Uncategorized
grrlscientist | December 7, 2008Here's the latest blog carnivals to entertain you and to keep your mind happy while you are engaged in other, less pleasant activities;
Book Review Carnival, which, as its name implies, is filled with book reviews. I find it interesting to see that the number of non-fiction book reviews outnumbers reviews for all other genres -- this is encouraging for me, since I am getting ready to take the plunge and write my own book (thanks to some encouragement from my SciBling colleagues).
Carnival of Cinema, which includes everything about film, from film reviews to trailers.
Friday Ark, issue 220.…
jwilbanks | December 7, 2008The good people at Autism Speaks have announced a major policy shift on open access. Basically they're saying if you take their money, you have to make the research open. I love this for all sorts of reasons. First, it's smart. Opening up research to more readers means you increase the chances of someone innovating on top of that research. Second, it's a good market indicator. Legislation and mandates are all well and good, but there's nothing as powerful as the customer standing up and changing the deal in the market...
I guess I delayed my post on this for personal reasons. Autism is a…
drorzel | December 6, 2008
Grading Medical Students (and More on Grade Inflation) -- Crooked Timber
"But, if grade inflation is supposed to be analogous with price inflation, rising grades do not, in themselves, constitute inflation. Rather, grade inflation occurs when grades rise relative to the quality of the academic performance of the students. And because we do not keep records of the quality of work students have done, we do not know whether grades have risen relative to the quality of that work. Perhaps, in any given university, the students are more talented, or harder working, or better prepared on entry, or…
gregladen | December 6, 2008Twenty eight years ago, Martha entered a persistent vegetative state. Her husband, Klaus, was acquitted of her murder twice. Have you seen the movie "Reversal of Fortune"? That's the story.
US heiress Martha von Bulow, who spent almost three decades in a coma but was still at the centre of 1980s courtroom dramas, has died at the age of 76.
Mrs von Bulow, known as Sunny, was found unconscious in her Rhode Island mansion in December 1980.
Her second husband, Claus von Bulow, who is now a society figure in Britain, was acquitted of twice trying to kill her with insulin injections.
bbc
And…
gregladen | December 6, 2008
Carnival of Cinema: A Smorgasbord!
The Totally Hot December Scientiae
79th Carnival Of The Liberals: Kicking Around George W. Bush & Evolution
Skeptics' Circle 101: The African Edition
Carnival of Trashy Romance Novels - Because Books Don't Fall Asleep Afterward
Cancer Research Blog Carnival #16
Carnival of the Liberals #79
Carnival of Socialism 24
Log Buffer #126: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs (databases)
gregladen | December 6, 2008I have only the vaguest memories of this myself, and that must be second hand. On December 6th 1989, I was probably in the jungle not getting much news. Anyway, Sciencewoman reminds us:
On December 6, 1989, an armed gunman named Marc Lepine entered an engineering classroom at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He demanded all 48 men in the class leave the room, lined up all 9 women against a wall...
Read the whole thing here, please.
mspringer | December 6, 2008Yesterday I posed a famous trick question, and we had the shortcut answer, the long "standard" answer, and a particularly elegant solution by commenter meichenl. Turns out he has his own blog called Arcsecond, and it's really fantastic. He focuses mostly on examining interesting mathematical situations. Check it out!
Some physics news: the perils of the LHC continue. As you have probably heard, the LHC experienced a severe breakdown during some of the early test runs. Aside from the break itself putting the collider out of commission, the particular system that broke was discovered to…
cwilcox | December 5, 20085 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago: well, I was all of 13, so...Freezing in WardsboroFinishing 8th grade (I'm just a baby!)Watching Saved By The BellListening to 'N Sync (hey, I was 13!)Getting my first iBook (A blueberry one!)
5 Things On My To-Do List Today:Take barry to the airportTake the dog to the vetGet cat foodGet my oil changedGo to the doctor (I'm a sickie)
5 Snacks I Love:CheezitsRice CrackersChips & SalsaCheese. In general.Poke
5 Things Iâd do if I was a Millionaire:Buy a house in HawaiiInvest enough to live comfortablyDonate someEat a lot of sushiPay off my family and my debts…
goodmath | December 5, 2008 It's just been a week for metric errors. Via Media Matters comes an impressive
list of stories in the media about the automobile companies financial problems, where they cite labor costs as a major issue. So far, so good. But in virtually every
story about this, you'll find a statement along the lines of: "union workers make $71 an hour in wages plus benefits".
