blogosphere
grrlscientist | September 18, 2007The Scientist has just published an online version of an upcoming print story on their site. This story asks the question, What are your three favorite life science blogs? I noticed that they asked seven men this question (not one woman, hello??!) and predictably, nearly all of the top blogs that they listed were written by .. men!
Quite frankly, I am offended. Are women life science blog writers really second-class citizens, undeserving of recognition and top honors? If you think that women have something of value to say about the life sciences, get on over there and be sure to let the…
scientificactivist | September 7, 2007The following is a transcript of the remarks I delivered to the Texas Aggie Democrats at Texas A&M University on September 5, 2007 (and I've added some links). I start out talking a little bit about the work I did in the organization when I was a student there, but I eventually get into the growing role that blogs are playing in Democratic Party politics.
I stood here almost exactly four years ago in front of a group not unlike yourselves. I was a junior at A&M, a newcomer to politics, still wet behind the ears, yet I was the new President of the Texas Aggie Democrats. It was the…
scientificactivist | August 23, 2007In response to Michael Skube's freewheelingly critical opinion piece about the blogosphere in Sunday's LA Times, the paper has published a response entitled "The journalism that bloggers actually do" by Jay Rosen, NYU journalism professor and PressThink blogger, via its online Blowback feature. For more information on the Skube affair, check out A Blog Around the Clock. I don't have a problem with Skube's assertion that blogs are no substitute for the mainstream media--I agree--but Skube is just so contemptuous and dismissive toward the blogosphere (a phenomenon he doesn't seem particularly…
scientificactivist | August 21, 2007On Sunday, the LA Times published an uninformed opinion piece by Michael Skube blasting the blog culture. A Blog Around the Clock has a nice wrap-up, and Jay Rosen is currently soliciting examples of good reporting by blogs over at PressThink for a formal response.
Tara Smith of Aetiology has coauthored a policy paper with Steven Novella of NeuroLogica Blog in PLoS Medicine about HIV denialism on the web. Read it. This is an especially timely topic, as Thabo Mbeki's government in South Africa shows signs of slipping back to its HIV denialism days with the recent firing of outspoken deputy…
scientificactivist | August 12, 2007Last week, I attended a seminar at the Oxford Internet Institute presented by J. Ignacio Criado and entitled "Political Blogging in Campaign and Political Communication: Political Leadership 2.0?" (see my announcement and the event's abstract here). My impressions are mixed, particularly in relation to the relevance of the seminar and the methods and conclusions of the presenter. I'll touch on these methodological issues briefly, but the main point that I took home was this: campaign blogging is fundamentally different from everyday political blogging, and it doesn't truly fit into the…
scientificactivist | August 11, 2007August 9, 2007, will go down in history as a great day for global warming denialism. On Wednesday, the 8th, well-known global warming denialist Steve McIntyre published a post on his blog about NASA finding a flaw in some of its temperature data that led to a minor reordering of the list of the hottest years on record. Not surprisingly, the conservative media and blogs went hog wild the next day. The mainstream media even got a bit carried away... despite the fact that we're talking about changes of hundredths of degrees here and that these numbers are only for North America (and don't…
scientificactivist | August 6, 2007This one is for my readers in Oxford. The Oxford Internet Institute is hosting what could be a semi-relevant and interesting talk this Wednesday at noon. Here are the details:
Title: Political Blogging in Campaign and Political Communication: Campaigning for Political Leadership 2.0?
Speaker: J. Ignacio Criado (OII Visiting Fellow)
When: Wednesday 8 August 2007 12:00 - 13:30
Abstract:
The extended use of Internet facilities within the generalization of social access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the advanced societies has contributed to both the diffusion and…
scientificactivist | July 24, 2007If we learned anything from the Atlas of Creation, it's that we can refute any evidence, regardless of how scientifically sound it is, just by putting a red X across it and writing "FALSE". Jeremiah McNichols reflects on this at his blog Think In Pictures... and then he takes it one step further. McNichols is selling merchandise to give you the same powers of refutation as the Atlas's own Harun Yahya. Check it out here. All proceeds go to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), so it's for a good cause.
Besides, who wouldn't want to be able to do this?
Evolution…
scientificactivist | July 24, 2007To keep my readers better informed, I've added a Google News RSS feed to the sidebar of the blog. It's currently located just under the search form, although I may move it later. It should deliver the latest headlines from the intersection of science and politics, so hopefully most of the entries that appear on it will be relevant. I owe much thanks to our technology director, Tim Murtaugh, for helping me set this up. Thanks, Tim!
Now, even when I'm not blogging as frequently as I probably should be (which happens fairly often these days, due to busy days and nights in the lab), you can…
scientificactivist | July 21, 2007You may have noticed a new link at the bottom of each entry that says "Sphere: Related Content" (only on a post's individual page, not on the home page). If you click on it, a window will come up offering links to related blogs and blog posts. On the top left, you'll see relevant blog posts from around the blogosphere. On the top right, you'll see related blog posts from this site. On the bottom left, you'll see some recommended blogs: Migrations, NASA Watch, and The Panda's Thumb. These are three outstanding blogs, and, outside of ScienceBlogs, these should be three of the most…
scientificactivist | July 16, 2007You may have noticed a little green box (replicated here) on the right sidebar advertising the ScienceBlogs reader survey. I hear that it's not going to be up too terribly much longer, so if you haven't taken the survey yet, please do. Not only will the feedback be useful to the folks here at ScienceBlogs, but you could win an iPod!
