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drorzel | January 17, 2009
Explaining the curse of work - science-in-society - 14 January 2009 - New Scientist
"How many members can a committee have and still be effective? Parkinson's own guess was based on the 700-year history of England's highest council of state- in its modern incarnation, the UK cabinet. Five times in succession between 1257 and 1955, this council grew from small beginnings to a membership of just over 20. Each time it reached that point, it was replaced by a new, smaller body, which began growing again. This was no coincidence, Parkinson argued: beyond about 20 members, groups become…
grrlscientist | January 17, 2009tags: annual science communication conference, ScienceOnline'09, SciO09, Sigma Xi, Research Triangle Park, science blogging conference, nature blog writing
Naturalist Blogging in the heart of the Big Apple.
Welcome everyone, to our session at the ScienceOnline '09 conference at Sigma Xi in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. This session is focuses on Nature Blog Writing and is being co-hosted by GrrlScientist (who is the author of this blog) and Kevin Zelnio, co-author of The Other 95%. This session is occurring live at the buttcrack of dawn (0900-1000 ET) on Sunday morning, 18 January 2008.…
pharyngula | January 17, 2009Sunday morning at 9am Central, tune in to Atheist Talk radio — this week, Dan Barker is going to tell us something or other.
stoat | January 17, 2009While browing the Dictionary of Philosophy, on my way towards Hobbes, I stopped at Hegel, and noticed a comment about his "orbits of the planets", something to the effect that the view that he proved, from first principles, that there are seven planets, is an error of translation. Odd, I thought: Hegel I know little about, other than a vague disrespect and a lack of interest in finding out more. But I didn't know he was up to astronomy or maths; and... he isn't. You can read it here if you like.
It looks to me like nonsense, along the lines of the modern french philosophers stuff that Sokal…
grrlscientist | January 17, 2009I am sitting here in North Carolina in a blog session about blog carnivals, and I am dismayed to ask you what has happened to these three blog carnivals: Tangled Bank, The Boneyard, and The Circus of the Spineless?
I know that there is a small core group of us at ScienceBlogs who are talking about rescuing the Circus of the Spineless, but no one has even mentioned that Tangled Bank may also have gone the way of the dodo, as has the Boneyard. Is there enough interest out there to rescue any (all?) of these three blog carnivals? I am more than willing to step forward as the coordinator/…
cortex | January 17, 2009So I joined Twitter. I'm still not on Facebook, for intransigent reasons that I don't fully understand and can't begin to express. But consider Twitter my bold leap into the world of the social web. I guess what I enjoy about Twitter is the sheer banality of the tweets, which remind me of normal, intimate conversation. There's the occasional moment of wit or humor, but mostly what people write about is the weather, or their hair, or what they had for lunch, or how much they hate airport delays. It's as if people are constantly texting this universe of strangers about how they feel. What's…
mspringer | January 17, 2009When I was a young kid growing up in south Louisiana, my family would sometimes make day trips out to John C. Stennis Space Center. Located just over the border in Mississippi, it's a huge rocket testing facility in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It has to be. Rockets are LOUD. Isolated though it is, it's open to whatever members of the public wish to visit during visitor center operating hours.
One of the people who works at Stennis lived with me for three years in a dorm room the size of my current kitchen. Lack of space aside, college was tremendous fun and we were lucky enough to…
cortex | January 17, 2009I've got an op-ed today in the LA Times on how Captain Sullenberger managed to stay calm in the face of terrifying circumstances:
We can all learn something from Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III. After his US Airways plane lost power and the smell of smoke and jet fuel filled the cabin, he needed to make a decision. The air traffic controllers were instructing him to proceed to a small airport in Teterboro, N.J., which was less than 10 miles to the west. But could the plane make it that far? Or would it crash in the Bronx?
In recent years, neuroscientists have been able to see what…
gregladen | January 16, 2009This is the sixth in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming.
In the last post in this series I talked about two aspects of large scale climate change: Milankovitch orbital geometry and the cycles of glaciation this effect causes, and the role of plate tectonics and related changes in altering sea and air currents, which in turn determine a great deal about climate change as well.
Now I want to have a quick look at a single glacial cycle (the most recent one of many), and one way in which the cycle is observed in the ancient record, identified, measured, and described.
As…
jrosenhouse | January 16, 2009Over at the New Republic Issac Chotiner offers up the following worthy thought:
As a respite from all the talk on cable television yesterday (and today) that the New York plane rescue was in fact a “miracle,” it is nice to see more coverage of the atheist ad campaign currently centered on London buses. (As a side note, and to answer a question asked by Rod Dreher and the great Alex Massie--namely, why are these atheists so “preachy”--the reason might be because every time something like a plane rescue occurs, we are subjected to 48 hours of nonsense and superstition).
Exactly right! See…
gregladen | January 16, 2009I finally met Janie Belle. That woman is very dedicated to blogging, to science, and to science blogging, because she came all the way from pretty far away to visit the ScienceOnline 09 conference.
Thinks have been getting pretty boring around here, but now they may turn exciting. Perhaps too exciting.
Conferences can be interesting.
gregladen | January 16, 2009Praxis Blog Carnival - Your Graduate Guide To Succeeding In 2009 is HERE at Podblack Cat
gregladen | January 16, 2009I'm in. In North Carolina, that is. Nothing happening yet. It is about 100 degrees warmer here than it was when I woke up this am. Flew with Stephanie Zvan (Almost Diamonds) and Ben Zvan (who is here to do a photo shoot). Checking out room, internet, preparing to go get a bite to eat and/or a beer or something.
.............
OK, back from having beers and dinner and beers. Grrl Scientist seemed to be live blogging from the restaurant . I got to meet my blogging Idol, Bora, and we chatted for some time. And I gotta tell you, I will never get enough of this wonderful southern accent!!!!…
sb admin | January 16, 2009
As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings.
OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds!
From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has…
sciencepunk | January 16, 2009
As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings.
OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds!
From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has…
grrlscientist | January 15, 2009For those of you who are wondering if the US Airways plane that crashed into the Hudson River immediately upon leaving La Guardia Airport in NYC for North Carolina can rest easy because here's a picture of my immediate surroundings for you all to enjoy ...
Image: source [larger view].
(I was on a US Airways plane to NC from LaGuardia)
The latest word is that the crash is due to a bird strike.
stoat | January 15, 2009Every now and again, its nice to be reminded that no matter how irritating the overenthusiasm of the greenies can be on occaision, the real wackos are on the septic side. If you can't cope with the long words at [[Global Warming]] then you can always look at the pretty pictures. Or maybe you like numbers?. More probably, you like sticking your head in the sand.
I'm sorry, but this kind of nonsense is just tedious. The world is getting warmer. You can argue about just how fast, and there is certainly a lot of room to discuss how much of a problem this is and how best to deal with it, but try…
sb admin | January 15, 2009OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) cleared yesterday's OSHA's advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) on the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl. The OIRA website indicates the review was completed on 1/14/09, with a recommendation for some change(s) to the document.
Diacetyl is associated with serious lung impairment in exposed workers, including the debilitating disease bronchiolitis obliterans. See the SKAPP website for further information (here).
The OMB OIRA posting about the OSHA notice offers only the following:
AGENCY: DOL-OSHAÂ RIN: 1218-AC33Â
TITLE…
jwilbanks | January 15, 2009Gerry Bayne of Educause interviewed me in December as part of the Coalition for Networked Information annual meeting. It's available in excerpts as part of the Educause Now monthly podcast and in full as a standalone cast.
It's always a little hard to explain this stuff, but Gerry's done a good job (in my admittedly biases opinion) at extracting the story, especially in the educause now editing...