Blogging news
tsmith | November 8, 2011As you may have noticed from the extended radio silence, it's been a busy few months between classes (both taking them and giving them), tenure packaging, and research. To add another responsibility to the mix, I gave a talk a few weeks back at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture's annual symposium. This year, the featured topic was antibiotics and agriculture, so I was invited to give an overview of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and livestock.
While I'm always happy to give talks to new audiences, discussing my work and the state of the field in general, I have to…
tsmith | August 23, 2011Our new Scienceblogs overlords sure have great timing with their new pseudonymous blogging rules. For those who haven't run across that yet, National Geographic has decided to eliminate pseudonyms and force everyone with a blog remaining here (which is already dwindling) to blog under their real names. Meanwhile, out here in the real world, there's a new unfortunate case study (short version: "EpiGate") showing how blogging under one's real name can lead to serious threats and potential loss of employment, among other things.
I blog under my own name (obviously), but if I were starting out…
tsmith | December 4, 2008 Readers from waaaay back may recall an event I helped out with a few years ago, bringing together scientists, philosophers, and our resident IDist to discuss evolution and intelligent design. One of the speakers was University of Iowa professor Mark Blumberg, a colleague in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Blumberg also happens to be a prolific author, and has just released his third book in 4 years: "Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell us About Development and Evolution."
As if that wasn't enough (and all of this while maintaining a very active laboratory, serving as Editor-in-…
tsmith | September 25, 2008Thanks again to those who blogged, commented or emailed regarding our PLoS Biology manuscript. Nick already has his own response here, highlighting posts such as Larry's, Blake's, Drug Monkey's, Thomas', and Carlo's. Several criticisms ran along the same lines: that, as Nick notes, "that further institutionalizing blogs risks compromising their inherent spontaneous and independent 'blogginess'". I agree with much of what he says in response:
We by no means argue that all blogs should be more institutionalized. In fact, I would argue that institutionalized blogs will and should remain a…
tsmith | September 23, 2008Along with Shelley Batts and Nick Anthis, I have a new paper out today in PLoS Biology on academic blogging: a short commentary on potential ways to integrate blogs into academia. Nick already has a bit of the history and goals of the manuscript over at The Scientific Activist so I won't repeat those here; long story short, we started out with the goal of simply reviewing academic blogs, and the paper ended up morphing into a road map describing potential ways to integrate blogs into academia.
Many, many readers and writers in the blogosphere donated their time to send us messages about…
tsmith | September 18, 2008 As today's Scienceblogs homepage notes, we've now reached over 1,000,000 comments. To celebrate, bloggers are throwing shindigs across the country. Ours is now officially set as well. We'll be screening "Flock of Dodos" on Monday, Sept. 22nd at 7PM in Kollros auditorium (Biology Building East, room 101). After the movie, we'll retreat somewhere (location TBA) for drinks and discussion.
tsmith | August 14, 2008Chris Condayan, ASM's public outreach and media guru (and the guy behind the scenes of MicrobeWorld), has an editorial in the latest issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology. Cleverly titled "Culture media," Condayan encourages microbiologists to get involved sharing their knowledge online (and gives examples of ways they can do so). He notes:
As long as the internet remains free from regulation, every microbiologist has just as much access to online distribution as the BBC and CNN do. And in this day and age, if you don't start sharing knowledge and news online, you may run the risk of…
tsmith | January 21, 2008As I mentioned previously, I spent the weekend in North Carolina discussing blogging, science, medicine, and other sundry topics with about 200 other bloggers and interested folks at the 2008 Science Blogging Conference. The sessions were excellent, and I loved the "unconference" format. Science writer Becky Oskin and I ran a session on "Blogging public health and medicine," which Mad Biologist was nice enough to summarize here. We'd started out bringing along a powerpoint presentation just in case, but the participants certainly weren't shy about speaking up, so we ended up ditching that…
tsmith | January 14, 2008Every year, the folks over at Medgadget.com host the Medical Weblog Awards. I've been nominated a few times, and even did OK in the best new blog category a few years back. This year, I'm apparently nominated in the Best Clinical Weblog category--which, honestly, I don't think I fit into. So I won't ask for your votes here, but I'll suggest you check out some of the other fine blogs that are nominated, and the others that are nominated for all the other awards (including fellow Scienceblogger Orac). If you see something you like, pass along a vote or two.
