Blogging
laelaps | April 26, 2010
Check out my article on the atmosphere and evolution, "The History of Air", over at Smithsonian.
The Raleigh News & Observer has a brief interview with me (conducted by DeLene Beeland) on paleontology, evolution, and my forthcoming book Written in Stone. (Check out the comments, too - I already have fundamentalists praying for me *headdesk*)
The next time you use a latrine in Peru, watch out for two-toed sloths
Cool new science blog centered around Yale museum specimens - The Life You (And I) Never Knew
Welcome another paleo blog to the blogohedron - March of the Fossil Penguins…
clock | April 25, 2010WWW2010 is starting tonight. Interested to know more about it? Sure, here's the brief history:
The World Wide Web was first conceived in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The first conference of the series, WWW1, was held at CERN in 1994 and organized by Robert Cailliau. The IW3C2 was founded by Joseph Hardin and Robert Cailliau later in 1994 and has been responsible for the conference series ever since. Except for 1994 and 1995 when two conferences were held each year, WWWn became an annual event held in late April or early May. The location of the conference rotates…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2010The 91th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Sexy Archaeology on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Kurt, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.
clock | April 23, 2010This week in NYC, at #140 conf, I was most impressed by the talks and panels about education, and the use of online technologies, Web, and particularly social networks like Twitter in the classroom. You know I am interested in this - just search my blog for names like "David Warlick" and "Stacy Baker", or dig through my "Education" and "Science Education" categories. These videos are all short - 10 or 20 minutes long, so I strongly recommend you watch all four clips:
Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) - Social Media + Education:
Real Time Communication and Education: Aparna Vashisht (@Parentella…
clock | April 23, 2010The 2010 Post with the Most blogging contest is ongoing - there are nine entries so far, but not many from science bloggers. The blog post should combine original text, audio, image and/or video into a coherent multi-media whole.
Check it out and submit something you have done or seen on other blogs.
clock | April 23, 2010Angela Shelton (@angelashelton), an Asheville NC native, gave a powerful talk at the 140conf in NYC this week:
clock | April 22, 2010In this talk, Jeff references his TEDx talk and a couple of his recent blog posts: The problem with comments isn't them and News(paper) in the cloud:
jstemwedel | April 22, 2010I really don't know what to say about this news item, except that it had better mean that the California State University presumptively* views blogging on one's own time and bandwidth as fully compatible with a professorial appointment, regardless of the subject matter on which the blog is focused or the views expressed by the academic doing the blogging.
Otherwise, there is a pretty messed up double-standard in place.
______
*Obviously, violating FERPA, HIPAA, or other laws or regulations would count against that presumption.
awild | April 21, 2010What happens if you score bug blogs for various characters and crunch them through a phylogenetic analysis?
Morgan Jackson investigates:
Although Morgan's exercise was tongue-in-cheek, he did uncover a pattern worthy of further exploration:
The last thing I want to comment on is the huge skew between male and female insect bloggers. Of the 58 blogs where I could determine the author's sex, only 28% of them were written solely by women. Even more concerning perhaps is that 38% of these women bloggers choose to remain anonymous, while not a single male blogger chose to stay private! With…
laelaps | April 19, 2010
Ask a Biologist is back! Go check it out at the new website.
There's a new T. rex in town, plus other cool science news. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Cobra rib muscles were co-opted to flare their hoods (ht @friendsofdarwin)
Julia got an awesome Camarasaurus tattoo. Check it out!
An amazing photo of a South Korean warship being raised from the depths.
Sometimes you photograph the bear, sometimes the bear runs over and steals your camera equipment (ht @NerdyChristie)
Bloggers vs. journalists (AGAIN *headdesk*) (by @mjrobbins)
The Thai Elephant Orchestra (via @edyong209)
A…
clock | April 19, 2010The New York Times Reader: Science & Technology by Holly Stocking is now out:
Science writing poses specific challenges: Science writers must engage their audiences while also explaining unfamiliar scientific concepts and processes. Further, they must illuminate arcane research methods while at the same time cope with scientific ignorance and uncertainty. Stocking's volume not only tackles these challenges, but also includes extraordinary breadth in story selection, from prize-winning narratives, profiles and explanatory pieces to accounts of scientific meetings and new discoveries, Q…
clock | April 18, 2010Since I don't do PowerPoint but use the Web for presentations instead, and since the recordings from AAAS are not free (yes, you can buy them, I won't), and since some people have asked me to show what I showed at my panel there, here is the list of websites I showed there. I opened them up all in reverse chronological order beforehand, so during the presentation itself all I needed to do was close each window as I was done with it to reveal the next window underneath.
