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gregladen | January 7, 2010Happy New Year and welcome to this new "on-line journal" which will be a collection of essays. It will be sort of a continuation of thoughts from my book, "Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style." In the essays, which will be roughly twice a week, I will be making reference to parts of the book from time to time.
Check it out
mspringer | January 7, 2010I've got to admit, this is a beautiful skyscraper:
I was never very enamored of the Petronias Towers or the Taipei 101, both of which lacked the architectural panache that supertall structures ought to have. The Burj Khalifa has it. Burj Dubai is a more elegant name, but long story short Dubai really got nuked by the worldwide financial crisis and this Khalifa fellow helped keep Dubai out of bankruptcy. So now he has the world's tallest building named after him. The Burj Khalifa cost around a billion and a half dollars to construct, and I expect that figure would have been enormously…
cortex | January 7, 2010I've written before about the importance of daydreaming and the so-called default, or resting state network, which seems to underlie some important features of human cognition. Instead of being shackled to our immediate surroundings and sensations, the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings and interesting counterfactuals. As a result, we're able to envision things that don't actually exist.
Of course, this new research conflicts with the bad reputation of mind wandering. Children in school are encouraged to stop daydreaming and "focus," and…
grrlscientist | January 7, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The writing-about-science-for-the-people blog carnival, Scientia Pro Publica, should have been published this past Monday, 4 January 2010. So what happened to it? Like you, I am curious to know the answer to this question. Despite excellent support from its regular contributors, this carnival has been struggling to survive mostly due to my own life situation.
You might recall, I started this blog carnival in March 2009 to replace the defunct Tangled Bank. You…
gregladen | January 6, 2010Are you for a pro-gay marriage bill currently being considered in New Jersey or against it?
There's a poll.
This is a tough one. PZ' minions are making a dent but not enough. So I respectfully request all eleven of my readers to head over there and help out.
gregladen | January 6, 2010As you know, Heathrow is the world's largest and busiest airport, second only to Schiphol in Amsterdam and JFK in New York. All three are eclipsed, of course, by O'Hare in Chicago and Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport in Bloomington, Minnesota.
.... read on ...
agelman | January 6, 2010I got the following bizarre email, subject-line "scienceblogs.com/appliedstatistics/":
Hi,
After looking at your website, it is clear that you share the same concerns about Infections as we do here at Infection.org. Our website is dedicated to sharing the various up to date information regarding Infection, and we would love to share it to you and your readers.
I would like to discuss possible partnership opportunities with you. Please contact me if you are interested. Thank you.
June Smith
Assistant Editor
Infection.org
June.Infection@gmail.com
Just the "Assistant Editor," huh? I'm assuming…
gregladen | January 6, 2010You may remember this theory regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs:
Now, there's this ...
Hat tip: Glen
gregladen | January 6, 2010George Bush and Barack Obama compared on the Terror Issue:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | January 6, 2010The Family is a fundamentalist group with thousands of members across the world (by their own admission) bent on inserting their religious perspective into national and global politics. It is documented (in part) in The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.
In recent weeks, Rachel Maddow has been documenting and exposing The Family's role in developing and advancing legislation to systematically murder gays and their sympathizers in Uganda (the President of Uganda is a member of The Family). This exposure appears to have resulted in this powerful…
gregladen | January 5, 2010Remember this?
If not, you missed one of the great moments on the intertubes. These kids are Krazy In Love!
Now, CLICK HERE and shell out five loonies for the happy couple!!!!
gregladen | January 5, 2010Soccer practice was brutal. The hot summer heat made every drill twice as hard as usual. Everybody was a little bit off of their game, however I was particularly sluggish. The coaches called for a water break after finally noticing that our dehydration was significantly affecting our performance. I was dragging my feet on the way to the water cooler when one of my coaches, Brett, pulled me aside from the rest of the players.
Read the post
cortex | January 5, 2010Via Tyler Cowen, comes this graph of demographic shifts in NIH grants, which show a clear trend: older scientists are getting more money.
Cowen also cites the eminent economist Paul Romer, who worries about the effect of this shift on innovation:
Instead of young scientists getting grant funding to go off and do whatever they want in their twenties, they're working in a lab where somebody in his forties or fifties is the principal investigator in charge of the grant. They're working as apprentices, almost, under the senior person. If we're not careful, we could let our institutions,…
gregladen | January 5, 2010..The Janus Edition is now up at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Click here to read this plant blog carnival.
gregladen | January 5, 2010A tuna has been sold at auction in Tokyo's fish market for 16.28 million yen ($175,000, £109,000), the highest price paid in Japan for nine years.
The bluefin tuna weighs 232 kg - nearly four times as much as the average Japanese man.
It was caught off the northern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu, in waters famed for high quality fish.
Mind boggling.
source
Whenever I see something like this I go and read the Guilty Planet blog for a while. Today I will eat salad garnished with tofu for lunch.
mspringer | January 5, 2010I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly...
- Owl City, Fireflies
If you're had any exposure to pop radio over the last few months, you've heard this plaintive rumination about the earth's rotation. The first time I heard it I thought it must be the Postal Service getting back together, but alas it was not so. Oh well, at least we can get some physics out of it.
Does planet Earth turns slowly? It depends on how you look at it. At the equator it's roaring along at more than 1000 miles per hour. This is pretty fast by terrestrial standards, and perhaps what Owl City…
agelman | January 4, 2010That's the headline in the Daily News:
The research, by Calvin College psychology professor Marjorie Gunnoe, found that kids smacked before age 6 grew up to be more successful . . . Gunnoe, who interviewed 2,600 people about being smacked, told the [London] Daily Mail: "The claims that are made for not spanking children fail to hold up. I think of spanking as a dangerous tool, but then there are times when there is a job big enough for a dangerous tool. You don't use it for all your jobs."
From the Daily Mail article:
Professor Gunnoe questioned 2,600 people about being smacked, of whom a…
tqa | January 4, 2010
Jonathan Turley posted a YouTube clip of an alarming swimming pool:
He can't imagine how a lifeguard would get to a victim in that pool. Speaking as a full-time lifeguard, I can't either. But that's not actually the thing that worries me the most about a situation like that.
If, hypothetically, I were a guard at that pool I'd be more worried about maintaining a line of sight to a victim than about getting through the water. And even that is less concerning than the issue of recognition - I honestly don't see how a lifeguard could reasonably be expected to recognize a drowning in progress…
gregladen | January 4, 2010I don't agree that civility is action and politeness is language. Politeness is formal arbitrary cultural convention, while civility is also arbitrary cultural convention but as dictated by Westernonormative agents. Both apply to language and behavior.
But whatever.
This post by Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock is Bora's take on online civility as well as an excellent link farm pointing to all the other stuff out there on this topic, and this is what you should read in preparation to the civility session at Scionliten, this year's Science On Line conference.
agelman | January 4, 2010This comment by Tyler Cowen on Sarah Palin's poor Scrabble strategy reminds me of my blog a few months ago with six suggested Scrabble reforms. Without further ado:
1. Change one of the I's to an O. We've all had the unpleasant experience of having too many I's in our rack. What's the point?
2. Change one of the L's to an H. And change them both to 2-point letters. The H is ridiculously overvalued.
3. V is horrible. Change one of them to an N and let the remaining V be worth 6 points.
4. Regarding Q: Personally, I'd go the Boggle way and have a Qu tile. But I respect that Scrabble…