Blogging
aardvarchaeology | September 17, 2007A couple of other bloggers here at Sb are writing a paper on the impact of science blogs on the outside world. You, Dear Reader, can help them by filling out a questionnaire.
This survey attempts to access the opinions of bloggers, blog-readers, and non-blog folk in regards to the impact of blogs on the outside world. The authors of the survey are completing an academic manuscript on the impact of science blogging and this survey will provide invaluable data to answer the following questions:
Who reads or writes blogs?
What are the perceptions of blogging, and
What are the views of those who…
clock | September 16, 2007Too busy with the pseudo-moving right now, so just a quick set of links to other people's good stuff:
An amazing, fantastic post on Laelaps about horse evolution (also noted by Larry Moran). While at first glance, this post on Pondering Pikaia on naturally occurring hybrids in fish is not related, I beg to differ - she does mention other instances of hybridism in nature, including those in Equids - the well-known mules and hinnies, and not so well-known zebroids and others. And I just finished reading a book Hemi: A Mule, which, IMHO, compares quite favorably to Black Beauty - after all, it…
neurophilosophy | September 15, 2007
but I prefer holding a book in my hands to reading from a computer screen.
We already have the technology that will enable us to carry whole libraries in our pockets. Next month, for example, Amazon will launch Kindle, an electronic book reader, and Google will begin charging users for full access to the digital books in its database. Soon, we'll have electronic tablet devices with enough memory to store hundreds of books.
To get an idea of what it might be like to read an electronic book, take a look at the latest issue of Blogger & Podcaster magazine. Click on the image of the cover…
clock | September 14, 2007A few days ago I wrote about the Zoo School in Asheboro, NC. It is even better than I thought - I got in touch with their lead teacher and she told me that all of their students have laptops in the classroom with wireless access. Their classrooms also have Smartboards and other cool technology. And they are very interested in their students utilizing the Web in a variety of ways, including blogging.
And obviously, some of them already are, as one of the students discovered the post on her own and posted this comment that I want to promote to the front page:
I am a Senior at the North…
clock | September 14, 2007A few days ago PZ Myers announced he will have some special guest bloggers on Pharyngula soon. While the first commenters were guessing Big Names, like Dawkins, my comment was: "I am hoping for your students....". A little later, PZ Myers updated his post to announce that yes, indeed, it will be his Neuroscience students who will be guest-blogging this semester.
And today, they started. They were thrown into a lions' den, but they are doing great, holding their own against the famously ruthless Pharynguloids who call them 'kids' and then slam them anyway in many, many comments (they are…
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007You can subscribe to my RSS feed by pasting this link into your feed reader. I've added an orange RSS button, as well as a counter displaying how many subscribers I have, in the sidebar on the left.
You can also get email notifications of my latest content here.
aardvarchaeology | September 13, 2007The twenty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The John Hawks Anthropology Weblog. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to scratch your itch and soothe your yearnings.
The next open hosting slot is on 24 October. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. You don't have to be an anthropologist -- you don't even have to be anthropoid!
aardvarchaeology | September 12, 2007
Last night's blogmeet was even better than the previous one: more people, some lady bloggers, some archaeologists and all presided over by Prof. Steve Steve. The professor was in a wild mood and immediately upon arriving did something indescribable with a large tabasco bottle, claiming that this was "good for his posture". Kind of disconcerting to have a conversation with a senior academic boasting that kind of... accommodation skills while he's... on the bottle.
Missing from the picture are myself (holding the camera) and Lars L of Arkland (who ended up outside the frame because it was too…
clock | September 11, 2007The Triangle blogging season has started, so I hope many of you locals and visitors join us for the first meetup of the year:
The Durham bloggers meetup will be the second Wednesday of each month at 6pm at Tyler's Tap Room in the American Tobacco Warehouse District. First meetup will be Sept.12th. Anton will coordinate. Duke is rapidly taking to blogging, and we've discovered some cool food bloggers in Durham -- and Pam Spaulding has represented the city well -- so we hope this meetup gets good attendance.
I bet there will be a lot of science and health bloggers there! What with Anton's new…
aardvarchaeology | September 10, 2007As mentioned here before, I'm going to The Amazing Meeting 5.5 skepticism conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 25-26 January. Now I've also signed up for the 2nd Science Blogging Conference in Durham, NC, the preceding weekend. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be co-organising a session at the NC conference with John McKay of the Archy blog. The theme will be "Blogging about the Social Sciences and Humanities".
