Miscellaneous
mixingmemory | June 26, 2006The first edition of The Synapse, one of two new neuroscience carnivals, is here. Especially interesting are the mating robots and the post on neurotheology.
cmooney | June 25, 2006The famous physicist once remarked: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." What do you think he meant by this? I'm thinking about using the quote in the new book to underscore two different views of science--a deductive approach based upon theory and a Baconian inductive approach based upon the collection of data--but I'm not sure if I'm interpreting Rutherford the right way....
jrosenhouse | June 21, 2006I rented The Aristocrats the other day. This was the documentary (for lack of a better description) by Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette in which numerous comedians and comedy writers were asked about a particular joke, called “The Aristocrats.” As Jon Stewart says in the movie, I'm not going to tell the joke. Suffice it to say that it is the sickest joke ever told. I mean it. Don't believe me? Rent the movie! Each comedian starts with the same beginning, and the same punchline. But the middle is a blank canvas for each performer to work with as he or she sees fit.
I can honestly say I…
cmooney | June 5, 2006Well, my old website, ChrisCMooney.com, has been hacked. I have no idea how to deal with it. I meant to set the old URL up to redirect here, but I have been way too busy to set that up...and now the problems are compounded. Will someone please email me if they can help out with this?
cmooney | May 16, 2006Just a couple of things that I've been meaning to give a plug to:
1. Daniel Collins, a geoscientist and environmental engineer at MIT, has started a new science blog entitled "Down to Earth." Check it out.
2. Defenders of Wildlife has launched a new program, the Conservation Support Network, to help promote the use of good science--not "sound science"--in wildlife protection policy. The scientific integrity movement continues to grow....
3. The website of the National Science Foundation actually won a Webby award recently for best government website. That is seriously cool--congrats.
Enjoy....
jrosenhouse | May 15, 2006Many thanks to Afarensis for the kind welcome and the lovely virtual chess set.
Also thanks to Orac at Respectful Insolence and to Razib at Gene Expression for their kind greetings. It's nice to feel welcome.
Actually, Razib has already taken issue with some of my remarks. But that is a subject for a different post...
Update: Oops! And thanks to John over at Stranger Fruit for his welcome. His strange antipathy towards mathematics notwithstanding. (It's the queen of the sciences for heaven's sake!)
jrosenhouse | May 15, 2006In just two short seasons Prison Break has earned its place among the best television shows of all time. Granted, the story has gotten increasingly absurd with each passing week. The fact remains that it is relentlessly suspenseful and has as interesting a cast of characters as any show in recent memory. Plus, I have a soft spot for “impossible escape” stories. So Prison Break earns a spot in my personal pantheon of all time great television shows, right alongside the original Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, The A-Team, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the first two seasons of MacGyver. (…
jrosenhouse | May 14, 2006I've been on blog vacation for about three weeks now, and a number of things have happened in that time. So let me get a few things off my chest.
Stephen Colbert was brilliant at the White House Correspondent's dinner. That is a fact, not an opinion. Frankly, the whole idea of the Correspondents' dinner is a bit grotesque. Journalists should not be hobnobbing and having a good time with the politicians they cover. Colbert said exactly what needed to be said.
David Blaine totally won me over with this last stunt. He held his breath for seven minutes and eight seconds. That's freakin'…
jrosenhouse | May 14, 2006Let me begin by thanking the good folks at Science Blogs for inviting me to join their party. The move seems to have gone smoothly. Still settling in, kicking the tires, testing the foundation and all that. Expect the links list to grow precipitously over the next few weeks. And, no, that small grey creature in the profile section is not me. Just a placeholder until I procure a photo of my smiling mug appropriate for the available space. Otherwise, everything seems in order for the production of mass quantities of bloggy goodness.
So what sorts of things do I blog about? Well, as the…
cmooney | May 1, 2006I just spent a wonderful weekend in Los Angeles, at an event that I didn't know existed but that so impressed me that I simply must give it a plug. I'm talking about the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a staggeringly well-attended mega literary phenomenon that really revives one's faith that a true and loyal audience for the written word still exists. As a New Orleanian, the best analogy I can come up with is this: The event is like a Jazz Fest for books. Some 150,000 people attended the two day festival at the UCLA campus, forming long wait lines to hear readings and talks by the likes…
cmooney | April 14, 2006I just left the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida; I'm currently sitting in the happily wired Orlando airport. Anyway, I noticed something at the conference that I can't resist mentioning--and no, this has nothing to do with hurricanes.
