Uncategorized
goodmath | July 7, 2010 So my decision is made. I'm closing up around here. I'm in the process of working out exactly where I'm going to go. With any luck, Seed will leave this blog here long enough for me to post an update with the new location. But I'm through with Seed and ScienceBlogs.
cmonforton | July 7, 2010OSHA and Imperial Sugar reached an agreement this week stemming from the agency's investigations following a February 2008 dust explosion that ultimately claimed 14 workers' lives. OSHA originally issued more than 100 willful citations for violations at the company's Port Wentworth, GA (site of the disaster) and Gramercy, LA plants, and proposed a total of $8.8 millions in civil penalties. At the time, OSHA chief Ed Foulke said:
"I am outraged that this company would show a complete disregard for its employees' safety by knowingly placing them in an extremely dangerous work environment.…
gregladen | July 7, 2010OK, not really. But ... following Pal MD's nostalgia/softdrink/video theme, here is what happens when the Pepsi Theme Song meets the Internet:
The scary guy in the middle is Physiprof.
I'm pretty sure that is not the Pepsi Theme Song, but the Internet says it is in several places.
tsaunders | July 7, 2010Regular readers of the Scienceblogs network will know that a new "advertorial" blog run by Pepsi has just been opened up on the network. Since then, we've lost at least 2 of my favourite bloggers (here and here). I'm actually on a self-imposed blog break at the moment (the posts this week were scheduled a while back), so I haven't had a chance to check out the new Pepsi blog, or decide how I feel about it, or at least how to present my thoughts in a coherent blog post. So I would suggest that anyone interested in the issue check out the Pepsi Blog here, and read PalMDs thoughts here, or…
scicurious | July 7, 2010Sci has just tendered her letter of resignation to the Overlords at SEED. This was a very, very hard decision, and it hurts Sci more than she can say. Sci would like to let you know, though, that she hasn't given up blogging!!! She has merely moved back to her old digs. You can find her at Neurotic Physiology, her old place. Please do drop by and visit!
As for my reasons, well, I just want to say that it was not specifically Pepsico that made me feel like I couldn't continue here. There were a multitude of contributing factors, and Pepsico was just a last in a long line.
But don't…
gregladen | July 7, 2010If you look at the Pepsi Food Frontiers Blog you will see that it now says "ADVERTORIAL" along the top of the blog. My understanding is that this is temporary and more design changes may occur, but the objective is to make this sort of blog clearly distinct from regular blogs. This is a good first step.
The RSS feeds from sponsored blogs, including the Google News Feed and such, will be handled separately, and posts from the sponsored blogs in the Fire Hose feed will be marked as such (eventually, not sure if that is in place yet).
People should still send in their feedback on this.
sb admin | July 7, 2010I've gotten a few emails about the Pepsi-ScienceBlogs tempest. It's clearly taken a toll on ScienceBlogs' credibility. Some of my SciBlings have resigned in protest, and others are taking shots on the topic.
Sponsorship is part of scientific publishing, even in the peer reviewed world. Remember how Merck published an entire fake journal to promote Vioxx? How much money gets spent on reprints that support a company's position, on articles paid for with corporate research funds?
Today's hullaballoo is more honest than either of those. My gut reaction is: calm down, world. This was a miserable…
jwilbanks | July 7, 2010I've gotten a few emails about the Pepsi-ScienceBlogs tempest. It's clearly taken a toll on ScienceBlogs' credibility. Some of my SciBlings have resigned in protest, and others are taking shots on the topic.
Sponsorship is part of scientific publishing, even in the peer reviewed world. Remember how Merck published an entire fake journal to promote Vioxx? How much money gets spent on reprints that support a company's position, on articles paid for with corporate research funds?
Today's hullaballoo is more honest than either of those. My gut reaction is: calm down, world. This was a miserable…
cortex | July 7, 2010There's a fascinating article in the latest Vanity Fair (not online) about the prevalence of LSD (aka lysergic acid diethylamide) among movie stars in 1950s Hollywood:
Aldous Huxley was one of the first in Los Angeles to take LSD and was soon joined by others, including the writer Anais Nin. The screenwriter Charles Brackett discovered "infinitely more pleasure" from music on LSD than he had ever before, and the director Sidney Lumet tried it under the supervision of a former chief of psychiatry for the U.S. Navy. Lumet says his three sessions were "wonderful," especially the one where he…
gregladen | July 7, 2010Having read my colleagues blog posts and many comments thereon and elsewhere, I want to suggest that we consider the new blog, "Food Frontiers," a little differently than some have suggested (see my original post) and, actually, welcome it to the Sb fold.
