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cortex | May 12, 2010Here's a post from last summer*:
I went jean shopping this weekend. Actually, I went to the mall to return a t-shirt but ended buying a pair of expensive denim pants. What happened? I made the mistake of entering the fitting room. And then the endowment effect hijacked my brain. Let me explain.
The endowment effect is a well studied by-product of loss aversion, which is the fact that losing something hurts a disproportionate amount. (In other words, a loss hurts more than a gain feels good.) First diagnosed by Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman, the endowment effect stipulates that once…
grrlscientist | May 11, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
gregladen | May 11, 2010"Praise should be unstinting and unironic, however much snark has hold in your heart...."
Read all about it.
pronald | May 11, 2010Ask a ScienceBlogger is a great way to get the answers you want.
Do you have a burning question to put to the ScienceBlogs bloggers?
Now is your chance to ask. ScienceBlogs has just announced the Ask a ScienceBlogger series, in which (you guessed it), you get to ask ScienceBloggers questions, and they answer them!
Once the ScienceBloggers have a database of questions, they will choose one at a time to pose to us ScienceBloggers, and round up the answers for you on their site.
Go ahead and post your questions as a comment here, or email it to editorial@scienceblogs.com. And look for the…
jgoldman | May 11, 2010Add to the list of expensive toys with lasers that I want.
Figure 1: Micro Temp Digital Infrared Thermometer, Pro Model. $59.99 at Cabelas.com
Imagine never having to clean a cooking thermometer, ever again!
pharyngula | May 11, 2010A colleague and fellow freethinker at Bemidji State University, Dann Siems, has been diagnosed with a terminal glioblastoma. This is not good. This is damned scary stuff. He's still blogging away occasionally, discussing the experimental treatments being tried on him, but this is all expensive, and he has a family as well. If you'd like to help, there is a benefit concert being held on 5 June with a raffle. Maybe you can't attend because Turtle River, Minnesota isn't exactly next door, but you could buy a raffle ticket. Or if you'd rather, you can just make a donation through Headwaters…
cwilcox | May 11, 2010Is there anything you'd like to hear explained scientifically? Any burning questions related to biology, chemistry, physics, or any other of the myriad of scientific disciplines? Or just have a good nerdy debate you need settled?
Well, ask us. ScienceBlogs is bringing back Ask a ScienceBlogger, where you can pose questions to the ScienceBlog community as a whole and Sciblings will answer! You'll then be able to see what different science bloggers have to say in response to your questions.
Either submit your questions as comments on this announcement post or e-mail them to editorial@…
gregladen | May 11, 2010Nathan Myhrvold and team's latest inventions -- as brilliant as they are bold -- remind us that the world needs wild creativity to tackle big problems like malaria. And just as that idea sinks in, he rolls out a live demo of a new, mosquito-zapping gizmo you have to see to believe.
cortex | May 11, 2010Here's an old post from July 08:
The devious slogan for the New York State lottery is "All you need is a dollar and a dream." Such state lotteries are a regressive form of taxation, since the vast majority of lottery consumers are low-income. The statistics are bleak: Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is also starkly regressive, with lower income households being much more likely to play. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, or about 9 percent of all income.
A new study by…
gregladen | May 11, 2010Criticizing an event in progress is often futile, both because it's frequently difficult to stop or redirect a process in motion and because ongoing events will distract from your message.
Wait, is this about boobquake?
gregladen | May 10, 2010... None of us want to think that criticism is actually about our behavior. It's much, much easier to dismiss it as the product of someone else's biased thinking. It's much easier to say, "This isn't about what I do, because no matter what I do, this person is not going to like it or me." ...
More on criticism at Almost Diamonds.
gregladen | May 10, 2010The social transaction here is a major theme of both Dragnet and Adam-12, and one that would later be developed in new directions by TV shows like COPS.
.... Read on
pharyngula | May 10, 2010I was given a proposal for a new word by a fellow named Francois Choquette. It's a tough game trying to get a new coinage accepted, and I doubt that it'll take off…but it's actually a useful word to replace that abomination, "spirituality". So I'll toss Choquette's description out there for the readership to judge.
Scientility
Describes the sensation that a scientist or amateur of science experiences when he/she observes an amazing phenomenon, for which his/her qualifications or knowledge makes them experience it a greater degree of appreciaton and joy than people without that knowledge.…
jgoldman | May 10, 2010Deborah Blum has plugged herself into the Borg, and brought her blog Speakeasy Science along with her for the ride.
She says:
Although my most recent book, The Poisoner's Handbook, is about murder and the invention of forensic toxicology in the early 20th century, my earlier works have focused on primate research, the science of affection, biology of gender differences, and even a 19th century scientific quest to prove that we live on after death. Does this variety of interests suggest a short attention span? Well, maybe. But it's more that I'm fascinated by the intersection of science and…
grrlscientist | May 10, 2010
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
This week's edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People); "Scientia Pro Publica 29" has been published by me at my Nature Network blog, Maniraptora. So go there, read the linked essays and be sure to leave your comments on at least one of those essays, either telling those authors what they did well, or making suggestions for improvements in their writing.
After you've read this carnival, perhaps you also wish to submit your blog essays to the next issue of Scientia? If so, you're in…
gregladen | May 10, 2010Rachel Maddow suggests this as the Must Read document for the impending confirmation process.
gregladen | May 10, 2010How do you build up a movement with destructive criticism?
...
Yeah, that's what I thought. But that doesn't stop the makers of sites like You're Not Helping from going flat-out negative, even when they're offering "praise."
Read the beginning of what looks like a series of posts on how to be helpful on the intertubes, at Almost Diamonds.
cortex | May 10, 2010I'm going to be away on vacation for the next week or so. I'll be putting up some old posts in the meantime.
Here's one from 2009 on "Boredom":
The great poet Joseph Brodsky, praising boredom:
A substantial part of what lies ahead of you is going to be claimed by boredom. The reason I'd like to talk to you about it today, on this lofty occasion, is that I believe no liberal arts college prepares you for that eventuality. Neither the humanities nor science offers courses in boredom . At best, they may acquaint you with the sensation by incurring it. But what is a casual contact to an incurable…
gregladen | May 9, 2010Barack Obama will nominate Solicitor-General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, US media reports say.
The White House has not yet commented, but Mr Obama is scheduled to announce his choice at 1000 (1400 GMT).
If confirmed, she would be the youngest member and the third woman on the court as well as the first justice in nearly four decades not to have been a judge.
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