Circle will be Beyond the Short Coat. Start getting your skeptical blogging skills wound up to participate in this biweekly orgy of skepticism!
oracknows | October 31, 2009It's almost here, and it's almost time!
The 123rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. This time around it will be here on Thursday, November 5. That means skeptical bloggers out there don't have much time to get their best recent work to Colin at Blue Genes for inclusion.
Guidelines for what we're looking for when it comes to submissions to the Skeptics' Circle can be found here. Instructions for submitting to this week's Skeptics' Circle are here.
Don't let Colin down! Bury him in submissions! (Not literally, of course, which would be hard. How do you bury someone in…
thusspakezuska | October 22, 2009Announced on the WMST-L listserv:
Women & Science/Technology Policy Seminar in Washington, DC
The Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN) will be holding its Women & Science/Technology Policy Seminar January 4-8, 2010 for women science majors who want to explore what life is like as a science advisor.
This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for women students to discover a different way to professionally apply their scientific and technological knowledge - in a career developing public policy. The seminar teachers are women scientists in diverse areas of government and the private…
oracknows | September 25, 2009Damn them Europeans and their being five or six hours ahead! They screw me up when it comes to plugging the Skeptics' Circle. Oh, wait. This time around I'm a day late. Rats. My excuse doesn't work. Never mind...
In any case, longtime commenter at RI (who also has his own most excellent blog), Kristjan Wager has served up yet another heapin' helpin' of skepticism and critical thinking at the 120th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Go. Read. Enjoy.
Then come back in two weeks to do the same for The Mad Skeptic on October 8, preferably after having submitted your own pearl of skeptical genius.…
oracknows | September 23, 2009Hurt, but not defeated, the humongous giant clam....
Wait. Wrong story. Actually Science-Based Medicine is back. Finally. Go. Read. Enjoy. Particularly a bit about crank conferences.
oracknows | September 22, 2009Science-based Medicine, a place where sometimes a "friend" of mine pontificates, is temporarily down. Recently, the SBM crew moved the blog to a new server. Beginning over the last two or three weeks, the blog became buggy. Very buggy. Response times became painfully slow, and then last Friday SBM went down and stayed down nearly an entire day. Valiant efforts and arguing with the hosting company got it up and running again over the weekend, although it remained painfully slow to browse. I thought I had harkened back to those days of yore when I used to use a 9600 baud modem. Then, sometime…
oracknows | September 21, 2009The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Lengend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again.
Or something.
What I do know is that the Wheel has turned once again and a new meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. Indeed, it is less than three days away. On Thursday, September 24, the 120th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will be hosted by Kristjan Wager at Pro-Science. He needs your submissions, and he needs them by Wednesday night. So give them to him. Check out the guidelines for…
oracknows | September 21, 2009Given how many of you read this blog and Science-Based Medicine, I thought I should make an announcement. Sometime this morning or early this afternoon, the Science-Based Medicine blog went down, returning only a cryptic message saying that the site has been "suspended." This is the second time it's gone completely down, the first being Friday for most of the day, and the performance of the site has been painfully slow all weekend, with interminable waits for page loads, etc.
The SBM team is aware of the problem. All I can say is that the problem is being worked on, but the technical guys are…
oracknows | September 18, 2009Given how many of you read this blog and Science-Based Medicine, I thought I should make an announcement. Sometime earlier this morning after 7 AM but before around 10 AM, the Science-Based Medicine blog went down, returning only a cryptic message saying that the site has been "suspended."
The SBM team is aware of the problem, and, quite frankly, I'm disturbed that the site isn't back up yet. I can tell you (and many of you may have noticed) that the site's performance over the last week has, quite frankly, sucked, with slow as molasses page loading, frequent database errors, and general poor…
jstemwedel | September 17, 2009And really, why wouldn't you? What could have prepared you for the possibility that reading one would make the other vanish, as if there were some kind of blogular wavefunction collapse?
The ScienceBlogs powers that be have been alerted that there's an issue with disappearing comments (if you're reading a post) and disappearing posts (if you're reading the comments). They are busy trying to get the squirrels out of the ductwork (or fix the javascript problem, whichever).
In the meantime, if you're desperate to contribute a comment to a post, or to get the 411 on a post on this blog that…
oracknows | September 10, 2009It's that time again, time for another meeting of that--choke!--"venerable" blog carnival known as the Skeptic's Circle.
Sorry, it just bugs me that the Circle I took over four years ago is now counted as "venerable." Oh, well.
In any case, this time around, it's at Cubik's Rube (great name for a blog, BTW), and it's a rip-roaring tale in which our host conjures a god. I kid you not. He really does. But he ends up...well, you'll just have to check out the 119th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle to find out what happens. I will say no more.
Also, don't forget that a mere two weeks hence, on…
oracknows | September 9, 2009I can't help but have noticed that one of our own, GrrlScientist, is in the running to be selected as the blogger to go on a trip to Antarctica and blog from there with the Quark Expedition in February. As of my checking, Grrl is in third place.
I have no doubt that She'd do a hell of a job, given her writing talent, and who can resist a chance to send a fellow ScienceBlogger to some frigid, desolate plain at the bottom of the world? There's not much time left, only until September 30.
So vote, already!
oracknows | September 6, 2009Here in the U.S., it's smack dab in the middle of a three day holiday weekend. Given that, I'm chilling for a while. There's some new material tomorrow, but today I have to head out for a celebration of my father-in-law's 70th birthday and, between that , to work on a talk I have to give on Friday. That makes today the perfect time to post a reminder that the 119th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching and will arrive on Thursday, September 10 at Cubik's Rube.
Instructions for submitting your skeptical blog posts are here. General guidelines for submission can be found here.
oracknows | September 4, 2009Now here's one thing we skeptics could use more of:
Imagine you're moving to a new city, and you want to see what skeptic-themed events or groups are available. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was one central place you could go, plug in the destination, and get a list of skeptical stuff to do?
Or, say you're going to be traveling on business, and you want to find some evening entertainment that's a little more fulfilling than getting drunk at the airport bar watching TV in your hotel room. Wouldn't it be great if you could pull up a website and see what skeptical events were going on in that…
oracknows | September 2, 2009As the person entrusted with the skeptical bloggy goodness that arrives every other week in the form of the Skeptics' Circle, how could I refuse to hawk something like this e-mail:
Inspired by the annual The Open Laboratory, the Skeptical Blog Anthology is a printed anthology of blog posts voted the very best of 2009, managed by the Young Australian Skeptics in conjunction with the Critical Teaching Education Group (CTEG).
Entries for the Skeptical Blog Anthology can be submitted to the Young Australian Skeptics Website at http://www.youngausskeptics.com/anthology.
The anthology is an attempt…
oracknows | August 21, 2009I realize that this is a little late, but for those of you in southeast Michigan who might be able to make it, there's going to be an attempt at an inaugural Skeptics in the Pub. Thanks to fellow ScienceBlogger and skeptical rogue PalMD and even more so thanks a couple of his similarly skeptical (but blog-free thus far) buddies, this event will come to fruition tonight. If it works out, maybe next time we'll gussy it up a bit and perhaps even have a speaker. For now, though, it's just a chance to meet and greet in informal surroundings.
PalMD and Orac will be there. If you're in southeast…