Blogging

On the other hand....read: Lesson From Social Media Day: I'm An Expert, Too.

I see - DrugMonkey, Janet, Pal and Jason are reviving the annual tradition of asking readers to say in the comments who they are. I did this in 2008 bit can't find if I did it in 2009. The original questions and instructions are: 1) Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments. 2) Tell someone else about this blog and in particular, try and choose someone who's not a scientist but who you think might be…

DrugMonkey's Google calendar must have told him that it's time for the meme in which bloggers ask their readers what they're doing here, a meme whose originator is the esteemed Ed Yong. Having played along myself in 2008 and 2009, I'm on-board to mount the 2010 version of this blog-reader census. Please respond to at least some of these questions in the comments so we can avoid the expense of sending people with clipboards to your front door: Who are you? (Scientist, philosopher, other? Student, parent, working stiff, blissful retiree? Given that personal identity is a matter of deep…

Last week, my SciBling Jason Goldman interviewed me for his blog. The questions were not so much about blogging, journalism, Open Access and PLoS (except a little bit at the end) but more about science - how I got into it, what are my grad school experiences, what I think about doing research on animals, and such stuff. Jason posted the interview here, on his blog, on Friday, and he also let me repost it here on my blog as well, under the fold: Here at Thoughtful Animal headquarters, we're starting a new series of seven-question interviews with people who are doing or have done animal…

My contribution to the Sb-wide Zombie Day will soon be posted, but if you need something to sink your teeth into before then, check out today's new issue of the Times of London science magazine Eureka (included inside the Times, for UK readers). Inside you will find two stories by me - one on paleobiology in the 21st century and the other on our changing view of tyrannosaurs - and you can access them online behind a free registration wall. It was a wonderful opportunity to write for Eureka, and I am indebted to editors Mark Henderson and Antonia Senior for their support and the freedom to…

...was just announced on everyONE blog. Go and see who won! And while there, check out the latest edition of the (bi)weekly Blog/Media coverage.

Last week I went to Philadelphia to a very interesting meeting - a Social Media Summit on Immunization. Sponsored by Immunization Action Coalition, this was a second annual meeting for health-care non-profits, organized (amazingly well, with great attention to detail) by Lisa Randall (and, I am sure, a small army of helpers). Over a day and a half of the meeting there were two simultaneous sessions at each time slot, but I did not have much opportunity to ponder my choices as I was at the front of the room at three sessions, and participated actively in several others. The style was very '…

Thanks to Greg Laden for the anniversary wishes. One year ago today I wrote my first post here at ScienceBlogs (technically, my first post was yesterday, but that was posting the live twitter transcript of my son's birth). I would like to thank everyone at Sb (bloggers, administrators, and commenters alike) for their support as well as for their arguments. Without the feedback I'm certain I wouldn't have been challenged to interrogate my own assumptions and produce the best analysis that I could. I haven't had the opportunity to write as often as I would like the last few weeks since I'm…

As mentioned in an earlier post, I was recently part of a panel on Digital Science at the NSF IGERT 2010 Project Meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting itself brought together PIs, trainees, and project coordinators who are involved in a stunning array of interdisciplinary research programs. Since the IGERT program embraces mottos like "get out of the silos" and "think outside the box", my sense is that the Digital Science panel was meant to offer up some new-ish tools for accomplishing tasks that scientists might want to accomplish. The panelists included Jean-Claude Bradley, who spoke…

The ninety-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! The next vacant hosting slot is already on 21 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.

Lethocerus medius, Linoleum block print by the Dragonfly Woman I've been meaning to mention Dragonfly Woman's insect blog, and now I've got an excuse. Chris Goforth- the Dragonfly Woman- is an aquatic entomologist and a friend of mine from when I worked at the University of Arizona. Recently, she sent this lovely print of a giant water bug. Chris's blog is a thoughtful repository of info on all things insect and water-dwelling. For instance, how to tell the difference between dragonflies and damselflies. And, insect metamorphosis. And now, she also crafts insect art. Awesome.

What were those magical mystery circles cut into leaf margins, and who made them? As so many of you recognized, they were the marks of leafcutter bees, furry little insects that use the leaves to make nests for their young. For their correct answers, MrILoveTheAnts gets 5 points, and James Trager gets five points. And Tonya & Hp each get a point for making me laugh.

Now this is big: ScienceBlogs Welcomes the World's Top Scientific Institutions to Our Network: We here at ScienceBlogs are pleased to announce that beginning today, we will be helping to spark the next generation of research communications by introducing new blogs to our network from the world's top scientific institutions. The initial list includes: CERN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), SETI Institute, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The first two of those are already live - check out the Weizmann Wave and Brookhaven Bits & Bytes. Go and say…

It is always funny to hear how "blogs are dying", being abandoned in droves as bloggers are all moving to Twitter. It's funny how that works - you see fewer posts on a blog, or a couple of bloggers going on a summer hiatus, and the sky is falling! In response to the latest such lament (which includes a seed of an idea that many have already developed at length and detail), I wrote this in the comments, and thought I'd repost it here for more discussion: It is June. Blogospheric summer slump has been observed every summer since blogging started. Nothing surprising: kids are out of school and…

The 95th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Afarensis on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to the hominid, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes! The next open hosting slot is already on 7 July. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.

From time to time I have a look at the search strings that have brought readers to this blog. Looking at some of the recent queries, I can't help but wonder what kind of blog this would be if these described my main focus: sarcastic jokes i do not get it is it a gender thing percentage of academic job applicants are women SJSU layoffs is it bad to email your professor alot I hate academia san diego zoo ethics make a fake diploma of brooklyn college describe the harpy eagle symbiosis objectifying women for a good cause Why are some communities more desirous of control more than other…

Last week I was at the Canadian Engineering Education Association Inaugural Conference in Kingston. It was a great conference and a very auspicious beginning for this very new organization. I have a summary post in the works which I hope to have up fairly soon. I presented the above titled paper on Monday afternoon, June 7th. It went pretty well -- I was part of a session with a couple of other librarian presentations so it was mostly just us librarians. However, there were several faculty members present and I did get a couple of nice comments about the presentation later on in the…

In the midst of the ongoing conversation about managing career and housework and who knows what else (happening here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and likely some places I've missed), ScientistMother wondered about one of the blogospheric voices that wasn't taking an active role in the discussion. She mused in a comment at Isis's blog: Do we ever get a post from DrugMonkey about how he does it? He has kids and a wife (who I think is a scientist) but he rarely talks about balance issues. I'm sure its been an issue. Until the MEN start talking about its not going to change. When…

Popped down to Lund over the day to teach a class on new media reach-out in archaeology. I showed the students a presentation and spoke for about 2 x 45 minutes. Spending only four hours in town, I had little time to do anything else, though I passed the venue of James Randi's upcoming lecture, checked out the relocated runestones outside and peered into an enticing sewer trench cut into the stratigraphy of LundagÃ¥rd, Sven Forkbeard's old hangout. Here are the main points of my talk. (And here's the whole thing in Swedish.) Old media - New media Gatekeeper - No gatekeeper Pros write -…

You may have noticed I've been blogging rather lightly in recent weeks. That's because I start teaching an introductory course on beekeeping next Monday. It'll be a great class, I hope. But the preparation has cut into blogging time something fierce and will continue to do so through August. In any case, while making lecture slides yesterday I ran into trouble locating a figure depicting the native range of Apis mellifera. You'd think someone would have posted one, somewhere. The western honey bee is the world's most economically important insect, introduced nearly everywhere where humans…