Bloggity Blog
mikethemadbiologist | December 24, 2008I go away for vacation, and the most interesting arguments always seem to break out (at least, no one can claim it's my fault). Lost in the entire kerfuffle over whether or not science journalists are wackaloon idiot fucknozzles is the question of why did Johnson bash ERV in the first place.
Looking over ERV's original post about Jablonski's epigenetics SEED article, I can't figure out what Johnson's problem with it is: I had the exact same reaction when I received my copy of SEED. Birdsong is epigenetic? Huh?
Admittedly, ERV uses a lot of LOLspeak, but I'm actually parshull to lolspeak…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2008I did:
Mike said, "The monster is back. He's struck again."
"That cannot be. Besides, what do you know? You're a biologist and you're mad."
"Stop being such a putz, Orac," retorted Mike. "Just because the election's over doesn't mean the monster is gone."
"I did not think that the monster was gone. However, my analysis suggested that it would most likely go into hibernation for a while, having fed on the brains of so many politicians. After all, look at the level of specious comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis that occurred."
"True, but apparently the Hitler Zombie was not sated. After all,…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2008I've been meaning to get to this question that ScienceBlogling Steinn asks:
giving a talk on blogging at Harvard tends to make one think,
in particular, what is the use of science blogging, and why are economists so good at blogging....
but, has science blogging done any good?
I can think of science policy issues where blogging has made a contribution, and the general spread of information and communication done by blogs has probably had some impact, but has any actual science been directly impacted by blogs, or discussion on blogs? I am hard pressed to think of concrete examples.
What is…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2008Say hello to Princess Sparkle Pony. Because commentary like this is priceless:
See, you let Sarah [Palin] outside her bubble, and you just can't control what happens! Tsk. Meanwhile, within her carefully crafted Avon crystal sphere, Sarah's whipping up the crowd with abortion, abortion, abortion, since the McCain campaign has pretty much been shamed out of using anything else. It's only a matter of time before she starts smearing Obama for associating with known domestic homosexuals. I look forward to seeing pictures of hockey moms carrying signs emblazoned with lipstick-wearing pit bull…
mikethemadbiologist | September 26, 2008I'll be away for a couple weeks on a much needed vacation. Don't worry, blogging will still happen, just not quite as regularly.
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2008I'm heading off to a microbiome meeting in Gaithersburg, MD (blech). Don't worry though, the Blogerator 9600 will still be firing off posts.
mikethemadbiologist | August 5, 2008Tell our Benevolent Seed Overlords what you think of Seed Magazine and Scienceblogs. Take this survey, and you'll be entered to win all sorts of electronic gizmos.
http://www.erdossurvey.com/sb/survey/
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2008The new edition of the Skeptics Circle blog carnival is up. Go check it out.
mikethemadbiologist | June 28, 2008Now that I've crawled out of my grant writing burrow (although I expect a slight relapse soon), I realized I missed two great posts by driftglass.
First, on McCain's fundamental problem:
This is because McSame doesn't just need The Base; he needs them on fire.
He needs them whipped into a peak of howling, manic, batshit, fuck-you-let's-kill-'em-all, political wilding frenzy...
Because these people had been promised things. Weird, scary things.
Sometimes bareback and shrieking and sometimes with a dog-whistle, but the Base was were promised that Commander Guy was gonna deliver cheap gas from…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2008The blog posts recently haven't been focused too much on science research recently for two reasons.
First, I'm deep in the throws of multiple grants, as well as helping to build a bioinformatics pipeline for a whole mess of microbiome data, so, at the end of the day*, I'm often just not up for blogging about science. On top of that, I'm giving a talk at the American Society for Microbiology meeting this week, so I have to prepare for that. On the other hand, I will be having dinner with ScienceBloglings Tara and Revere, so that should be pretty fun. Thanks to the ScienceBlogerator 9600,…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2008Our Benevolent Seed Overlords have announced a photo contest:
Where do you do science? Seed Magazine wants to know.