I started with http://www.scienceonline2010.com/ to explain the new interactive, collaborative methods in science journalism…
clock | April 18, 2010About a week ago I posted Twittering is a difficult art form - if you are doing it right. While Griff Wigley agreed, I also got two interesting and somewhat dissenting reactions from Kate and Heather.
First, in my defense, that post was targeting journalists and professional communicators, just one of many posts in a series, especially in this vein, exploring the best ways for media and comms folks to use Twitter.
Twitter is just another medium. Like blogs, Twitter can be used in any way one wants. I am not going to tell anyone "you are doing it wrong".
Some media companies just broadcast -…
clock | April 18, 2010The Bride Of Coturnix and I are flying to NYC early tomorrow morning and leaving Thursday afternoon. While we set Monday and Thursday to be "for us", we are flexible if anyone wants to meet for coffee or lunch - just let me know and we can arrange something. We plan to meet with my brother late Monday night for dinner or drinks (depending how timely is his flight in) but we can meet earlier.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will attend the 140 Characters Conference organized by Jeff Pulver:
At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls "The State of NOW" and the…
clock | April 17, 2010As this blog is getting close to having 10,000 posts, and my Archives/Categories are getting unweildy (and pretty useless), I need to get some of the collections of useful posts together, mainly to make it easier for myself to find them. I did that by collecting my best Biology posts a couple of weeks ago. Today, I am collecting my best posts from the categories of Media, Science Reporting, Framing Science and Blogging. There are thousands of posts in these categories combined, most with excellent links or videos, but here are some of the posts that have substantial proportion of my own…
clock | April 16, 2010I decided, since there are many, to put them under the fold now. But you should check them out - some excellent, thought-provoking stuff:
Journalism is not a zero-sum game
If you think the web is useless, make it useful. If you think Wikipedia is full of errors, correct the ones you find, or shut up. If you think the web only consists of ill-informed echo chambers, get in there and add an informed view.
Along the way, you might just find that there are hundreds of thousands of people doing exactly the same thing.
Guest Post: Energy Ministers of the Americas Come Together in D.C - State…
clock | April 14, 2010If you attended ScienceOnline2010, either physically or virtually, you know that Anil Dash was there, leading a session called Government 2.0.
Anil Dash is a pioneer blogger (and of course twitterer) and the very first employee of Six Apart, the company that built blogging platforms including MoveableType (which is used by Scienceblogs.com) and Typepad.
Just before ScienceOnline2010, Anil made an official announcement that he will be leading Expert Labs (also on Twitter) which is a new project funded by AAAS to facilitate feedback by the experts (including scientists, of course) to the Obama…
clock | April 13, 2010Go say Hello to Alex Wild, over on the Myrmecos blog - ants, an occasional insect that is not an ant, and amazing photography.
awild | April 12, 2010For a second time, that is. Some of you may remember me from Photo Synthesis, where I guest blogged for a bit a year ago. I am happy to be invited back to the borg!
Myrmecos is not a new blog. Rather, we have been over at Wordpress since 2007. I say "we", because the blog has evolved to become more of a community. Myrmecologists (= ant scientists) smarter than I hang out in the comments and submit guest posts, and there's a gang of top-notch nature bloggers over at Wordpress carrying on a stream of apparently continuous conversation across blogs of which Myrmecos is but one little part. Kind…
laelaps | April 12, 2010
Caterpillars must walk before they can anally scrape (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
Twitter taphonomy conversation reminded me of one of my favorite books, Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and Their Paleobiological Implications by Johannes Weigelt
Deep-sea scavengers risk low-oxygen levels to have ham for dinner (via @mjvinas)
The explosive chemistry of coal mines (by @deborahblum)
Lemur species rediscovered after 100 years (ht @dendroica)
Watch out for those falling blocks! - NYC gets destroyed, 8-bit style (ht @PD_Smith)
Creepy cadavers - photos of old school dissections (ht @…