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grrlscientist | June 13, 2006Hey everyone, there's another new blog carnival out there, one that I am most pleased to be part of! The 2nd edition of the Philippine Blog Carnival was just published and it does include a piece by moi, along with some others that you will also find quite interesting. Most essays are in English, but a few are in Tagalog(?) or Filipino(?). I can read this blog carnival reasonably well (and I am sure that long-time reader, Tabor, can also read it), probably because I can read and speak a reasonable amount of Indonesian, which is closely related to Malay and Tagalog and Filipino, so I am not…
retrospectacle | June 13, 2006Here's the continuation of some tips to get into (and be happy in) graduate school for the sciences. These tips may help you focus yourself during interviews and the admission process, or at least give you something to think about.
11. Good scientists don't always make good mentors.
When you read awesome papers, its easy to imagine this brilliant scientist as the perfect mentor. But its important to get a variety of opinions to find out if the person you want to work with is a good teacher, and good with people. Personalities are not always compatible, don't let it interfere in getting your…
tqa | June 12, 2006With Tropical Storm Alberto nearing landfall, this seems like as good a time as any to talk about hurricanes and global climate change. With legions of reporters standing by to cover the storm, and scrambling for things to talk about while they're waiting, someone's bound to talk about the question of a link between this hurricane season and global warming. They've already been primed by former President Bill Clinton, who linked Republican policies, global warming, and increased numbers of hurricanes at a fundraiser yesterday. If this season is anywhere near as active as predicted, I think we…
tqa | June 12, 2006This weeks question:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
Tough question. I've got lots of ideas about what I'd do with limitless funding within my own area, but until the question came through, I hadn't thought too much about alternative careers.
I guess my answer depends on "outside of your own discipline" means. If it means that the shift has to be to an entirely different discipline, I'd have to go with astronomy, and look at the geological history of other planets. If I…
stcynic | June 12, 2006No, not when she claimed that the 9/11widows enjoy the fact that their husbands died. Of course that's vile and anyone with one iota of human decency knows it. I didn't think it was possible for me to despise Coulter any more than I already did, but a friend just emailed me a link to this article from Media Matters wherein she compares herself to H.L. Mencken. And that just crosses my line. To me, this fits perfectly with Michael Bolton daring to compare himself to Sinatra. Mencken is the finest essayist America has ever produced. Coulter is a carnival barker on the midway of right wing…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2006The 31st edition of the Carnival of the Green is now available for your reading pleasure at my new blog sibling's place, A Blog Around the Clock. There are lots of good essays listed there to read.
neurotopia | June 12, 2006This is painful. We got back from anniversary trip bliss to see the first US game. And we're down 2-0 in the start of the second half. ARGH. Besides the fact that Czech is offsides every 5 minutes, we really should be down 1-0. Our defense kinda collapsed and let the big guy in the middle get a header in the first few minutes of the game. The second goal was just a dynamite 1-in-1000 shot through multiple defenders, 20 yards out with perfect placement. I have no illusions that we can pull this off, but hopefully we can at least get on the board....
nisbetmc | June 12, 2006What research would I be focused on if I weren't currently studying the interactions between science, media, and politics? It would have to be the role of the news and entertainment media in shaping international public opinion about the U.S., what pundits and journalists commonly refer to as the "Anti-Americanism" problem, though the topic is much more complex than that label implies. My brother Erik, who is in graduate school at Cornell University, is actually writing his dissertation on this topic.
nisbetmc | June 12, 2006
Over the weekend, there was a Bigfoot sighting near my parents' house in Clarence, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. The sighting is complete with the following photograph. See how local TV news covered it. The Bigfoot myth continues to be a favorite of American culture. For more on Bigfoot, see these articles from Skeptical Inquirer magazine by managing editor Ben Radford (here, and here.)
tqa | June 11, 2006Janet tagged all of us new SBers with a mathematically themed meme. I put off answering this long mostly because I have a massive aversion to math - that's why I went into evolutionary genetics. I'm also not a big fan of the whole self-reflection thing. It makes me think too much. But I'm also easily victimized by peer pressure, so here it goes:
Three reasons that I blog about science:
1: Science is cool, and I don't think enough people appreciate that.
2: Writing helps me organize my thoughts.
3: Fundamentally, I am a science geek at heart, and I don't know what else I could blog about.…
tqa | June 11, 2006Dr. John Marburger, the current Presidential Science Advisor, has a little question-and-answer piece over at Newsweek. Nick Anthis has some comments on the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the article over at The Scientific Activist. On the whole, I agree with Nick, but there is one point that Marburger made that I think deserves a bit more attention.
