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grrlscientist | November 30, 2008My friends and colleagues at Nature Network (yes, I am a member of their auspicious group, although I have yet to start a blog there), have been passing a meme around amongst themselves. Martin Fenner is the culprit who started this whole thing off, so go yell at him about it. Anyway, in an effort to reduce NN's inbreeding coefficient, I have decided that this is a perfectly good meme for the greater blogosphere, or at least for ScienceBlogs, especially since it is navel-gazing at its best, and who doesn't enjoy picking through their own belly-button lint?
What is your blog about?
Well, my…
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008Hey everyone, great news! A little birdie has told me that the entire contents (63 volumes) of the journal, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, are now available to the public, free of charge! I am still investigating the site myself, but have already found that this offer also includes the archives for another journal, Science in China Series C: Life Sciences, and perhaps others. This great offer is only available through the end of this year, so be sure to take advantage of this before 2009!
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008Here are the latest blog carnivals that have been published for you to enjoy. Since I was traveling, I have included all the blog carnivals that I am aware of that were published during that time period;
I and the Bird, issue 89. This blog carnival focuses on wild birds and bird watching.
Encephalon, issue 59. This blog carnival focuses on the brain and neurobiology and how they interact to produce behaviors. I will be hosting this blog carnival in a couple weeks, so be ready to help me by contributing your writings to it!
Carnival of Conservatism, a blog carnival that actually focuses on…
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008tags: thanksgiving escape, wild turkey in central park, bob levy
Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George, 2008 [larger view].
The photographer writes:
I found the one and only Wild Turkey continuing to forage in Central Park this week. However it was the first time I found him at Turtle Pond which is north of his usual haunts. Apparently he is extending his range. I wonder what powerful motivating force has convinced this bird to remain here alone instead of joining others of his kind outside the city?
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008tags: Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for?, giving thanks
Image: orphaned [larger view].
Thanksgiving is a celebration of the things that we are thankful for, so I thought I'd make a list of everything I am grateful for;
I found a wonderful little cafe and deli that provides free wifi (and an outlet where I can plug in my laptop, which is strategically hidden behind their cookies), so I am thankful that I have free wifi today, when all my usual sources of wifi are closed to the public. (If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello!)
I am thankful that I still…
gregladen | November 26, 2008A word of advice:
TAKE THE TURKEY OUT OF THE FREEZER NOW!
Here is a Thanksgiving Joke for you.
mspringer | November 26, 2008Ok, ok, I admit there's post-1900 classical that I really like. Copland and Gershwin in particular were mentioned by a number of people, and both are great. I made my first acquaintance with Copland when I was a little kid watching a NASA documentary, and in the background of some dramatic launch was his Fanfare for the Common Man. Gave me chills.
Now to the actual post:
I'm thankful for many, many things. One of them is having the next few days off from school. Now large parts of that time off are going to be spent studying, but that's not a bad deal considering there will also be…
cortex | November 26, 2008Speaking of decisions, I've got to make a rather difficult one today: beer for the Thanksgiving table. I was inspired by a totally wonderful Burkhard Bilger article in the New Yorker on the rise of "extreme beer" and the sheer difficulty of being able to afford a wine that fits the varied foodstuffs of the table. (Don't get me wrong: I'm not one of those insufferable souls who worry constantly about food-wine pairings, but the food being served this year is especially varied. What possible fermented liquid goes well with sweet potatoes and marshmallow and brussel sprouts covered in gruyere…
pharyngula | November 25, 2008The US is too dependent on cars and oil, and the automobile companies have been total failures at addressing the needs of the country…which is why they're now looking for bailouts. So I have to say I thought Keith Knight's solution is very appealing. After pointing out the incompetence of our automakers, he suggests…
Yes! Rebuild the railroads and put together a national mass transit system! Now there's a public works project that would put people to work and improve our infrastructure. I'd also really like to be able to climb onto a train at the local station when I have to travel.
cwilcox | November 25, 2008Viva Viagra - but not if you're an athlete.
The World Anti-Doping Agency is considering banning the drug because of its capability to be used as a "performance enhancer" (yeah, yeah).