In many cases, they even go so far as to specifically compare that figure as wages to other companies. For example, this quote, from a conservative
talking head:
"When you're paying $73.73 an hour to those people with salary and…
mspringer | December 5, 2008Challenge question! It's either very easy or somewhat difficult depending on how clever you are at approaching it. No fair answering if you've already seen the problem before, though if no one's managed it in a few hours I'd say it's fair game to post the solution if you already know it.
Two trains are 100 miles apart on the same track, headed on a collision course towards each other. Both are traveling 50 miles per hour. A very speedy bird takes off from the first train and flies at 75 miles per hour toward the second train. The bird then immediately turns around and flies back to the…
cortex | December 5, 2008Yawn. Just seeing that word made you more likely to open your mouth in a big inhalation, contort your face and stretch out your arms. In other words, yawning is a contagious experience.
Now it turns out that happiness is like a yawn: it easily spreads between people in social networks. Nicholas Christakis, a doctor/sociologist at Harvard, is doing some of the most interesting work on social networks - he's shown, for instance, that when a loved one gets ill people suffer serious medical consequences, and that the ability to quit smoking depends in large part on the number of smokers in your…
pharyngula | December 4, 2008A few people are trying to put together some events for CONvergence, the SF convention that will be taking place 2-5 July in Minneapolis (I'll be going, too). They need volunteers to help with organizing — it's a bit tentative right now, so I can't give out all the details, but if you write to me I can connect you with the bigwigs and tell you a little more.
grrlscientist | December 4, 2008
I am sure you've all wondered what happened to ScienceBlogs' Millionth comment contest, you know, like who won and did she get to visit NYC and all that. So I am here to tell you that Peggy, our millionth comment contest winner, arrived in NYC today and is getting ready to spend four days exploring all sorts of science-y things in this wonderful city. Peggy is also writing about her experiences on her blog, so be sure to check it out! Her first blog entry includes some pictures of all the loot she's gotten for being the grand prize winner. Looking at those pictures makes me wish I'd won…
sb admin | December 4, 2008Anyone who works with the mentally ill knows that they smoke more than other people. In fact, people with mental illness (hereafter, MI, not to be confused with myocardial infarction) are about twice as likely to smoke as people without mental illness, with smoking rates of 60-90%. One of my favorite stats is that "44% of the cigarettes smoked in the United States are by individuals with a psychiatric or substance-abuse disorder." People with MI are also heavier smokers, and may even be better at extracting nicotine from the cigs that they smoke.
Studies have shown that people with MI can…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2008Wow, this is a truly unexpected honor: one of my essays was chosen by the "MetaCarnival." This blog carnival seeks to bring together the best of the blogosphere by sampling the diverse topics collected in the carnival format.
sb admin | December 4, 2008The official figure for cholera deaths in Zimbabwe is 565, but The Independent cites a senior health officialâs report that the death toll is closer to 3,000. On Wednesday, riot police in Harare used batons to disperse and beat a group of doctors and nurses expressing anger over the outbreak. Barry Bearak summarizes the countryâs grim conditions in the New York Times:
The cholera epidemic and the new crackdown on dissent come in a country already mired in desperation. The government is paralyzed by a stalemated power-sharing deal, and the official inflation rate is 231 million percent.…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2008tags: NYC events, announcement, evolution, NYC Skeptics, Don Prothero
Great news, my peeps! My friend and "scientific sibling" (courtesy of AMNH), Professor of Geology and author, Don Prothero, will be speaking in NYC for the New York City Skeptics about evolution and his book, Evolution: What The Fossils Say And Why it Matters [my review]. Even though we're email pals, I've never before met him in real life, so I am really looking forward to this. [Note: rumor has it that we shall explore the pubs of the UWS while he is here, too]
Who: Donald Prothero
What: public presentation, "Evolution…