Misc
sarahdasher | December 26, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math/Bad Math.
What's your name?
Mark Chu-Carroll
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Chase my children around.... (I've got a 6 year-old girl and a 3 1/2 year-old boy.) Cook. Chase my children some more. Make bizarrely elaborate paper airplanes. Shout at my children. Play Irish music on the wooden flute. Work. Break up fights between my children. Work. Suzuki violin with my daughter (my son isn't big enough yet). Collapse from exhaustion.
What is your blog called?
Good Math/Bad Math
What's up with that name?
When I first…
sarahdasher | December 25, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Jake Young of Pure Pedantry.
What's your name?
I have many names: Satan, Asmodai, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, He Who Must Not Be Named, He Who Steals Paper Clips and Other Tiny Metal Things, etc. But my favorite is "James Jacob Young" or "Jake" for short.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I enjoy longs walks on the beach, cooking, cleaning, and talking about my feelings. No, really...OK, that's a lie. Actually, I like running, watching cultish television, movies, kicking ass and taking names, teaching, and writing.
What is your blog called…
sarahdasher | December 24, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Carl Zimmer of The Loom.
What's your name?
Carl Zimmer
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Write magazine articles, books, and various other pieces of dead-tree media. Or investigate anthills with my daughters.
What is your blog called?
The Loom
What's up with that name?
It's one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books, Moby Dick. The cabin-boy Pip has fallen into the ocean and sees more than he can handle:
"...among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of…
sarahdasher | December 22, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Janet D. Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science.
What's your name?
Janet D. Stemwedel. But you can call me Dr. Free-Ride, since that's the pseudonym I used when I launched my blog. (It came from a discussion with my ethics in science class about whether I was a free-rider for having earned a chemistry Ph.D. paid for in part with public funds -- as science Ph.D.s in the U.S. are -- without paying the public back by being a practicing chemist.)
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I teach philosophy at San Jose State University. I hang out with…
ksharpe | December 21, 2006
Over the holidays, we'll be rerunning interviews with the ScienceBloggers, beginning with Suzanne Franks of Thus Spake Zuska.
What's your name?
Well, originally my name was Suzanne Franks. Then I married someone, and just because I said I wanted to, my name became Suzanne Shedd. Ten years later, it took a lawyer and a court order and a "petition to retake former name" to go back to Suzanne Franks. And there's still a utility company and a credit bureau that thinks my social security number belongs to Suzanne Shedd. Let that be a lesson to you young women who think it's a good idea to…
ksharpe | December 15, 2006What's a time in your career when you were criticized extremely harshly by someone you respect? Did it help you or set your career back?
sarahdasher | December 7, 2006Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) was a professor at the London School of Economics and among the most influential philsophers of science of the 20th century. Among his other projects, Popper dealt with the question of what is, and what is not, science.
Popper proposed that what separates scientific theory from non-science is empirical falsifiability: that is, whether an idea can be disproven by observation and experimental testing. God's existence, for example, cannot be called a scientific theory because no observation can falsify the existence of God. A logical corollary to this idea…
apalazzo | December 3, 2006... came Stephane Dion to take the leadership of the Liberal Party in Canada.
Dion's platform ... (from the CBC)
"We cannot afford to miss out on the next industrial revolution: the sustainable economy," Dion said when he announced his bid April 7.
"For that reason, we must weave together economic growth, social justice, the environment and public health. That is why I want to become leader of the Liberal party and then prime minister of Canada."
From Robert Sheppard's blog at CBC:
Dion seemed to come out of nowhere. He had the least money and organization of any of the top tier…
sarahdasher | November 30, 2006
This time around, we're talking to Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex.
What's your name?
Jonah Lehrer
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I pretty much live inside a gaggle of words. I spend my entire day either writing or reading so I can write more. HBO and Netflix are my main escapes.
What is your blog called?
The Frontal Cortex
What's up with that name?
It's the brain area where it all comes together.
How long have you been blogging, anyway?
Since June.
Where are you from and where do you live now?
Born and raised in the mean streets of Los Angeles. I now live in Concord, NH,…
apalazzo | November 26, 2006I heard about this great new (parody) company, NEXTgencode. You gotta love their tagline: Your Destiny is no Longer in Question.
From their website:
Want to see some of their "products"? Here's an add:
And here's even more adds!
Some products include:
- Permapuppy ... have a pet that never grows up!
- Special gene purchases (2XE4 to improve mathematical ability, BLSHt for better verbal facility)
- EnlargeEar ... make your ears 20% larger to "bring you back into the conversation".
(It's funny, while surfing the site we found a link to this other great site.)
For more visit NEXTgencode!
[HT…
stoat | November 23, 2006Of the Green blogs in the UK. Hmm, am I green? Maybe... Sadly since I'm not in the top 10 I don't get listed on the main page only in the see-also bit.
apalazzo | November 23, 2006If you haven't seen this, Orac is shocked that I'm shocked and then proceeds to give a run down of other autism related quackery ... go check it out.
In contrast, Abel Pharmboy is joyous about my shockingly shocked post.
OK time to start Thanksgiving day cooking ... oddly enough I'm preparing duck soup as I write this ...
stoat | November 19, 2006We had a brief holiday on the Norfolk coast this weekend; and were lucky to have two days of near-perfect weather. Or at least blue skies - it was still pretty cold and somewhat blowy. Here you see our shadows marching off into the distance.
Castle Rising was good, too. The first time I've ever been there. Its a very odd Castle - it was a genuine one, not just for show, and yet its elaborately decorated on the outside. The photo of M in the arched passageway is interesting: the passageway was cut through the thick wall because the floor of the main hall had collapsed and they had no other way…
sarahdasher | November 17, 2006Who would you nominate for Scientist Laureate, if such a position existed?
sarahdasher | November 10, 2006What are the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folk?
apalazzo | November 9, 2006... while I'm waiting for our daily lunch caravan to assemble. My 10 sec analysis:
- A partial change in governance will be good for the country. Hopefully funding will increase for education and science.
- Look at these maps of changes in the house and senate, and they say that the North East doesn't yield any political strength anymore. HA! This part of the country has withdrawn it's remaining support for the GOP. (And Deval Patrick won too, although that wasn't a surprise.)
- I can't beleive that Massachusetts voted against the proposition to extend liquor licenses to supermarkets. (The…
apalazzo | November 7, 2006
Not only funny, but reminds the voting population that we must disregard these ridiculous attack ads.
sarahdasher | November 6, 2006
The North Carolina Science Blogging Conference will be held Saturday, January 20, 2007 in Chapel Hill, NC. This is 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." On the slate so far are lectures and discussions about promoting science literacy, using blogs as collaborative tools, and a host of other topics from medical and helath blogging to illustration.
ScienceBloggers already registered for the event include: coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock,…
apalazzo | November 5, 2006Here are some things for you.
If there is one radio show you should listen to every week it's This American Life.
This week: What's in a Number? 2006 Edition. The preview from www.thislife.org:
A new study in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates the number of Iraqi dead since the U.S. invasion at over 600,000. This week, we look at whether that number might be accurate, and return to a in-depth look at a similar study in The Lancet, with similar methodology. That study came out a year ago, and was largely ignored by the press. We also hear U.S. forces dealing with the aftermath of…