As painful as it is to admit (and I'm really squirming here) Isis and Drug Monkey were perhaps right to reserve judgment. Perhaps they recognize that what others have made into a stark distinction is really a gray area: There are in fact many science bloggers (here on Sb and elsewhere) who are paid fully by a single company from a major…
gregladen | July 7, 2010UPDATE: It gets worse. Chis Mooney has provided some additional details. As more and more is known, my tendency to say to 'William': "oh, stop confessing and just get back to blogging, we forgive you" is turning into "OMH, you fuckhead, please slit your wrists now" ... except I'm afraid he'd do it and I'd feel a little bad about it. For a minute or two. Anyway, check this out: Appalling Revelations about "Tom Johnson"
This is interesting enough to bump to post status; More information from the Buddah is not Serious YNH Confession Thread.
Chris Mooney wrote this on The Intersection last…
hrynyshyn | July 7, 2010Class M is on an indefinite hiatus. For an explanation, please see this post by Grrlscientist.
sb admin | July 7, 2010Karen Starko writes: Several basic questions related to Reye's syndrome (RS) have come to me from readers of Mark's book, Inside the Outbreaks. These show the importance of continued education on health issues. (For example, some physicians thought that fever was essential to getting RS). Again, thanks to Mark Pendergrast for a wonderful addition to our public health knowledge.
Is an influenza or chickenpox infection necessary to acquire RS?
The answer is no. RS generally has two phases: the antecedent illness and usually, within a few days of this, the syndrome of vomiting and…
scicurious | July 6, 2010
A dangerous pastime, you know.
If you've been around the blog for the past day, I'm sure you've seen that there's been a new...blog...from PepsiCo. Sci's not sure what she thinks of it, but it's not positive. I know we had GE and Shell and stuff...but that felt different, somehow. Being as Sci has recently been looking in to a lot of food and reward related mechanisms and issues associated with things like binge eating, she is more than a bit uncomfortable. So she needs some time to think about it. Posting will resume when I've had my think.
In the meantime, thanks so much for the…
tqa | July 6, 2010
A few of you might have noticed that there's a new blog here at ScienceBlogs - one that does not exactly seem to be receiving a warm welcome.
Pepsico - the makers of much of the sugary caffeinated goodness that gets me through the day - seems to have managed to purchase a blog here. (Contrary to popular belief, that's not actually the strategy I employed to get my slot. I don't have corporate pockets, so I went with "beg and grovel" instead.) For obvious reasons, having a corporation blogging about their products at Sb raises some concerns about things like conflicts of interest, the…
goodmath | July 6, 2010 As my friend Pal wrote about, Seed Media Group, the corporate overlords of the ScienceBlogs network that this blog belongs to, have apparently decided that blog space in these parts is now up for sale to advertisers.
We've been advertiser supported since I joined up with SB. I've never minded that before. Providing a platform and bandwidth takes money, which has to come from somewhere. The way that ads have been handled before has been no problem: the ads are clearly distinguished from the content. There's no way that you're going to mix up one of my posts with a paid advertisement.
Until…
cwilcox | July 6, 2010I, like many of my fellow SciBlings, am less than ecstatic that PepsiCo now has a blog here at ScienceBlogs. It needs to have the Pepsi logo on it. It needs to be 100% clear that the content may be shameless advertising for a major corporation. Right now.
But what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? I'm not talking about Pepsi or its products, which have been shown time and again to be general detriments to health. I'm talking about this new blog. People are accusing them of all kinds of things including compromising the content here - but they haven't written a single post.
Yes,…
gregladen | July 6, 2010The BBC Sports Section accidentally released a version of its newly designed website that insulted many of its readers, and possibly insulted The Queen (depending on one's interpretation). The web site had "place holder" text and graphics that were not removed before release. Here's the story.
Let this be a lesson to you, web developers!
A legislator in California is afraid of the asbestos in the State Rock. But, this asbestos can't really get out of the rock an harm you. But technically, yes, it is in there, in the serpentine, helping it look all cook and stuff. Read about the…
gregladen | July 6, 2010Certain individuals who shall not be named (or linked to) by me on this blog have been making the usual petty and annoying nuisance of themselves. But there is some justice on the Internet, and the slapping upside the head happens here. Enjoy. Or throw up a little in your mouth. Either way, fine with me.
gregladen | July 6, 2010... in a research project having to do with dialect ...
We are doing research on different accents in "North American" (US and Canadian) English. We know that Americans and Canadians have a great deal in common in the way they speak, but there are also differences. These differences are influenced by geography, gender, age, ethnicity, and many other factors. In order to study the ways that North American accents differ amongst each other, we have put together a survey of common words, and we'd like you to participate!
We'd like recordings from anyone who has grown up speaking English in the…