tsmith | November 12, 2007... (L-R) Scienceblogs' own rabblerouser, PZ Myers; Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy; myself; and birthday boy Evil Monkey, along with a host of other science bloggers and readers (including some self-identified in the comments in PZ's and Phil's posts)? A nerdalicious Saturday evening in DC, that's what. We arrived a bit late and so missed some of the festivities, but I did get to chat with both PZ and Phil a bit, and hear some stories about Phil's upcoming book. I did not, however, get the memo on the dress code, and sadly left my blue button-up-over-a-T-shirt-sporting-a-button combo back…
tsmith | November 12, 2007While I'm taking care of some housekeeping, I'll mention the final numbers for the Scienceblogs Donors Choose 2007 challenge. In 2006, we raised collectively just over $34,000 (which included $10K from Seed media). This year, we extended the drive a bit, upped our individual blog goals, and Janet has the final tally: just a hair shy of $73,000 (which included $15K from Seed this year). I want to send out a final thanks to readers here who donated, no matter what amount. I also encourage everyone to take a look at some of Janet's suggestions on how to keep momentum going, and work for…
tsmith | October 10, 2007Monday's post highlighting a few of the DonorsChoose projects brought in a few more donations, so check out another round of teacher-initiated projects, and throw in a few dollars if you're able (or more than a few--I still have almost $1700 to go to reach my goal, or even another $900 to reach the total I raised last year).
Genetic Research for Immigrants
Needs: $324 (33% funded)
Asking for: Gel electrophoresis equipment (district is 94% low income, large immigrant population)
Students would have an opportunity to extract, observe and compare their own DNA with classmates in the process…
tsmith | October 9, 2007Science blogger Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle is once again in the running for a nice chunk of change via the 2007 blogging scholarship. She's one of 20 finalists, and as things stand, it's a close race (and to be honest, some of her closest challengers are just pretty lame). So she'd very much appreciate it if you wandered over yonder and dropped her a vote on behalf of science blog fans everywhere.
tsmith | October 8, 2007I've been remiss at soliciting more funding for the Scienceblogs DonorsChoose challenge. All told, Sciencebloggers have raised over $12,000 total so far to fund teacher-initiated, citizen-funded projects--$175 of that from here at Aetiology thus far, so I have a bit of catching up to do. I know you're all busy people, so I'll save you a few mouse clicks and over the next few days, describe a few of the challenges on my roster this year:
We have to see it to believe it!
Needs: $286 (34% funded)
Asking for: 10 microscopes and slides for a class of 7th graders (district is 88% low income).…
tsmith | October 3, 2007I mentioned a new blogging project I'm involved with last week--a group blog called Correlations in conjunction with PBS and WIRED magazine. Well, now it's up and running, so take a minute to poke around and read more about my other co-bloggers. Just intro posts are up for now, but "real" content will be coming shortly (they're still tweaking things a bit). Comments on things you like/hate are appreciated as well.
tsmith | September 28, 2007I rarely watch TV, but I'm always up for a good nerd show. So when I was contacted from a representative of the PBS affiliate in L.A. about a new show they were doing in conjunction with WIRED Magazine, I was definitely interested. The show is called WIRED Science (you can watch the pilot or previews on the site). It's kind of like a news magazine TV show--Dateline but with science (and, well, better personalities.) The show premieres next Wednesday, October 3rd at 8 PM (7 Central).
So how does this concern me, besides being an interested viewer? The reason they contacted me was…
tsmith | September 19, 2007I've been terrible about submitting to and promoting fellow bloggers' carnivals lately, so here are two to take note of: the latest Grand Rounds is here at Six Unto Me, while you can get your fix of ecology bloggin' at the most recent Oekologie over at Fish Feet.
Finally, if you're looking for even more reading material (or scouting for new blogs), The Scientist has an article asking for your favorite life science blogs.
tsmith | September 17, 2007Do you have a few minutes? Care to lend you time by completing a short survey to help answer the titular question?
[EDITED TO ADD: thanks! We reached 1000 survey responses in just about 10 hours' time, so the survey is now closed...we really appreciate your participation!]
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. We're examining 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…
tsmith | August 20, 2007I mentioned August would be a hellish travel month. Beginning August 2nd, I drove to Chicago for YearlyKos, back to Iowa and grabbed the kids and dogs, headed to Ohio to visit family (including an almost-9-months-pregnant sister and her 18-month old son), headed out to Maryland/DC/Delaware for an impromptu road trip, back to Ohio, back to Iowa, to Wisconsin for a science conference, back to Iowa for the evening, then flew back to DC to pick up a friend, and then drove up to New York to meet up with many other Sciencebloggers for the weekend. Then back to DC, and back to Iowa this morning…
tsmith | August 16, 2007I've not mentioned this yet because I hadn't had a chance to see it myself, but C-SPAN did broadcast this year's YearlyKos Science Panel. You can see Chris's talk on hurricanes and global warming here; Ed's talk on fighting creationism by running for school board here, and Sean's talk on dark energy and dark matter over yonder. I have the videos of the final parts--the Q&A session--after the jump.