Blogging
aardvarchaeology | June 4, 2009The sixty-eighth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 29 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.
And check out the latest Skeptics' Circle!
clock | June 4, 2009You may have noticed a couple of days ago that Caryn Shechtman posted an interview with me on the New York blog on Nature Network. Then, Caryn and Erin and I thought it might be a good idea to have the entire interview reposted here, for those who missed it. So, proceed under the fold:
1. What is your professional background?
Even as a little kid I always loved animals and thought that whatever I do when I grow up would have something to do with animals: perhaps work at a zoo or in a circus!. When I was in 6th grade or so, I read the entire series of books by James Herriot and decided to…
laelaps | June 4, 2009For some scientists, "blog" is one of the worst four letter words there is. Aren't science blogs pits of ill-formed opinions where the ignorant can post anything they like without fear of peer-review? Of course not, but unfortunately there are many professional scientists who consider blogging a dangerous thing. That's why I am glad to say that the National Academy of Sciences has started up a blog of their own, The X-Change Files, as part of their Science and Entertainment Exchange.
The X-Change files is a blog well-worth checking out, and they already have quite a few heavy hitters (like…
laelaps | June 2, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Last month an international team of paleontologists lifted the veil on one of the most spectacular fossils ever discovered; a 47-million-year-old primate they named Darwinius masillae. It was a major event, but not everything went as planned. This fossil, popularly known as "Ida", immediately sparked a controversy about the relationship between science and the media, the ethics of buying fossils from private collectors, and what our distant primate ancestors were like.
Indeed, the media blitz…
clock | June 2, 2009Caryn Shechtman, one of the two bloggers at the New York blog and manager of the New York City Hub at Nature Network, called me up last week and interviewed me for the blog. The interview - on a range of topics, but mostly about blogging - is now published and you can read it here.
clock | June 1, 2009The entries are listed and linked here. Go and vote here.
If you are interested in voting for me (but there are many other good choices, of course), know that to date the Archaea post got 0 votes, the Shock-Value got 2 and the others got 1 vote each. Perhaps we can do better (it appears impossible to vote more than once, so choose wisely).
clock | June 1, 2009If you read this blog even superficially, you are probably aware of everyONE, the community blog of PLoS ONE. The blog has been so successful, that our colleagues at PLoS Medicine have decided to follow our example and start their own community blog.
And, today they are ready to reveal - Speaking of Medicine. Go check it out - click on all the tabs on top for all the additional information. Bookmark and subscribed. Spread the word about it. And come back often and use it - and post comments.
laelaps | June 1, 2009Many thanks to everyone who has sent in material for the Ida carnival. There is plenty to post, but I have decided to delay the carnival by one day. Instead it will go up tomorrow afternoon, and I will be accepting entries until 9 AM tomorrow. Why? Because today is the Silence is the Enemy blogswarm and I want to encourage readers to check it out/contribute to it rather than keep fretting over Ida. I strongly urge you to read Sheril's post and follow the links over to essays from other participants.
laelaps | June 1, 2009Voting for the new 3quarksdaily contest has recently opened up, and now you can vote for your favorite blog posts. I was glad to see that Laelaps is represented by four entries, although admittedly it was difficult for me to choose which one to vote for! If you want to give me a hand head over to this page and cast your vote. The entries that receive the most votes will then go on to a final round on June 8, 2009 when Steven Pinker will hand-pick the best of the best.
clock | June 1, 2009Later this month, I'll be attending the 59th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. The list of Nobel Laureates (about 20 of them) and the list of about 600 young researchers from 66 countries are very impressive. Of course, not being a chemist, I'll have to do some homework before I go, learning what these people did to get the prizes.
The program certainly looks interesting - there is a lot of "meta" stuff beyond pure chemistry, so I will always find interesting sessions to attend and blog from. Yes, I am going to be there as a blog-reporter. I understand that PZ will also be there…
clock | June 1, 2009I posted only 128 posts in May - the reason for this reduction in numbers I explained here. Traffic has suffered only a little bit so far, I'll keep an eye. Looking back at the month, I noticed how many videos I have posted: about half are very informative and thought-provoking, the other half are hilariously funny. Take a look. So, what did I actually blog about last month?
There was some serious science on this blog last month, e.g., Why social insects do not suffer from ill effects of rotating and night shift work? and Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
I celebrated my birthday and…
laelaps | May 31, 2009Just a quick reminder: Tomorrow I will be posting a collection of links all about "Ida", from the hype surrounding her announcement to the actual science of the PLoS One paper describing her, sometime in the early afternoon. If you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at evogeek AT gmail DOT com by 9AM tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to what comes in.
aardvarchaeology | May 31, 2009The 68th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Remote Central on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Tim before Tuesday evening. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
clock | May 31, 2009In the beginning, blogs were mainly collections of links. With the development of blogging platforms, many bloggers moved on to long-form writing. But blogs were still places for a lot of linkfests, or link-plus-one-liner posts as well. My blog has always been a mix of both styles. Thus, my average of 8.2 posts per day.
But recently, you may have noticed the most definite reduction in the number of posts per day. Why?
First, because I heard some complaints about my blog being a firehose of stuff that is "boring, just links" (although others said that my role as a trusted filter was…
bioephemera | May 31, 2009If you've been following the Jared Diamond/New Yorker controversy, or my ongoing posts on journalism vs. blogging (here, here, here, here, here), you might be intrigued by this conversation about the culture of fact-checking in journalism, between journalism professor Jay Rosen and programmer Dave Winer, in their podcast series Rebooting the News. Consider this riddle: how is fact-checking in journalism like (or unlike) debugging a computer program?
Here's Rosen's take on it:
One of the features of a rebooted news system would actually be borrowed from the tech world. And it's the notion of…
sciencewoman | May 31, 2009
Dearest Blog-friends,
Have I ever mentioned how much I love all my readers and my Sciblings? This blogging community means so much to me, I just don't even know how to express it. The amount of support I get from y'all is amazing. As evidence, on Friday, my email box contained several nice emails (and offer to collaborate on some research!) and my snail-mail box was overflowing with goodies...
Wonderful, wonderful teas from my wonderful, wonderful co-blogger Alice. And a beautiful bracelet from Letmenatalya on Etsy (h/t Isis)
Thank you to all my friends for your thoughtful comments, kind…
sciencewoman | May 29, 2009In the past few weeks, Scienceblogs has quietly debuted two fantastic new bloggers and a new channel (off the main page) related to information and library science, including open access and open science; digital and print publishing; information property and ownership, and more.
Christina Pikas is a science and engineering librarian and a doctoral student, and she blogs at Christina's LIS Rant. Lately she's been doing a fantastic job of blogging and tweeting the Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting.
John Dupuis is the head science librarian at York University. He blogs at…
awild | May 29, 2009Who says we can't have both beetles and Pheidole on Friday?
A South African Sap Beetle (Nitidulidae) reacts to a swarm of Pheidole megacephala by retracting its legs and antennae, leaving little exposed but smooth chitin. The ants have difficulty finding anything their mandibles can grab, even if they have the tank-like beetle surrounded.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper