blogosphere
grrlscientist | December 23, 2008
Image: TouchGraph and Google [larger view].
Thanks to a reader, sparc, I have reconstructed another web phylogeny of this blog for you to look at. If you actually go to the site itself and look at the graphics as well as the left sidebar, you'll find all sorts of interesting things pop up, thanks to Java.
So what does your blog phylogeny look like using this search-and-graph paradigm?
bioephemera | December 22, 2008At io9, Annalee Newitz asks, "can robots consent to have sex with humans?"
Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply force her to always have sex, whether she wanted to or not? And what about the Romeo Droid in Circuitry Man, or the Sex Mecha in AI, who live entirely to sexually please women, even when those women are abusing them or putting them in danger?
Obviously this isn't a urgent social issue. An insentient robot is just an appliance, not a person, and a truly sentient AI doesn't…
grrlscientist | December 22, 2008
The "Web Phylogeny" of Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted),
22 December 2008.
Image: created by Websites as Graphics.
KEY: What do these colored dots mean?blue: for links (the A tag)red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)green: for the DIV tagviolet: for images (the IMG tag)yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)black: the HTML tag, the root nodegray: all other tags
Back in theice ages, two years and seven months ago, I had a "web phylogeny" constructed for my blog. As you can see,…
bioephemera | December 10, 2008This coming June, the NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research is holding a three-day course entitled "Medicine in the Media: The Challenge of Reporting on Medical Research." The agenda is here. Amazingly, course registration is free, and meals and lodging are provided - all you have to do is get yourself to Bethesda, Maryland.
What's the catch? Well, the application process is competitive; only 50 spots are available, and in recent years, only 1/3 to 1/2 of applicants have gotten in. So if you're a science journalist whose "primary target audience is the general public" - and yes, that…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008How much do I love this mashed up, remixed version of the standby "Did You Know"? So much that I couldn't help rocking out to it a little during the talk I gave today at work on Web 2.0. I heart fatboy slim.
I'm not getting into the question of how reliable these stats are - while many of them (especially the computing power ones) are obviously speculative, the demographic stats in the original presentation by Karl Fisch were sourced. Of course, it's been through several iterations since then. C'mon, just enjoy the music.
I really do never get tired of watching this.
PS. And it's way…
bioephemera | December 1, 2008Today is World AIDS Day. Globally, 33 million people are living with HIV infection - most of them in developing nations. An estimated 2.7 million were infected with HIV in 2007 alone. In the United States, more than 1 million people are living with HIV. Still think AIDS isn't your problem?
If you're a blogger, consider joining BloggersUnite, an initiative to harness social media and spread the word about AIDS prevention. You can grab a badge to add to your blog like the one in my sidebar at left.
More on World AIDS Day 2008 and the state of the HIV pandemic here.
bioephemera | November 16, 2008Scibling Brian Switek over at Laelaps is in the running for the $10,000 science blogging college scholarship, and he needs your help to win. I'm amazed again just typing this that Brian is a college student. He writes more eloquent, insightful essays than most graduate students! (And if you don't read Laelaps, you should. . . his worst crime lies in blogging too much for me to keep up!)
Vote here (voting is open until Nov 20.)
bioephemera | October 29, 2008
I was meme-tagged a while ago by Thomas at Medical Museion, and I never got around to responding, because I was incapacited by indecision! The meme (which originated with Arte y Pico) requires that I recommend five inspiring blogs to my readers. That's harder than it sounds - there are so many more than five inspiring blogs (just look at my growing blogroll!) and most of my favorites have a lot of fans already.
But since this is a chance to recommend some excellent non-Sb blogs, which may have fewer readers than they deserve, here are my five nominees. If you like my blog, you'll likely…
bioephemera | October 25, 2008
Images from a Thai ad campaign for Black & Decker lawnmowers! Yikes.
While I appreciate the sharpness of any blade that could slice such a clean, anatomically elegant cross-section through a living snake, I have to also say "eeeuw." Poor critters!
Unfortunately, industrial harvesters do chop up lizards and snakes, although less surgically than this. Many years ago, when I was working the night shift at a produce freezing plant, we had to pick bits of reptile, insect, and amphibian out of the frozen vegetables. Fun job, that.
Anyway, the strangest thing (besides the idea that this…
scientificactivist | October 23, 2008Seed just announced that it will be matching up to $15,000 in donations to this year's ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose Challenge. This is great news, and if you haven't donated already this is a great reason to do it now. There's only one week left!
You can donate to my challenge here.
bioephemera | October 22, 2008
"Migration"
Doug Aitken
Last year, on a brisk, cool day much like today, I was jogging near the National Zoo when I noticed a good-sized young deer ambling out of the Zoo, toward a busy road only a few carlengths away. Two passersby were frozen on the path; they could clearly foresee the pending disaster, but had no idea what to do about it.
I jogged right up to the buck, yelled at him, and made as if to slap him on the rump. He looked at me dumbfounded, as did the walkers. Then he ambled back into the bushes. Easy enough. But I think the concerned walkers expected the buck to gore me, or…
scientificactivist | October 14, 2008We're now two weeks into our 2008 ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose Challenge, which means that the challenge is almost halfway over. So, if you haven't donated yet, please do! Either click on my widget to the left or on this link. The pace of donations has been a little slow this year, which is a shame considering that there are so many worthy proposals in need of funding. Let's step it up!
In case you needed a little bit of extra motivation, though, Seed just announced that it's offering prizes to donors. To maximize your chances of winning, donate as soon as possible, because prize drawings…
bioephemera | October 7, 2008Dymaxion SkeletonMatthew Day Jackson, 2008
I had a pleasant surprise at our Apple blogging panel last week, when my friend Christopher Reiger of Hungry Hyaena dropped by. He's posted a thoughtful response to some issues we touched on very lightly in the panel.
Like Brian and I, Christopher was a little disappointed that the panel didn't delve into the philosophy of science blogging, or examine whether blogging helps us interlink magisteria that are normally discrete. (I happen to think it does, which is why I blog). Of course if we had gone there, it probably would have been a much longer,…
scientificactivist | October 1, 2008For the month of October--and for the third year in a row--ScienceBlogs will be teaming up with the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge to raise money for worthy classroom projects. This year, they've added a nifty blog widget, which I've posted at the top of my left sidebar. So, if you're in a generous mood, you can donate directly from my widget, or you can visit my challenge here. DonorsChoose is a website where potential donors can browse through project proposals written by teachers from all across the US, and this year I've personally picked out ten projects that I would like to see…
bioephemera | October 1, 2008Just a reminder that tonight I'll be appearing with some of my Sciblings on a science blogging panel at the Apple Store SoHo. Come join us!
scientificactivist | September 28, 2008On Saturday, 20 September, Mo Costandi (Neurophilosophy), Selvakumar Ganesan (The Scientific Indian), Kara Contreary (Pure Pedantry), and I hosted a gathering at the Calthorpe Arms in London to join others in celebrating ScienceBlogs' one millionth reader comment. In addition to footing the bill for the drinks, ScienceBlogs also sent each party a nifty little Flip video recorder. As you can see, we didn't get too crazy with it, but we did manage to capture about half an hour of conversation, and I've divided it up into three separate videos:
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Enjoy!
bioephemera | September 25, 2008Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith authored an article on science blogging which appeared yesterday in PLoS Biology. In their words,
We propose a roadmap for turning blogs into institutional educational tools and present examples of successful collaborations that can serve as a model for such efforts.
The article gives solid examples of how blogging has facilitated scientific collaboration, in fields from plant genetics to science policy. I don't think anyone disputes that blogs can open the lines of communication and enable interactions across research groups, institutions, and…
scientificactivist | September 24, 2008Since our paper on the role of blogs in academia was published earlier this week, we've received quite a bit of feedback from the across blogosphere. Befittingly, the authors of the paper have contributed to this, as Tara gave her thoughts on her blog, I gave mine on my blog (Shelley has been busy traveling for interviews, so she hasn't had a chance to weigh in yet), and we published a list of acknowledgments. (I'd also like to thank our respective universities' press offices for their outreach efforts. I found Oxford particularly pleasant to work with, and they even put up something on…
scientificactivist | September 23, 2008Yesterday, I blogged about the paper that Shelley Batts, Tara Smith, and I just published in PLoS Biology on integrating blogging into academia. As promised, we have a very long list of people we would like to acknowledge for their contributions to this work. As I noted yesterday, this paper was built upon the anecdotes, suggestions, and other feedback we collected from across the science blogosphere. In addition to the people listed below, we also gained insight from a variety of discussions that took place within the internal ScienceBlogs forums, and we owe a big thanks to all of our…
scientificactivist | September 22, 2008Just over a year ago, I joined fellow science bloggers Shelley Batts (Of Two Minds) and Tara Smith (Aetiology) in setting out to catalogue the accomplishments--and pitfalls--of the scientific blogosphere and to explain why people should pay attention. In a sense, we wanted to say "We are the science bloggers; hear us roar!" And, in order to make our case, we drew from the collective experience of our fellow science bloggers, far and wide, asking how blogging had affected their work, their careers, and their lives--both positively and negatively.
The results were astounding. Across the…