Blogospheric science
jstemwedel | November 28, 2006Scott Eric Kaufman wants to know how fast a meme can sweep the blogosphere. And it's not just a matter of idle curiousity: his MLA presentation depends on it.
He writes:
What is the speed of meme? People write in general (typically truimphant) terms about how swiftly a single voice can travel from one side of the internet to the other and back again, but how often does that actually happen? Of those instances, how often is it organic?
Most memes, I'd wager, are only superficially organic: beginning small, they acquire minor prominence among low-traffic blogs before being picked up by a…
jstemwedel | November 16, 2006If you're ready to admit that we're almost done with 2006 and that it might be OK to start making plans for 2007, check your calendar and think about coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, a "free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web."
(more after the break)
The conference will be happening in Chapel Hill, and is mostly scheduled for Saturday, January 20, 2007. (There's also a Friday night dinner planned, and a Thursday aftenoon…
jstemwedel | November 4, 2006Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My adventures with John Wilkins at the PSA meeting in Vancouver continue. Last evening, Wilkins brought me to a reception where I had the pleasure of mingling with a great many philosophers who have made philosophical studies of various aspects of evolutionary biology. Strangely, these minglings were punctuated with camera flashes. Here I am trying to have a word with Robert Brandon as the paparazzi close in on us.
Here I am trying to catch up with Roberta Millstein (who blogged at the much-missed Philosophy of Biology) about her recent move to UC Davis…
jstemwedel | September 29, 2006I want to commend to you a pair of posts that strike me as calls to action. Both relate to the oft-discussed "pipeline problem" in the sciences. And, I take it that both authors are interested in making science (and especially academic science) a less hostile environment not just for women, but for others who love science but, frankly, may not have much patience for current institutional or societal barriers to entry to the tribe of science.
Responding to the recent NAS panel's finding that institutional bias is responsible for the lower rates at which women in science departments are hired…
jstemwedel | September 12, 2006I actually have a longish post I'm working on (about whistleblowing), plus a bazillion submissions for the upcoming Skeptics' Circle to sort through, but between teaching and grading and coaching and making lunches, well, there are a bunch of important tidbits that will fall through the cracks unless I give you a random bullets post:
*DonorsChoose is in the middle of a California Back to School Challenge, a drive to raise $250,000 to fund teachers' proposals for California classrooms by September 30 -- and they've lined up matches to double contributions. If you're so inclined, toss them a…
jstemwedel | August 16, 2006David at The World's Fair has posed another, "Ask a ScienceBlogger, Sort Of" question:
Essentially, as scientific types who tend to analyse, over-analyse, supra-analyse things, and who like to categorize and follow empirical trends, I'm interesting in hearing what you think it is that sparks these viral outbursts of information outreach? This question (and apologies for its convolution) also relates directly to your role as a blogger, where the assumption is that you revel in increased traffic, and are kind of looking for these tricks anyway. I guess, I'm just interested in hearing a…
jstemwedel | August 11, 2006Well, I can't smell it from here on the Left Coast, but those of you in nose-shot of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden may soon get to partake of the wonder that is the Amorphophallus titanum, aka "corpse flower".
Yes, you guessed it, this fragrant bloom smells like a dead animal. Flies loooove it.
If you're not going to be near Brooklyn in the near future (or, you know, you don't want to hurl), you can follow the blooming of the corpse flower vicarously on a BBG blog, or watch it on webcam. (There is no live smell-o-cast, but undoubtedly someone is working on that technology for next time!)
jstemwedel | August 2, 2006Another dispatch from the BCCE:
The Journal of Chemical Education (or J Chem Ed, as we call it in the biz), is, in fact, targeted to an audience of chemical educators. Its website has the online version of the journal, plus some resources for teachers of chemistry at the ChemEd Resource Shelf. If the full array is too overwhelming, you can check out Hal's Picks monthly recommendations for what to read. You may be surprised at how many of the picks are not officially chemistry (or even science) books, but each of them has some interesting, useful, or funny connection to matters scientific.…
jstemwedel | July 30, 2006It's hard to know the best way to blog a dinner (especially when you have agreed, with your dinner companions, that each of you should blog it to discover whether the result is a Rashoman-like situation wherein each description might as well have been of a different event). Also, I was up late packing and up early catching my airport shuttle. So this may be somewhat stream of (un)consciousness.
The Restaurant
Very good food. Very bad service. The umeshisho makimono was especially good. Less good: the fact that the veggie sushi was plated with the non-veggie, resulting in half of my…
jstemwedel | July 18, 2006Yami at Green Gabbro puts out a call for interviewees for a book project on women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM).