(There was some confusion about what to call this thing. In Sweden, archaeology is in the humanities along with history, religion studies, classics, philology etc. In the US, my…
clock | September 8, 2007The first blogger meetup of the season will be this Wednesday, September 12th, at 6pm at Tyler's Tap Room in the American Tobacco Warehouse District. Come in large numbers, bring your friends!
To stay informed about this and other local bloggy events, sign up for the BlogTogether mailing list.
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Here are a handful of new blogs I've just found:
Neurofeedback on the Brain
Mind Modulations
Neuromod Blog
Gray Matters
Cognitive Neuroscience Review
And here are two new blogs by philosophers of mind:
The IP Blog
Colin McGinn
clock | September 6, 2007Danica:
If you receive the invite from friends or anyone to join social networking site Quechup, don't do it! Disregard that Quechup email and don't visit the website. Last night I was caught up by invitation of reputable friend, didn't know for this spam, and this morning I got alert email about this. I tried now to log into the site and delete my account - but I failed. Such a fraud. I don't know how to delete my account as I am afraid that my address book will be spammed by this Quechup site!
clock | September 5, 2007Before we focus on science, and while the weather is still nice, we (and by "we" I mean "bloggers in the Triangle area of North Carolina") will have some other kind of bloggy fun, the one that involves taste buds!
Yes, join us for a three-day Foodblogging event on September 23-25, 2007, with the special guest-star: the famous chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman. We'll eat, drink, read, chat and blog while celebrating and promoting the locally grown food prepared by local chef celebrities.
Anton has all the details - the seating is limited so sign up quickly. Yummy!
clock | September 5, 2007Far too busy today, so just news in brief....
New on science blogging:
You can now subscribe to the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap:
Bonus: people who sign up now will be automatically entered in the ScienceBlogs 500,000 Comment contest, for a chance to win a trip to the greatest science city.
Our friends on The Intersection are looking for a new banner. There are prizes to be awarded! Can they possibly get a banner prettier than mine? Give it a try!
Another blogging contest! Win real money for student blogging. Nominate your favourites today. Let's have some science bloggers up in the…
sciencetolife | September 5, 2007The 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (organized by ScienceBlog's very own Bora Zivkovic) is fast approaching.
Suzanne Franks and I will be co-chairing a 1 hour session tentatively called "Exploring Women in Science Blogging".
We are interested to get your feedback and comments on what we are proposing and your suggestions for improving or making it better. Here are some details:
There will be a diverse panel of female science bloggers (we're thinking one graduate student, one professor, and a third in industry or in business for herself) to share their experiences as science…
aardvarchaeology | September 4, 2007The Liberal Party in my home municipality of Nacka has started a blog and kindly put local bloggers on their blog roll. They've tagged Aard "Extreme Archaeologist". I'm taking that as a compliment -- I mean, they aren't calling me "Archaeological Extremist".
As mentioned here before, Sweden's political spectrum is much wider than the US one. The United States' entire bipartisan system maps onto the conservative half of Sweden's parliament. We're currently governed by a conservative coalition, a rare occurrence in Sweden, but polls show that they actually lost the majority support shortly…
clock | September 3, 2007Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And many bloggers' eyes and typing fingers bring a lot of sunlight to whatever anyone is trying hide. This makes bloggers dangerous to many entrenched and powerful interests.
Not that bloggers are Martians, recent arrivals on this planet, to be treated as a 'special interest' group. Bloggers are people. And the Web gives people the ability to say what they think, to report what they see, to fact-check the PR outfits, to use their own individual expertise to parse others' arguments and, yes, to point fingers at the guilty.
And in many countries around…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007Abdel Monim Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and blogger, has identified (in Arabic and English) a prison officer who allegedly tortured him for 13 days at a state security headquarters back in 2003.
27-year-old Mahmoud is a member of Ikhwan Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB). The MB is the world's first Islamist movement - it was founded in 1928 - and its early ideology is what inspires most of today's Islamists, including al-Qa'eda.
The MB has always been, and remains, Egypt's biggest and most popular opposition party. It is officially illegal, but is tolerated by Egyptian president…