Click here or on the image to take the survey.
Thanks for helping out!
scientificactivist | July 9, 2007Over at A Blog Around the Clock, Bora has posted an interview he conducted by email with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on science and science-related issues. The fact that John Edwards participated is a good indication that the 2008 candidates (at least the Democratic ones) are taking scientists, bloggers, and even science bloggers seriously. Props to Edwards for playing ball, and a big "well done" to Bora for arranging this.
Bora asked Edwards eight questions on some of the more important and timely science-related issues facing America, including global warming, health…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2007tags: blogosphere, five lives meme, meme
I don't think this was intended to be a meme, but it is certainly has all the makings of a good meme. Basically, it is a self exploration exercise where you imagine that you could have five lives where you could explore five different careers, lifestyles, whatever -- what would they be? So if "Five Lives" became a meme, I'd be quite pleased because I am curious to know how all of you would answer it. I found it at Day by Day, an interesting blog written by a female postdoctoral scientist.
Well, for my first life, I would choose to be exactly what I am…
scientificactivist | January 16, 2007Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around the Clock announced this morning that the first ever anthology of science blogging, The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006 is now available for purchase. At the website of the publisher, Lulu, you can either purchase a paperback copy or download the entire volume. Since it spans an impressive 336 pages, however, I would suggest the former.
Bora deserves a round of applause for undertaking the monumental task of editing this anthology, and doing so in a phenomenally short amount of time. Hundreds of posts were nominated, but fifty made the…
scientificactivist | January 11, 2007It was just brought to my attention today that the comments on my blog weren't working. I had thought it was kind of strange that I hadn't had a comment in almost two weeks, but, well, whatever. It had something to do with the Google search code that I had on the sidebar, so I've taken it off for now. I apologize for the inconvenience!
Regardless, the point is that comments are now working, so, please, comment away!
Update: Seed's web guru, Tim, has informed me that I forgot to close a tag in the search code, hence the problem. It's fixed now, so both the Google search and comments are…
scientificactivist | January 11, 2007(...and to ScienceBlogs.com, which was coincidentally launched on the same day.)
Today marks the one year anniversary of my first post on The Scientific Activist, back at the old scientificactivist.blogspot.com site. The first post, which laid out fairly accurately what this site would be about, can be read here. In fact, if you read down to the bottom, the very first comment on my site came from Tara Smith of Aetiology, who I later ended up joining on ScienceBlogs.com. ScienceBlogs.com has certainly been the story in science blogging this last year, and it has been quite an honor to be a…
scientificactivist | December 29, 2006The Scientific Activist received a shout out yesterday in the latest issue of the Ventura County Reporter in Sandra Sorenson's article stressing the continued importance of blogs and how they likely contributed to Time Magazine's recent Person of the Year announcement:
However you view Time Magazine's decision to name every somewhat cognizant citizen "Person of the Year" a cop-out, flattering the deadline-burdened staff got something right: There is increasingly active dialog between the average citizen and the mainstream media. And it isn't always amicable....
But what of the blog, that…
scientificactivist | December 3, 2006Via A Blog Around the Clock comes news that Daniel Rhoads, who writes the informative blog Migrations (and formerly A Concerned Scientist), has successfully defended his dissertation. So, after a few minor revisions, it looks like it won't be too long before we'll have to call him Dr. Rhoads.
In good blogger form, Daniel has published the first chapter of his dissertation online. The title of the chapter is "Integrin receptors and determinants of polarity in directed cell migration," and it looks like a nice overview of the subject. As someone who used to study cell migration in blood…
scientificactivist | November 17, 2006There really aren't that many blogs out their written by scientists about the science that they do, and this seems particularly true in my area of study, NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). I have been able to find a few, although none of them focus specifically on biological or macromolecular NMR. The following list is, of course, not meant to be comprehensive, and if anyone knows of any other NMR blogs, I would love to hear about them.
Stan's NMR Blog: This blog, run by Italian physicist Stanislav Sykora, seems to be the most comprehensive and regularly updated of the NMR blogs I've come…
scientificactivist | November 5, 2006Fellow ScienceBlogger Shelly Batts of Retrospectacle was chosen this last week as a finalist for a blogging scholarship being offered by Scholarships Around the US. She's a hell of a blogger, and I think she deserves our support. If you agree, you have until midnight (Eastern Time) TONIGHT to vote for her. Vote here! If you're looking for reasons to vote for her, here's her case for herself:
I'm a PhD student studying a cure for deafness. My thesis is related to the regeneration of the sensory cells in the inner ear, which people lose as they age, in response to noise, or are born without…