Just as the hurricane conference ended, a new conference was starting at the same hotel--a distinctly Christian conference oriented towards promoting youth "leadership." Now, possibly it's just me, but I was staggered by the name of this event: "Lads to Leaders & Leaderettes." Er...questions running through my head when I heard this…
cmooney | April 4, 2006Today I'm working on updates to Chapter 9 of my book, which is divided up into sections about misuses of science to favor food industry interests and misuses of science to deny the dangers of mercury pollution and contamination of fish. The chapter itself is entitled "Eating Away at Science." However, it has been a very difficult one to update: There don't seem to have been many major developments in either of these stories in the past year or year and a half. Or am I missing something?
Your thoughts appreciated.
cmooney | March 26, 2006Just for the record (and since everybody's doing it), my blog owns 18.25 percent of me. I expected it would be much worse. I can't imagine how PZ could have gotten 6.25 percent, given that he posts much more frequently than I do. He must be super efficient....
(If you're confused what I'm talking about, see here for the latest quiz that's making the rounds on ScienceBlogs).
cmooney | March 21, 2006I've been reading a book by James Rodger Fleming entitled Meteorology in America, 1800-1870. In it, he describes how mid-19th century scientists were intrigued by the fact that tornadoes seemed to leave barnyard fowl stripped of their feathers. One intrepid researcher, Elias Loomis, saw an opportunity in this anomalous fact. By studying--I shit you not--how fast you have to send a chicken flying through the air in order for its feathers to be pulled off, Loomis figured he could deduce the wind speed of a tornado. And yes, the experiment involved a cannon. Here's Loomis's report:
As the gun…
cmooney | March 17, 2006Seriously, wouldn't it be cool if I was capable of writing a substantive post on this subject? Or better yet, a book? It would be a bestseller.
But alas, I can't. All I can say is this: Happy St. Patrick's Day. And on that note, this 1/4 Irishman is taking a much-needed blog hiatus (at least a week in length) to actually start serious work on his new book project (for the latest hurricanes/global warming post, see here). In the interest of sanity and productivity alike, I really need a few less things on my plate for a bit. But I'll be back before too long....
cmooney | March 16, 2006American colonialism strikes again. It turns out that Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho has received $ 39,000 in donations recently from the U.S. Virgin Islands, double what he received from his own constituents. Why do the U.S. "territories" give so much political cash? Because that's the only way they can influence our political system, lacking voting representation in Congress. It's an outrageous situation, but one that is continually perpetuated. I wrote about it for my very first article in The American Prospect, back in 2000--the story is even worse in Puerto Rico. And nobody ever talks about it.
cmooney | March 8, 2006A while back I did a post about Mark Siegel, the author of the book Bird Flu, which received a number of comments. Among those, Tara took Siegel to task for appearing to suggest, in the Washington Post, that there's no need to prepare emergency supplies of food and water in anticipation of an outbreak.
Recently I heard from Siegel, who wrote in to clarify his position and invited me to post his email. Here's what he had to say:
Dear Chris,
thanks for mentioning my new book on your blog in what i thought was a very respectful way.
FYI - i am actually in favor of emergency supplies of food and…
cmooney | March 6, 2006I just started reading Michael Grunwald's book on the Everglades, The Swamp, after hearing him speak last week and picking up a copy afterwards. It sounds like a fascinating read, especially since Grunwald in his talk framed the story of the Everglades as a momentous trial by fire for the concept of ecosystem restoration. "The ultimate test of sustainable development," he called it.
We've already lost half of the original Everglades, but late in the Clinton years a huge, bipartisan restoration plan was put in place. Saving the Everglades is now popular, uncontroversial, and well-funded. Yet…
cmooney | March 6, 2006I haven't read the latest issue of Harper's magazine, but apparently it contains a major article challenging the notion that HIV causes AIDS, as well as discounting the severity of the African AIDS epidemic. This is very troubling, especially since Harper's editor Lewis Lapham has generally been a good defender of science against the Bush administration's abuses. Say it ain't so.....