clock | December 7, 2008Nina Simon explains:
Getting a good comment is like getting a million puppies in the mail. I am so so so grateful whenever you write back and share your thoughts with all those faceless people and with me. But I've also learned not to rely on or have an unhealthy relationship with that gratitude. I'm ecstatic when you comment. I'm thrilled when someone links to me. I'm elated by reader numbers. But what keeps me going is an interest in writing, learning, and sharing
Read the whole thing - it is detailed and good.
clock | December 7, 2008...you need to find the useful information by following the links in this post.
clock | December 7, 2008This kind of he-said-she-said False Equivalence journalism is infuriating and is the prime reason why nobody trusts the corporate media any more which is why the newspapers are dying:
Academic Elites Fill Obama's Roster:
.....All told, of Obama's top 35 appointments so far, 22 have degrees from an Ivy League school, MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago or one of the top British universities. For the other slots, the president-elect made do with graduates of Georgetown and the Universities of Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina.
While Obama's picks have been lauded for their ethnic and…
clock | December 7, 2008Triangle bloggers will meet at Carrboro Creative Coworking on Wednesday, December 10th at 6pm. Please join us if you can.
clock | December 7, 2008Festival of the Trees #30 is up on A Neotropical Savanna
The 16th Edition of the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is up on Bayblab
clock | December 7, 2008
Past Religious Diversity And Intolerance Have Profound Impact On Genetics Of Iberian People:
New research suggests that relatively recent events had a substantial impact on patterns of genetic diversity in the southwest region of Europe. The study, published on December 4th in the American Journal of Human Genetics, shows that geographical patterns of ancestry appear to have been influenced by religious conversions of both Jews and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula.
Genetic Ancestry Of African-Americans Reveals New Insights About Gene Expression:
The amount of proteins produced in cells--a…
clock | December 6, 2008It's life isn't it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.
- Katharine Hepburn
clock | December 6, 2008Deborah Howell, the WaPo Ombudsman (for a few more days), wrote her thoughts on science reporting in the Washington Post (and in general) - Making Sense of Science Reporting:
The job of science reporters is to take complicated subjects and translate them for readers who are not scientifically sophisticated. Critics say that the news media oversimplify and aren't skeptical enough of financing by special interests.
That led me to review papers that are to be published soon as part of a project sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on how the media cover science and technology,…
clock | December 6, 2008Creation Museum, step aside! Welcome to Dinosaur Kingdom, a Virginia roadside amusement park in which plastic dinosaurs eat plastic Union soldiers:
Dinosaur Kingdom is a twist on the biblical Creationist view that people and dinosaurs lived together. Here, people live with dinosaurs -- but only until the dinosaurs eat them.
As the tour begins, visitors are asked to imagine themselves in 1863. A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use…
clock | December 6, 2008Thanks to DrugMonkey for the reminder. We do this meme every year in December - the only rule is to "post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year." Here we go (ClockQuotes are usually the first post of the day and thus of the month, so there is not much in terms of my own words):
January:
A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
February:
I have called this principle, by which, each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
March:
Two things are aesthetically…
clock | December 6, 2008Even after Sam-I-Am persuades me to try them?
On the other hand, can we learn something from this book about selling science? Evolution? Are our anti-Creationist tactics, for instance, better or worse than Sam's? Or is his strategy inappropriate for this topic?
clock | December 6, 2008You build a mine where the ore is. And facilities right next to the mine, to extract the metals from it. And a factory next to it that turns the raw metal into parts and objects. And a train station or a port next to it, so you can move the objects to the stores you built where the people are. And you also build a town where all your employees will live.
That's how it's always been done.
You cannot work the land, without living on it and getting your boots muddy. If you are hoarding something valuable, you need to hire night-guards who will actually show up at work. I understand, there…
clock | December 6, 2008Michelle asks: What Kind of Online Superhero Are You?
The easiest way to think of this is through superheroes, of course. In many comics such as Superman, Spiderman, and Batman, the protagonist has double life. The characters seem to cherish both roles-the closeness of relationships with others in the standard life and the power and responsibility of the superhero life. In other comics such as X Men, the hero and the person are the same. Wolverine, although sometimes escaping into solitude as Logan, is always a Mutant. Jean Grey is always Jean Grey and Storm is always Storm. There is no…
clock | December 6, 2008
Danielle Lee was profiled in The St.Louis American the other day. Among else, the article says:
Recently, she was invited to co-moderate a panel on diversity in the sciences at the third annual ScienceOnline conference in Research Triangle Park, N.C. In January, scientists, science bloggers, journalists and students from around the world will meet to explore how online and digital technologies influence science communication and education, and vice versa.
clock | December 6, 2008erv and Ed Yong discuss science, blogging, science communication, HIV, and, er, vampires....
clock | December 6, 2008Have you ever heard of Cummingtonite?
Cummingtonite or magnesium iron silicate hydroxide is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2. Monoclinic cummingtonite is compositionally similar and polymorphic with orthorhombic anthophyllite, which is a much more common form of magnesium-rich amphibole, the latter being metastable. Cummingtonite shares few compositional similarities with alkali amphiboles such as arfvedsonite, glaucophane-riebeckite. There is little solubility between these minerals due to different crystal habit and inability of substitution between…
clock | December 6, 2008Why The 'Perfect' Body Isn't Always Perfect: How Hormones Interact With Waist-to-hip Ratios In Women:
Having an imperfect body may come with some substantial benefits for some women, according to a new article in the December issue of Current Anthropology. The hormones that make women physically stronger, more competitive and better able to deal with stress also tend to redistribute fat from the hips to the waist, according to Elizabeth Cashdan, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. So in societies and situations where women are under pressure to procure resources, they may be less…
clock | December 5, 2008Madness is consistent, which is more than can be said of poor reason. Whatever may be the ruling passion at the time continues so throughout the whole delirium, though it should last for life. Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy, but begin to shift and waver as we return to reason.
- Lawrence Sterne