We've all seen the stereotypical pictures of a science lab: microscopes and petri dishes sitting atop sterile work benches; electric circuits sunk in a mess of metal wires and batteries; equations scribbled on blackboards. But we also know that plenty of world-changing science goes on in non-typical places.
Now hard at work on the next issue, Seed editors want to see the typical or not-so-typical places where you do science. For the chance to get your scientific work space…
mikethemadbiologist | March 25, 2008What you missed if you weren't at the Boston Skeptics meeting
Thank you to all the people who turned out last night for the Boston Skeptics meeting.
One person described as the first talk "that included LOLcats, slut DNA, a laundry list of nasty infections, and a solid anti-creationist message." I presume this is a good thing.
It's always hard to figure out how to pitch a talk, given an audience that ranges from biologists to people who don't know any biology, but I got the impression that everybody got something out of the talk (hopefully). It was a nice bunch of people too. I'll have…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2008...because, if you're in Boston, you should be heading to the Boston Skeptics meeting.
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2008Don't forget: I'm speaking tommorow at the Boston Skeptics meeting about how we should defend evolution and attack creationism. My title of my talk is "Defending Evolution the Right Way: As a Fundamental Part of Biology and Biomedicine, Not as a Cultural Icon." If you don't go, you'll miss slides like this:
And this:
How could you not want to go?
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2008KIDDING. But if you're in Boston March 24, feel free to drop by the Boston Skeptics first EVAH! meeting and hear me speak.
But while we're on the subject of religion, I think you should check out this excellent post by ScienceBlogling Razib:
To conclude, my general suspicion of the New Atheists echoes Chris' in some ways, I find many of them sloppy and rather uninterested in constructing an accurate model of the world. They are polemicists, first & foremost. That is all fine and well, but to the gods of rhetoric I offer few sacrifices. To those of knowledge I would give my firstborn.…
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2008...other, larger bloggers. At least, that's what my site statistics tell me. I suppose my original response to a Bayblab post about the moral perfidy of ScienceBloggers wasn't serious enough, although, in light of the revelations that the Bayblab post was an experiment (in what, I'm not exactly sure), I gave the Bayblab post exactly the response it deserved.
Nonetheless, the whole affair de Bayblab did lead me to ask what posts actually received the most hits over the last year.
After looking at the top ten posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), one common thread emerged: every one of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2008I shall destroy all blogs!! I look like this. Really.
Over at Bayblab, there's a jeremiad about how we at ScienceBlogs are destroying science blogging. We're also money grubbing whores--because that $2-4 a day goes really far. I don't get paid that little at my day job.
Even back at the old site, where 300 hits was a really good day, I've never let site hits dictate what I write about, probably to the chagrin to Our Benevolent Seed Overlords (and site hit total). I've always written about politics. Why? Because it matters. If you think scientific research happens in an apolitical…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2008
So, I received this award from skippy, with the stipulation that I award ten other bloggers with the coveted E. After two days of consideration, which gave others the chance to award the oodles of bloggers I wanted give the E to, I am left with a list of ten. So, in no particular order, here they are:
Thoughts from KansasThe MahablogdriftglassPhysioprofRespectful InsolenceEffect MeasurePhilosophers' PlaygroundDecrepit Old FoolThe Barefoot BumRev. BigDumbChimp
And because "this one goes to eleven", Lance Mannion.
Now go read 'em.
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2008...and it's pretty damn good. So I got an email from ScienceBlogling Orac about an autism 'hub' he's putting together, so, having belatedly checked my email, I'm moving this post up.
In the Sunday NY Times, Public Editor Clark Hoyt describes the Times' policy for covering autism-vaccination studies (italics mine):
On Jan. 23, Edward Wyatt, a culture reporter in the Los Angeles bureau, reported on the cover of The Arts section that the first episode of "Eli Stone," a legal drama on ABC, was stepping into the debate over whether childhood vaccines cause autism -- "and seemingly coming down on…