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mspringer | December 4, 2008Seed's editorial policy is unusually generous in the latitude we ScienceBloggers get. Let's hope it's generous enough for this!
Linked via Instapundit, I saw this interesting article about theft of and damage to speed cameras. As an strong supporter of civil liberties, this warms my heart. If a flesh-and-blood police officer catches me speeding, fair enough. But ubiquitous surveillance of every move, invading privacy in order to fill city treasuries... I'm not such a fan.
And make no mistake, it is to fill treasuries. Public safety is a convenient fig leaf. Studies have shown that in…
cortex | December 4, 2008Nicholas Kristof has an important column on the link between iodized salt and IQ in developing countries:
Almost one-third of the world's people don't get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.
When a pregnant woman doesn't have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency…
pharyngula | December 3, 2008I'll believe them when I see them. Greg Laden says we should all vote on this idea: that we ought to rather thoroughly revamp how science is taught in this country by setting national science standards on the teaching of evolution. I'd like to see it if it could be done well, but I predict that such an initiative would set up some awesome squealing from the creationists…which is another reason to support it.
gregladen | December 3, 2008The 54th edition of Four Stone Hearth, the Anthropology Web Carnival, is up at International Cognition and Culture.
gregladen | December 3, 2008Tramplings. Sounds like the title of a Stephen King novel. And it may as well be.
When the news of the Wal-Mart empoloyee being trampled to death was coming out, the thought occurred to me "doesn't this happen every year? Why would the fact that this happens every year not be part of the story? That would seem important!" So I figured I was just wrong and that it dosn't happen every year.
Then, I came across Sciencewoman's post, and that made me think of this again.
And this time I googled it. I put "Trampled" and "Black Friday" into google, and here's what I got (not in order):…
pharyngula | December 3, 2008The temperatures here in Morris are dropping into the single digits °F, snow is on the ground and probably not going away until the spring, and the lakes are all frozen over — we spotted our first icehouse on Lake Minnewaska last weekend. So what does that mean? I'm flying south this weekend, to Orlando, Florida!
I'll be speaking at the University of Central Florida on Friday, 5 December, at 7pm in Communications Building 101. Afterwards, we tentatively plan to adjourn to the Lazy Moon for refreshments — we can't be certain because it's a pizza place in a college town, so we may not be able…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008
Richard "Dick" Davisson in the courtyard outside the physics building
at the University of Washington (2000 or 2001).
Image courtesy of Christophe Verlinde.
I have been lucky to know a lot of talented scientists while I was working my way through school. One of my very good friends (and drinking pals), physicist Richard (Dick) Davisson, was the son of Nobelist, Clinton Davisson, who won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1937. Interestingly, his maternal uncle, Sir Owen Willans Richardson, was also a Nobel prize winner in Physics (1928). Sadly for all of us who knew and loved him, Dick died in…
jwilbanks | December 3, 2008Copyrights and open access and curation are all important.
But the real tragedy today is that a bacon costume was stolen, in my town of Boston to boot. If you see someone running around dressed like bacon, or more likely, see it in a second-hand costume shop, send email to the nice folks at Bacon Salt.
Oh yes. If this is viral marketing, bacon salt people, you're dead to me.
gregladen | December 3, 2008On Monday, Birmingham mayor Larry Langford was busted by the feds for bribery and fraud in connection with a multibillion-dollar sewer bonding that has caused the county in which Birmingham is seated to end up in near bankruptcy.
Langford, Montgomery investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre were charged in the 101-count indictment. The charges also include money laundering and filing false tax returns.
Langford is accused of receiving $230,000 in bribes from Blount, some of them routed through LaPierre, to influence the bond deals while Langford was president of the Jefferson…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008Here's the latest carnivalia for you to enjoy!
Carnival of the Blue, issue 19. This blog carnival focuses on the oceans and everything involved with them -- an important topic in today's world, and one that I write about from time to time.
bleimanb | December 3, 2008 An expedition to a tiny island in the South Pacific's Republic of Vanatu has yielded hundreds of new species, including possibly 1000 new species of crab.
Squat lobster
153 scientists from 20 countries participated in the survey of Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific, scouring caves, mountains, reefs, shallows, and forests collecting species. Out of over 10,000 species collected, the researchers are predicting that as many as 2000 may be previously unknown to the scientific community. Some pics from the National Geographic story are below, but we encourage you to visit this article and…
cortex | December 3, 2008If you're in the New Haven area, I'll be talking about the neuroscience behind Proust, umami and Girl Talk at Yale tomorrow at 5 PM. The talk is free and open to the public.
cwilcox | December 2, 2008In 1982, criminologists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson published an article in The Atlantic Monthly called "Broken Windows." The theory they laid out became known as the Broken Windows Theory. It holds that people are more likely to commit crimes in areas that appear unwatched and uncared for - i.e., "if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken...[because] one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing," as put in the Atlantic article.
In other words, perceptions alter…
gregladen | December 2, 2008
And this is how they try to show you who is boss:
Hippo plays with kitty:
gregladen | December 2, 2008
December 2008 History Carnival
Carnival of Evolution #6
Berry Go Round # 11 - Berries, and more than just Berries
The 153rd Carnival of Homeschooling
Carnival of Space #81
The (November) Carnival of Elitist Bastards is Up at Last!
All Things Eco Blog Carnival Volume Twenty Seven
Please submit your entries to the upcoing Oekologie Carnival, to be hosted here. Click here to submit.
pontiff | December 2, 2008Nature article on El Naschie. (See also The Case of M.S. El Naschie, Continued.)
Opening scene from the Nature article, the greatest of all euphemisms, "retirement" starts off the show
The editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself, is set to retire early next year.
Scene two, the story so far:
Five of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie. And the year to date has seen nearly 60 papers written by him…
grrlscientist | December 2, 2008Here's a few more blog carnivals for you to enjoy;
History Carnival, December 2008 edition. This blog carnival focuses on history, both recent and long past history.
Europe Travel, 1 December issue. This blog carnival is crammed with lots of travel photoessays, and lots of gorgeous images, too.
Berry Go Round, issue 11. This blog carnival features one of my images, isn't that cool? I am pleased, of course!
That's Blog, 29th edition, a blog carnival that focuses on .. writing a blog!
cortex | December 2, 2008What would it be like to have an immaculate memory, so that every detail of life was instantly inscribed in the brain? It's actually unbearable. Here's Der Spiegel:
Price can rattle off, without hesitation, what she saw and heard on almost any given date. She remembers many early childhood experiences and most of the days between the ages of 9 and 15. After that, there are virtually no gaps in her memory. "Starting on Feb. 5, 1980, I remember everything. That was a Tuesday."
She can also date events that were reported in the media, provided she heard about them at the time. When and where did…