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razib | June 20, 2006A few weeks ago Evolgen expressed irritation that people kept confusing his blog with Jason Rosenhouse's Evolution Blog. Well, check this:
Razib at Evolutionblog has asked contributors to try defining evolution in ten words or fewer.
The title "Evolution Blog" must be cognitively "sticky" or something! Jason did link to me recently, so I suspect this is where the memory leakage and conflation came into play....
razib | June 19, 2006As most of you know, SEED will be matching the money we're raising here at Science Blogs. Thanks to the many who've already given. If you haven't, I encourage you too! Step up!
razib | June 16, 2006I was hungry yesterday, and everywhere I went the lines were long, so I decided to visit a "fast food" restaurant. While I was waiting for my order a 7 year old child was adding more ice to the soda fountain machine. The child had to use a chair to climb up, and he was having a very difficult time with the task. I assumed this was the owner's child helping out, but he was wearing a fanchise uniform. I couldn't help it, I was outraged, so I blurted out "They let you work here?!" I mean, I was thinking, what is this, Pakistan? The child looked at me, and was like, "What?" And suddenly I…
razib | June 15, 2006Question: Ask a Science Blogger June 15:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?
My guess: blogging is easy. What it takes is a little courage to speak your mind (or foolhardiness, depending on how you look at it). For myself, I'm juggling a lot of different things in my life right now, so I always make sure I "clock" myself. Believe it or not, a lot of the posts do not take much time because I'm ruminating on a lot of these topics all the time. Once it…
razib | June 15, 2006Time to represent...no point pulling one's hair about the ignorance of the anti-evolutionist unwashed unless one is willing to do something about the problem, right?
Small update: Props to those of you who have given so far! Small $$$ can go a long way. In any case, just so you know, everyone should feel free to give directly to whichever project they want to give to. If you do give to this weblog's Donor account, know that I'll probably throw most of the cash first to the genetics & evolution related stuff.
[end update]
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool,…
razib | June 14, 2006Manish has a post up on this YouTube video of a South Indian movie where the male lead has an out of control bouffant. The weird thing is that whenever I hear South Indian languages I always get a weird feeling like I'm listening to aliens chattering in an Indian accent. Myself, I can speak Bengali with about an 8 year old level of fluency, and so Hindi (an Indo-European language like Bengali) doesn't sound too weird and I can make out many of the words...but when I hear people going off in Tamil or something it is really strange (the languages of South India are Dravidian, not Indo-…
razib | June 14, 2006Simon of Bloggasm asked me 5 questions, and I responded. Now, I will admit that I found being "interviewed" to offer my "opinion" kind of hilarious (another interview with me should pop up on the web at the end of this month, "watch this space," or, better yet, read another genetics blog regularly). As a blogger basically I am offering a never-ending stream of opinion, so it seems like going to the ice-cream parlor when you've got two fridges of Costco creams sitting at home. But hey, food is more than about ingestion, and interaction with other human beings means kicking back control to…
revere | June 12, 2006Holy shit! Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway tags me with the Random Eight meme and no sooner do I get it done (incurring her wrath because I didn't pass it on), when I learn that as a ScienceBlogs newcomer we also got tagged with the pi meme by Janet (Dr. Free-Ride).
It could be a lot worse. Pi is an irrational number whose decimal expansion doesn't end or repeat and this is a truncated version (eight digits; I don't know if this is because the ScienceBlogs publishers are bandwidth cheapskates; or the mistaken notion you cannot represent an irrational number exactly on a computer. That…
revere | June 11, 2006A blog meme has just landed on my head, like a deposit from a flu infected migratory bird (affirmative answer to the question, "Do you have any grey poop on?"). It got dumped on me by my Flu Wiki partner, Melanie Mattson, maestra of the acclaimed Just a Bump in the Beltway blog. I tagged her about two months ago and this is payback. If you don't know, a blog meme is a task set by one blogger on one or more others, to proceed chain fashion until everyone is exhausted or bored or both.
This one should have been easy: set down eight random things about yourself. But it's a bit harder if there…
revere | June 9, 2006Welcome to our new house at ScienceBlogs. We trust our old readers had no trouble with the directions to get here. You can wander off to the kitchen and fix yourself a drink while we introduce ourselves to our new neighbors.
We describe EM as a forum for argument and discussion about progressive public health ideas, which both sums it up and probably doesn't tell you much. "Progressive" is a code word for being on the Left. This is a lefty political blog (and a Koufax Award Finalist for Best Expert Blog; PZ took the honors in that category, and deservedly so). The argument and discussion part…
razib | May 21, 20063 years ago I invited David B to post on Gene Expression (classic), and over the years he's produced some meaty entries which deal with important scientific and cultural issues. Below are 10 posts which I'd like to introduce to Science Blogs readers....
Biological versus cultural evolution
Is culture useful?
Celts and Anglo-Saxons
Once more into the breach
The World Riddle
Defining Group Selection: Price's Equation
Regression to the mean and Galton's Fallacy (not!)
A load of Rawls
Ethnic Genetic Interests: Part 1
Measuring Genetic Diversity
Update: Links fixed.
razib | May 16, 2006At least 6 known murders this spring. How many more unsolved mysteries? How many nests rendered empty?
razib | May 5, 2006Seed is asking which invention I'd uninvent. My reflexive response is atomic weapons. I want to emphasize weapons because I think nuclear energy is going to be important, just as James Lovelock does. But if I was God who could change the world by fiat, well, atomic weapons would probably be it. Now, I say this with the convinction that I suspect more lives would be lost between 1945-2000 than in the "atomic age." I think convential wars would be more brutal and more frequent than under the specter of the nuclear apocolypse. But, I suspect in my lifetime some idiotic small banana republic…