Viagra (sildenafil citrate) works to increase blood flow by causing blood vessels to become wider, which, in theory, could provide an extra boost to sporting performance. For example, high-altitude studies have shown viagra to restore oxygen levels or lung capacity - which would be a huge help if your team's playing in mile-high stadium. New York papers already reported in June that several well-known athletes…
pharyngula | November 25, 2008
I have many things to be thankful for. One is that I'm not the brain-damaged idiot who wrote this appalling editorial in the Newnan Times-Herald.
Thanksgiving must be a terrible time for atheists. They have no God to thank.
They do not have the privilege of gathering with family and friends to express gratitude by saying: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." An atheist on his deathbed faces serious uncertainties. Gazing upward, he pleads: "Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul -- if I have one."
I'm also thankful that atheists are not sitting down and taking this nonsense…
sb admin | November 25, 2008We've mentioned before that the Obama administration will soon be focusing on developing new approaches to consumer-product safety. It's worth remembering some of the solutions that have been proposed over the past couple of years, as high-profile problems with contaminated food and drugs have raised concerns about the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to meet its tremendous responsibilities.
In particular, we shouldn't forget about Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro's proposal to separate FDA's food and drug missions. In September, DeLauro (D-Conn.) introduced the Food Safety…
cortex | November 25, 2008The next few months are going to be full of news and riffs on my next book, How We Decide, which comes out in February. As a result, I'm trying to pace myself and limit the shameless self-promotion, at least for now. But sometimes one just can't resist! So here are some nice early reviews. Kirkus called it "a treasure trove of scientific data, clinical research and real-life examples of decision-making processes." And here's what Publishers Weekly had to say, in a starred review:
What is going on in the brain of a pilot deciding how to handle an emergency or a man trying to escape a wildfire…
pharyngula | November 25, 2008I'm normally a fan of the United Nations — I think more international cooperation is important — but they've just made a bad decision, voting in favor of a measure to condemn "defamation of religions". It's another example of the way religion tries to preserve its inanities by restricting criticism since, after all, it cannot survive any kind of critical thinking. And then there's this comment:
And don't forget that no less an authority than Canada's own Louise Arbour, former UN high comissioner of human rights, wrote in response to a complaint about the publication of those famous Danish…
cortex | November 25, 2008Lincoln Center recently featured a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Here's what Ben Brantley had to say in the Times:
Life unfolds in a series of exquisite contradictions in "Waves," a remarkable, genre-defying work from the National Theater of Great Britain that raises the bar for literary adaptations. The world that is so magically summoned in this improbable page-to-stage translation of "The Waves," Virginia Woolf's most challenging novel, is one of fragmentation and flux, of impenetrable solidity and ghostly transparency, of simultaneous bloom and decay.
The six lives this…
mspringer | November 25, 2008I'm on the road today and so can't write up an extensive post. So for today, I leave you with a picture from physics history: the 1927 Solvay conference. It proved that there's no critical mass for genius. If there were, this gathering would have exploded. A large fraction of my "Greatest Physicists" are all in the same place smiling (or glowering) for the camera:
(Click for full size)
If I had a time machine, that conference would be pretty high on my list of things to see.
drorzel | November 24, 2008
FQXi Community: Articles, Forums, Blogs, News
"For the current [essay] contest, [the topic] is "The Nature of Time," including, but not limited to, the arrow of time; the emergence of time in quantum gravity; time, free will and determinism; time travel; the beginning or ending of time; and timelessness."
(tags: physics time internet quantum astronomy science)
The Quantum Pontiff : Dewy Eyed Pastoralism
"A scientific life lived in short breaths, one publication at a time, until it's too late, and no one can even understand what you are doing. "
(tags: science academia biology history…
mspringer | November 24, 2008Classical is how you look at it. To most people, classical music is whatever happens to be written before about 1900 that you hear played in orchestra halls and NPR. To classical fans, there's more nuance involved. More ambiguity, too.
"Classical music" is generally divided into about four eras, one of which is itself confusingly called the "classical era". They run as follows.
Baroque: From about 1600-1750. To pick a representative example of this beautiful and staggeringly diverse genre at random from playlist.com, here's Bach's Suite No. 3 In D - Air 'On The G string'
Classical: 1750-…