While the status of women in STEMM has improved in the past few decades, it has been a slow process with many ups and downs. Programs aimed at girls interested in science and Title IX, which prohibits discrimination in universities, have helped increase the number of STEMM degrees awarded to women. But the number of women is still shockingly low in some disciplines, such as physics and computer science, and at the highest ranks in all fields…
jstemwedel | July 10, 2006How is our vision of the world affected by the possibilities we see explored in science fiction? Meme Therapy asked a bunch of science fiction writers (and some philosopher of science), and got some interesting answers about reading and writing, grappling with conflicting messages, questioning authority, and being worried. Go read it.
jstemwedel | July 10, 2006The problem with having eyes and ears everywhere is that sometimes they deliver sensory data that make you want to rip them out of your head or stuff them with cotton, respectively.
An eagle-eyed reader pointed me toward some eyebrow-raising comments on another blog, which would not be of much interest except they purport to transmit information obtained from one of the fine science departments at my university. So, to uphold the honor of my university, I have to wade into this.
First, a representative sampling of the comments from the poster in question. He writes:
I will leave this site…
jstemwedel | July 8, 2006So, because of assorted commenting issues across the ScienceBlogs galaxy, our tech gurus installed a new spam filter. And apparently, it's quite the enthusiastic little spam filter. Word is that it has swallowed a number of legitimate comments (known with some certainty to be legitimate because they were composed by the blog owners). And blog posts (which I would have thought, as an outsider to the wonderful world of software architecture, were presumptively not spam).
Possibly, particular words are triggering the activation of the spam filter's voracious jaws. I can't type them here (…
jstemwedel | June 25, 2006This time they're going after Tara. So sad that a fundraiser would inspire such an underhanded attack. Someone must be feeling very desperate!
* * * * *
Reading Aetiology was fun -- but suddenly I was washing my hands obsessively, sending back rare hamburgers at restaurants, and turning down rest-stop guitar-string tattoos. My friends want to know what happened to the happy-go-lucky guy I used to be.
That blog turned out to be a vector of buzz-kill.
I plan to protect my kids from the germ theory of disease.
jstemwedel | June 19, 2006I'm following up on my earlier post in the wake of the outing of dKos blogger Armando. At Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein had posted an interesting discussion of the issues around pseudonymous blogging, and whether it might sometimes be ethical to reveal the secret identity of a pseudonymous blogger. She raises lots of interesting issues about whether blogging is properly regarded as a species of journalism, and how the ethics of blogging might be related to the journalistic ethics of the "old media". As well, Armando turns up in the comments to disagree with Lindsay's analysis of the…
jstemwedel | June 17, 2006We kicked off the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose drive just over 50 hours ago. Since then:
ScienceBlogs readers have made donations totaling $8498.73
SEED is matching that $8498.73, and will match up to another $1501.27.
Doing the math, your donations plus SEED matches means at least $16, 997.46 will go to help teachers and students. But, we're going until July 1, so I know we can do better than that!
Dave and Greta at Cognitive Daily are sweetening the pot even more -- they'll kick in their own money to add another 10% to any amount you donate to their challenge. (Don't forget, that gets…
jstemwedel | June 16, 2006Maybe this is a bad idea, but I'm unable to resist poking this particular hornets' nest. (I've poked it before, after all.)
There's a post on Slashdot reporting that GNOME got 181 applications for Google's Summer of Code from men and zero applications from women. As a result, Google has seen fit to mount a Women's Summer Outreach Program 2006.
But here's the "value added" to this information by Slashdot:
Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get…
jstemwedel | June 16, 2006Since we kicked off the drive yesterday morning:
ScienceBlogs readers have made donations totaling $3784.30
Our beneveolent overlords at SEED have put up as much as $10,000 to match reader donations*. That means that so far, SEED is kicking in $3784.30 to match what you all have donated. And, if readers can collectively donate another $6125.70, SEED is committed to matching that as well.
So far, exactly 13 readers who have made donations have forwarded their email confirmations from DonorsChoose to sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com to enter the drawing for fabulous prizes at the end of…
jstemwedel | June 15, 2006Just a quick update on the progress of the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon:
At last check (as I'm composing this post), across all the Sb blogs participating in the challenge, readers have donated more than $3000. That's a strong start, readers!
The bloggers at The World's Fair are going to try to get you to donate to their challenge by promising, for a donation of $10 or more, to publish a science haiku of your composition in The Science Creative Quarterly. Is that fair?
If you would like to help a particular geographical region, it's worth combing…
jstemwedel | June 10, 2006In honor of the arrival of all the new neighbors here at ScienceBlogs Towers, here's a little getting-acquainted meme.
3 reasons you blog about science:
To make the scientific method less scary to non-scientists.
To examine the ways in which behaving ethically really makes for better scientific knowledge.
Because I find science endlessly fascinating.
Point at which you would stop blogging:
If I ran out of things to say (which is hard for me to imagine).
1 thing you frequently blog besides science:
Academic stuff (pedagogical musings, rants about cheating, etc.)
4 words that describe your…