In the article, when asked about stem cell research, Marburger says:
Objections to embryonic stem-cell research are rooted in ethical principles and the idea of compromising these is repugnant to many U.S. citizens. Science alone cannot…
grrlscientist | June 11, 2006
On this bright, sunny Sunday, the latest edition of the Carnival of the Godless was published for your reading pleasure, hosted by The Atheist Mama. I was especially interested to read the essay about a forbidden five-letter word.
tags: blog carnival
clock | June 11, 2006New World Cup Soccer Ball Will Unsettle Goalkeepers, Predicts Scientist:
The Adidas 'Teamgeist' football has just 14 panels - with fewer seams - making its surface 'smoother' than conventional footballs which have a 26 or 32 panel hexagon-based pattern.
This makes it aerodynamically closer to a baseball and, when hit with a slow spin, will make the ball less stable, giving it a more unpredictable trajectory in flight.
This will make for some interesting viewing, to say teh least!
So far, I only caught about half of the Sweden vs. Trinidad match yesterday. I need to make an exam for…
purepedantry | June 11, 2006A 28-year-old woman has been cited for lewdness for exposing herself inside a store. The woman was riding a motorized cart inside Lin's Market Place on Thursday with her pants around her ankles and not wearing underwear.
Customers didn't notice the woman until she would stand up from the cart and bend over to look at items on the shelf, exposing her buttocks.
The woman told police she arrived in Cedar City with a circus but was left behind.
Ahhh! So she was from the circus. That makes so much more sense now...Carnie folk -- you just can't trust 'em.
purepedantry | June 11, 2006Why do people run for office? Is it because -- as I would guess -- of some psychological trauma they endured as children? Or do they possess a gene variant common in the Kennedy's?
A study in the American Political Science Review delves deeply into the subject concluding (shockingly) that people have different reasons:
The authors significantly revise existing methods of explaining decisions by lower-office holders to run for higher office. First, they distinguish between ambition formation and the decision to run itself, positing and finding that "progressive ambition" exists prior to a…
purepedantry | June 11, 2006Dr. Robert Singer and colleagues at Albert Einstein have observed transcription in single eukaryotic cells -- that's right single cells.
I will divide how into two groups for the initiated and the uninitiated so you can both see how cool this is.
For the uninitiated: In order for a cell to make proteins, it must first make a copy of its DNA to send to the cellular machinery that makes proteins. This is called an RNA molecule. While scientists have developed a bunch of ways to look at RNAs, all those methods up until this point were done on the collection of RNAs from many cells rather…
mikethemadbiologist | June 11, 2006By way of AmericaBlog comes this news about the Democrats' fundraising:
According to the Washington Post -- and Ken Mehlman -- Democrats are competitive with the Republicans in fundraising this year because of the internet:
NC Chairman Ken Mehlman, whose committee has seen a 10 percent fundraising drop, compared with 2004, said Internet fundraising has allowed Democrats to reach a new group of liberal donors and narrow the GOP's edge with individuals. But he said his party still holds a solid financial lead because of money raised by state parties.
Still, the trends at the national level are…
purepedantry | June 10, 2006CNN reports on a survey of the increasing number of people getting tats:
The American University employee is among about 36 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 with at least one tattoo, according to a survey.
The study, scheduled to appear Monday on the Web site of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, provides perhaps the most in-depth look at tattoos since their popularity exploded in the early 1990s.
The results suggest that 24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15 percent to 16 percent of U.S.…
purepedantry | June 10, 2006A sheriff's deputy who is accused of going topless at a campground has been fired and charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
Dawn Rene Roberson, 38, of Royal, was fired Wednesday after she turned herself in on the misdemeanor charges.
According to incident reports, a marine patrol deputy and a park ranger told a topless Roberson to cover up in separate encounters Sunday.
Oh come on. Why you got to hate on the topless police? I would frankly feel much safer if all the police went topless. It gives it that air of familiarity that I have grown to love in law enforcement.
purepedantry | June 10, 2006Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
I guess if I had to go back and do it all again, I would have gone through with being a physicist. When I got to college I knew that I was just destined to be a physicist because that was the subject that I liked the best in high school. Little did I know at the time that college level physics is a hell of a lot more difficult than computing the trajectory of spherical cows.
This question doesn't quite apply to me though because I am still…