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petnoyer | January 16, 2007
Just when you thought you escaped the onslaught of annual reviews in the media, along comes a slacker post from the Deep Sea News. Craig tasked me with this weeks ago, but I quickly passed the responsibility to a bevy of impartial judges willing to slog through last year's material in search of the year's best stories.
So, welcome to the Best of the Abyss 2006. Five highly qualified judges from federal, non-profit and private sectors with backgrounds and experience in deep sea issues reviewed a list of nominations in categories compiled by Craig and myself, and submitted their votes with…
pharyngula | January 16, 2007A strange map—it gives an equivalent nation in GNP for each state in the US:
Some are weirdly appropriate: Minnesota compares with Norway, France and California are mates, and Dick Cheney's home state shares something else in common with Uzbekistan. Texas and Canada, though…hey, do you think if we tell them that it will double their GNP, that they'll take Texas off our hands?
purepedantry | January 15, 2007We've been chatting in the ScienceBlogs forum about doing some posts about basic concepts in science -- short articles for people who don't necessarily have lots of background but would like to get some. Anyway, Chad is inquiring from his readers what kind of posts they would like to see. Suggestions for him are ideas like energy and force.
I think that idea is a good one, and I am happy to participate. So here's the question: If I were to post some basic concepts articles, what would you like to know about? If it were something related to neuroscience, that would probably be good. At…
purepedantry | January 15, 2007Evolgen has a hysterical post on the evolution of zombie populations.
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007
Bird flu is suddenly back in the news as officials in Indonesia report new cases this week. In a spring 2006 Skeptical Inquirer Online column, after evaluating trends in reporting and opinion polling, I offered this outlook on the nature of news coverage and its impact on public perceptions:
Though experts are often quick to criticize the media, so far, there is little evidence that news coverage of Avian flu has promoted undue alarm among the American public. Public attention to the topic remains relatively low, while few Americans express worry that they or their family might contract the…
grrlscientist | January 15, 2007
The guy sitting next to me at my watering hole is having pancakes for dinner tonight, so I had to use this as a segue into sharing the most absurdly funny picture that I've seen on the internet (yes, I know it's been out there for years, but I've never had the opportunity to use it, until now).
I dedicate this picture to the guys who created the creationism museum.
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007Back in the fall, after hosting a class "blog" debate on the Internet and community, more than a few readers asked me whether I would post the reading list for the undergrad course I teach here at American University. Below is the schedule of readings assigned for the spring semester, along with a course description. As of right now, this spring semester's blog debate is scheduled to take place between April 26 and May 3.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is an introduction to research exploring the many dimensions of "communication and society." As we will review, mass communication and…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007For those that have been following the debate over the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of top US research universities, the publication is currently hosting an interesting discussion with the creator of the index, anthropologist Lawrence B. Martin, former graduate dean at SUNY Stony Brook Check it out here. And see this news report by the Chronicle on reaction to the index.
nisbetmc | January 15, 2007
By far, the most successful buzz marketing campaign of the past decade has been Apple's ability to dominate news coverage with the release of their latest i-products. NPR's On the Media interviews Wired columnist Pete Mortenson on how Apple gets journalists and news organizations to do their PR for them, heralding new products as page one news. Just press play above to listen.
cmcclain | January 15, 2007The last forum at the International Biogeography Society meeting discussed how biogeographer's might increase public outreach. Unfortunately little attention was given to what I feel is one of the most effective mechanisms, blogging. The forum really discussed more traditional processes such as press releases, museum exhibits, and popular science writing.
So to my other SB'lings and to you, I propose a challenge. First, can you without a
Google search define what the field of biogeography is. Second, as a voice for our audience, what do you think is the most effective mechanism for…
tqa | January 14, 2007In this 60 Minutes interview, President Bush explained why he brought up mistakes that had been made in his recent speech to the nation asking fordecreeing that more troops be sent to Iraq:
PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about?
BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it.
OK, let's see what's wrong so far. First of all, Abu…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007
The NY Times' Barnaby Feder offers this report on the City of Berkeley's decision to regulate nanotechnology locally. As this research area moves more and more into the market, and especially into overtly political contexts like city councils, state legislatures, and Congress, the issue will climb the media agenda, and shift in its framing towards more dramatic interpretations centered on scientific uncertainty, amplified risks, conflict, and the public accountability of scientists, regulators, and industry. It's a pattern I have detailed extensively in studies of stem cell research, plant…
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007You can debate the validity of these metrics endlessly. You can question whether citations and pubs are the best indicators of university quality and impact, and you can deliberate over whether or not the social sciences and humanities should be evaluated using metrics grounded in a physical sciences "lab output" model. Yet according to a calculation of publications and citations, Harvard University tops the recent Chronicle of Higher Ed rankings of doctoral research universities. At #2, UCSF ranks as the top public university overall, and Berkeley and UWisc are the other top placing…
cmcclain | January 14, 2007Peter's post on the Alvin pilots generated an email from Janet Voight, deep-sea cephalopod expert extraordinaire, pointing me to this great video. Enjoy.
cmcclain | January 14, 2007Finally got back from my meeting minus a piece of luggage or two. Unfortunately the trip came with a shocking reality of anthropogenic effects on marine systems. Before I headed to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, I asked around and searched online to find some localities to snorkel while I was there. Myself and two close friends loaded up in a rental car and went off to visit the sites on my list. These sites were 4 years ago the best in snorkeling the island had to offer. Unfortunately today, they are degraded coastal systems dominated by sewer runoff, resorts, industry, and trash…
pharyngula | January 14, 2007Really. This is painfully sad: a young woman enters a water-drinking contest to win a video game console for her kids, and ends up dying of water intoxication.
nisbetmc | January 14, 2007Apparently, Dinesh D'Souza, who has been embarrassing himself with wanna-be-academic bomb throwing books for years, has finally thoroughly discredited himself. A fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, D'Souza in his latest work The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, claims that bin Laden and al-Qaeda don't hate the U.S. because of its policies in the Mideast and the Muslim world but rather because of the "decadence" of America's "cultural left."
Read the WPost review calling the polemic the "worst nonfiction book about terrorism from a major publishing house…
nisbetmc | January 13, 2007
A battle appears to be brewing in Texas over the proposed Presidential library at SMU:
DALLAS - Negotiations to build George W. Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University have divided the campus, pitting the administration and some alumni against liberal-leaning faculty members who say the project would be an embarrassment to the school. Some professors have complained that the combined library, museum and think tank would celebrate a presidency that unnecessarily took the country into a war.
razib | January 13, 2007Sergey Gavrilets and William R. Rice have a new population genetic model for homosexuality out. You can read the full paper over at Gavrilets' website, while Ars Technica and Matt both have some nice commentary. I don't have much to add, and generally share Matt's skepticism of the utility of a one locus model, but at least it is somewhere to start. I will reiterate that the "problem" is obligate homosexuality. I don't find facultative homosexuality as surprising or evolutionarily mysterious. Also, I am intrigued by the the older brother effect because of its implications of genomic…
petnoyer | January 13, 2007A new article in Journal of Geophysical Research by Gouretski and Koltermann shows global warming estimates since the 1950's are positively biased 0.2 - 0.4 °C due to discrepencies between temperature readings from the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) device and Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) sensors.